Arguments with Ethnography : Comparative Approaches to History, Politics and Religion Volume 70

ISBN-13: 9781845202804 / Angielski / Miękka / 1999 / 208 str.

Ioan M. Lewis; Loan M. Lewis

Opis

A major critique of the globalization of the culture principle in anthropology. This study contends that the subjective anthropology promoted through postmodernism represents an extreme development of long established, highly patronizing and misleading evaluations in the anthropologist's creative role in the construction of theory. Arguing that theory building is dependent on the actual study of peoples - a study which is empirically based and historically sensitive - the book advocates the "fieldwork mode of production and reproduction." The simplest model for the construction of empirically-grounded theory involves three interacting sets of factors: the subjective ethnographer and their deployment of current theoretical assumptions; the multi-layered ethnographic "facts" disclosed by fieldwork; and the geopolitical and historical contexts in which fieldwork is conducted.

Spis treści

Preface, Acknowledgements, 1. History 'Functionalised', 2. A historico-functionalist debate: (Ernesto De Martino, Michel Leiris and E.E. Evans-Pritchard), 3. Deconstructing Descent, 4. Frontier Fetishism and the 'Ethiopianisation' of Africa, 5. Writing Nationalism in the Horn of Africa, 6. Present and Past in North-East African Spirit-Possession, 7. The 'Wise Man's Choice': Conversion Theories, 8. Shamans and Sex: a Comparative Perspective, 9. Ethnography and Theory in Anthropology, Bibliography, Index

O autorze

Ioan Lewis (Author)