Bu Kadar Etnografi Yeter!

Year 2017, Volume: 4 Issue: 1 - Ethnography, 173 - 188, 15.06.2017

Tim Ingold

Abstract

Etnografi hem antropolojide hem diğer bağlantılı alanlarda fazlaca kullanılan bir terim haline gelmiş ve anlamını büyük ölçüde yitirmiştir. “Etnografikliği” araştırmamızı yürüttüğümüz kişilerle yapılan görüşmelere veya daha genel olarak alan çalışmasına dayandırmak, antropolojinin bir disiplin olarak, gerek ontolojik taahhüdünü gerekse eğitsel amacını ve temel çalışma prensibini -  yani katılımcı gözlemi- zayıflatmaktadır. Ayrıca, akademinin hem içerisinde hem de ötesinde, birlikte incelediğimiz kişiler ile birlikte öğrendiklerimiz arasında zararlı bir ayrımı yeniden üretmektedir. Antropolojinin etnografiye, her şeyden daha fazla olan takıntısı, onun kamusal sesini kısıtlamaktadır. Bu sesi geri kazanmanın yolu ise, antropolojinin gerçek yaşam ile tahayyül arasındaki kopukluğu sağaltmaya adanmış, ileriye dönük bir bilim olarak yeniden gündeme getirilmesinden geçmektedir.

Keywords

karşılıklılık, eğitim, etnografi, saha çalışması, yöntem, katılımlı gözlem, teori

That’s Enough About Ethnography!

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. 

Keywords

correspondence, education, ethnography, fieldwork, method, participant observation, theory

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