Plenarveranstaltung:
I | Perspektiven der Ethnologie
Termin:
Dienstag, 02.10.2007, 09:00 - 11:00 Uhr
Ort:
Audimax (Gebäude), Auditorium Maximum (Hörsaal)
Shalini Randeria: The Production of Anthropological Knowledge: Challenges and Dilemmas of a Field Science.
The complex relationship between theoretical appproaches, empirical knowledge generated by long-term intensive fieldwork and writing of ethnography has been the subject of continued contestation. I propose to revisit some of these older debates in order to delineate some current challenges and dilemmas facing us as socio-cultural anthropologists. I will argue that (1)after the crisis of representation that focussed on writing rather than fieldwork practices, we have fortunately returned to a renewed interest in a minimal realism; (2) questions of scale and sites of fieldwork once again draw attention to what empirical material our practices in the field, however redefined, generate and how; (3) if the legacy of post-modernism has been a weariness towards grand theory, there is a renewed interest in middle-level theorisation , however eclectic and (4) the politics of location (rather than merely representation) continues to be crucial as we renegotiate our relationships with not only our interlocutors in a much more heterogenous “field” but also with social scientists in and from the socieites that are the object of our study.