Beyond the Field: Ethnography, Theory, and Writing in Anthropology

The centrality of field research, so strong in mainstream English-speaking anthropology, sometimes turns unduly into a sort of “mystique of fieldwork”, according to which anthropological knowledge stems directly from researcher’s subjective experience. If Geertz and the Writing Culture movement insisted on rhetorical-literary devices filtering field experience, less clear is its relationship with the theoretical dimension of anthropological writing. This aspect can be explored in two directions: (a) the analysis of anthropological traditions including forms of empirical research different from fieldwork; (b) the analysis of “mainstream” authors in which the research/theory relationship is configured in a less classical way, e.g. with a conspicuous theoretical elaboration based on the use of empirical data not directly produced through fieldwork.