User-Friendly Ethnography?

Abstract

The literature on anthropological research methods, and particularly on field research is now very large indeed (Ellen 1984), but ethnographers of the Mediterranean have until recently contributed little to it, with the exception of a small group of Geertz’s students (Dwyer 1982; Rabinow 1977; Rosen 1984) who have produced both experimental ethnographies and detailed accounts of fieldwork. Perhaps this reticence has some roots in certain special problems faced by anthropology working close to the centres of its own origins (Just 1978; Chapman, in this volume), and perhaps it is partly because another demanding problem — the profusion of historical materials — has also decisively shaped ethnographic writing. Perhaps too, the sense in which theory, method and literary genre are all mutually involved has held back discussion.

I would not have written this paper without an invitation from the XIIIth Rural Sociology Conference, Braga, Portugal, April 1986. The participants in the working group on methods produced several days of highly stimulating papers and discussions, which I was asked to summarise. This paper grew out of that summary, and any merits it has are due largely to: Stanley Brandes, Maria Catedra, John Corbin, Marie Corbin, William Douglass, Ruiz Fejao, Michael Herzfeld, Julie Makris, Brian O’Neill, João de Pina-Cabral, Robert Rowlands, Boaventura Santos, Jose Sobral, Joseba Zuleika.