Abstract
In this article, based on my long-term ethnographic fieldwork in northern Thailand, I argue that discussion surrounding the engaged anthropology understands engagement as a monolithic whole, without distinguishing the instrumentalisation of knowledge from the form which comes into existence with the explicit self-understanding of the researcher. I believe that ethnography as a method, as it is affected by the commitment between anthropologist and informant, demands engagement as an imperative for various forms of reciprocity which jointly form the social dynamics of any fieldwork.