Zwei Erkläsungsansätze sozialer Anthropologie: Eine Illustration aus Storoznycja, Ukraine
Two kinds of explanation in social anthropology: An illustration from Storoznycja, Ukraine

Summary/Abstract: This paper investigates two ways to explain social phenomena: socio-historical explanation on the one hand, naturalistic on the other. The author tries to explore and make clear the epistemological background of both procedures. In the first part of his paper, he concentrates upon the constitutive elements of socio-historical explanation, described by French historian Paul Veyne and summarized by J. L. Gorman. The author accepts Veyne’s characterization of historical fact, namely that a historical fact is the product of a unique, specific description without being a singular phenomenon. A naturalistic explanation, on the contrary, tries to explain its facts by means of natural, nomic/lawful processes. In the second part of his paper, the author tries to illustrate in a sketch both types of explanation with the help of ethnographic material, collected during his fieldwork in the small Ukrainian village of Storoznycja.

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