Терен антропологије и теренско истраживање пре и после критике репрезентације
The Field of Anthropology and Fieldwork Before and After the Critiques of Representation

Author(s): Zorica Ivanović
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Keywords: epistemology; fieldwork; methodology; critique; representation; location
Summary/Abstract: Ethnographic fieldwork, a research practice based on direct and long-term social contact between a researcher and researched (participant observation), resulting in a written ethnography, came to be traditionally regarded not only as having the most significant methodological value but also as one of the distinctive features of anthropology as a social-science discipline. The development of the poststructuralist and postmodern critique within the discipline, which gave rise to the criticism of ethnographic representation, has challenged a number of epistemological assumptions of field research and hence opened up a space for further critical examination of various aspects of the ethnographic method. This article provides an insight into genealogy and critical history of the ethnographic method in modern anthropology. At the same time, it critically examines the postmodern textual paradigm that underpins the critique of ethnographic representation. The criticism is leveled against the way in which this paradigm, just like other approaches that emphasize the model of language, tends to ignore historical contexts and subjects as well as some of the fundamental elements of the socio-cultural understanding that is achieved through (personal) experience and a direct encounter with the researched. Framed in these terms, the article does not seek to offer an exhaustive historic periodization of field research, which is, of course, characterized by a much more complex and contradictory development. Rather, it aims to draw attention to the way in which a redefined conceptualization of fieldwork can still play a significant role in modern anthropology without reducing the discipline's identity to ethnography.

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