Hau Journal of Ethnographic Theory· 2014Q2
That’s enough about ethnography!
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- Q2SCImago
- 2014year
Short summary
Anthropology's overreliance on the term 'ethnography' has diluted its meaning and is curtailing the discipline's public voice, argues Tim Ingold.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- The term 'ethnography' is overused and has lost its meaning.
- Overemphasis on ethnography undermines anthropology's core commitments and methods.
- The discipline perpetuates a harmful researcher-subject distinction.
- Anthropology's public voice is being curtailed by its obsession with ethnography.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Ethnography has become a term so overused, both in anthropology and in contingent disciplines, that it has lost much of its meaning. I argue that to attribute “ethnographicness” to encounters with those among whom we carry on our research, or more generally to fieldwork, is to undermine both the ontological commitment and the educational purpose of anthropology as a discipline, and of its principal way of working—namely participant observation. It is also to reproduce a pernicious distinction between those with whom we study and learn, respectively within and beyond the academy. Anthropology’s obsession with ethnography, more than anything else, is curtailing its public voice. The way to regain it is through reasserting the value of anthropology as a forward-moving discipline dedicated to healing the rupture between imagination and real life.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Hau Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2014 · DOI ↗
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Field: Anthropology
AnthropologySocial Sciences