Academic literature on the topic 'Ethnology – field work'

The work of French ethnologist and prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan (1911–86) represents an important episode in twentieth-century intellectual history. This essay follows the development of Leroi-Gourhan's relationship to the discipline of ethnology from his early work on Arctic Circle cultures to his post-war texts on the place of ethnology in the human sciences. It shows how in the pre-war period there is already a conscious attempt to articulate a more comprehensive form of ethnology including the facts of natural environment and material culture. The essay also indicates the biographical importance of Leroi-Gourhan's mission to Japan as a decisive and formative experience of ethnographic fieldwork, combining the learning of a language with extended immersion in a distinctive material and mental culture. Finally, it explores how in the post-war period Leroi-Gourhan's more explicit meta-commentaries on the scope of ethnology argue for an extension of the discipline's more traditional domains of study to include the relatively neglected areas of language, technology and aesthetics.

Updating Romanian Ethnology: traditions, themes, scientific practices Romanian Ethnology (named, at first, either Romanic Philology or Ethnopsychology) became an academic discipline at the end of the ninenteenth century, as part of Philology studies and in tune with European theories regarding comparative researches on folk (peasant) cultures as a means to identify origins, interrelations and evolution of peoples. As part of European Ethnology, Romanian Ethnology has evolved as a science engaged in the project of national construction and practising the discipline has always implied resisting political bias, especially during the communist period. After 1989, Romanian ethnologists have freely explored the limits of their science, criticising tradition and practising interdisciplinary approaches that have induced a fruitful state of internal crisis, out of which a „new Ethnology” has emerged. Although rural tradition and national and multiethnic cultural heritage remain the most important topics of Romanian Ethnology, there are also a series of recent themes (work migration, exploring socialism and postsocialism, urban cultures and many others) that integrate research into international trends. As far as specific practices are concerned, Romanian Ethnology (or its most „fashionable“ equivalent, Sociocultural Anthropology, as I demonstrate there is no substantial difference between ’Ethnology’ and ’Anthropologies’) is grounded in the research field which is explored by using qualitative methods.

The article presents the key results achieved The Russian Academy of Sciences N.N. Miklouho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in 2018, which is one of the leading Russian scientific institutions in the field. In the context of the research activities conducted by the Institute, the authors highlight the development of some fundamental issues of ethnology, socio-cultural and physical anthropology, as well as of a number of interdisciplinary areas. A brief review of the main publications representing the most significant scientific results is given. Special sections of the article reveal the key points of organizational and expert activities. The main vectors of international cooperation are indicated. Key words: IEA RAS, problems of ethnology and anthropology, research, expeditions, education, international cooperation, expert work.

Abstract This paper discusses Alfred Russel Wallace’s Amazonian ethnography and his collaboration with Robert Latham on the models of indigenous Amazonian peoples that were placed on display at the Crystal Palace ethnological exhibition in 1854. The reception of scholars and the public to this innovative work is also considered. Wallace’s involvement in the first British ethnological exhibition of large proportions was fundamental to the dissemination of his work, which made a valuable contribution to a field of study—the ethnology of South America—that was still in its infancy in Britain, in marked contrast to Portugal, Spain, Germany and France. Wallace’s field observations of indigenous peoples were instilled in the British imagination through the handbook to the exhibition, in which Latham stressed the importance of Wallace’s descriptions to the advancement of the field of ethnology. Indeed, Wallace’s ethnographic accounts were deemed to provide an authoritative supplement to James Prichard’s preliminary and still somewhat limited ethnological map of northern South America, contributing to the creation of a more complete picture of the indigenous Amazonian peoples of Brazil.

The article outlines the reactions of Slovenian ethnologists and cultural anthropologists to the COVID-19 pandemic in the field of research and pedagogical work at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana. Special attention was paid to the impact of the pandemic on the work of the Slovene Ethnographic Museum in Ljubljana.

These are brief memoirs dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Department of Ethnography / Ethnology, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University. The author’s personal impressions date back to 1968-1974, when a whole galaxy of talented ethnographers worked under the leadership of the outstanding scientist S. A. Tokarev. They trained a large number of specialists who mastered the basics of scientific work, field research methods and continued the work of their wonderful teachers in various parts of the country. This testifies to the continuity of traditions in the field of ethnologica science and its relevance up to the present.

All scholarly fields feed on rhetoric of praise and criticism, mostly self-praise and self-criticism. Ethnology and folklore studies are not exceptions in this, regardless of whether they constitute a single field or two separate but related ones. This essay discusses questions concerning ethnological practice and object formation, cultural theory and the theory of tradition (or the lack thereof), cultural transmission, cultural representation, and the ethics and politics of cultural ownership and repatriation. It draws on general observations as well as on work in progress. The main concern is with a discursive move: from tradition to heritage, from the ethnography of repetition and replication to cultural relativist descriptions and prescriptions of identity construction and cultural policy, from ethnography as explanation to ethnography as representation and presentation. In addition, the essay seeks to delineate other underlying tenets that appear to constitute our traditions and heritages - both as strengths and as long-term constraints and biases. Where is ethnology headed in its quest to transcend theories and practices? Less theory and more practice? More theory on practice? Or more practice on theory?

When in the 1880s and 1890s German Lutheran missionaries were sent to Australia from their colleges in Hermannsburg in Lower Saxony and Neuendettelsau in Bavaria to work among the Australian indigenous peoples of the Northern Territory, they had no ethnological education to speak of. This was particularly true for Carl Strehlow who, born in 1871 and educated from 1888 to 1891 at the Lutheran Missionary College in Neuendettelsau, arrived in Adelaide in 1892 and went straight to work with Pastor Reuther among the Diari in Killalpaninna, south of Lake Eyre. From there, in 1894, he was sent to Hermannsburg to resurrect the abandoned Lutheran Mission Station of the Finke River Mission, owned by the South Australian Immanuel Synod. The records of the curriculum in Neuendettelsau show no subjects teaching the theory and practice of ethnology. However, his ethnographic work among the local tribes of the Arrernte and Loritja is today still considered a classic in the field. As a contribution to the history of research methodology in the field of ethnology, I intend to give a brief outline of 1) the early development of scientific research instructions in general, and 2) as a special case, Carl Strehlow’s learning process in form of letters with questions and answers between himself in Hermannsburg and his editors in Frankfurt.

The authors give an overview of the academic career of Professor L.P. Lashuk. He was one of the leading professors of the Department of Ethnography (now Ethnology) of Moscow State University in the 1960-1980-ies. L.P. Lashuk received his degree at the Department in 1950, having obtained high-quality training. This enabled him to work successfully and fruitfully until 1960 in Syktyvkar, at the Komi branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He obtained national recognition for contributing greatly to the development of ethnography of the peoples of the Komi Republic. Having returned to Moscow to work at the History Faculty of the Moscow State University, the scholar used his rich experience in the field, expanded his research interests, became one of the Russian leading ethnologists, founded his scientific school. The authors believe that the Department of Ethnology played a tremendous role in the formation of LP. Lashuk as a professional, one of the most prominent representatives of national science among "second generation" professors of the Department of Ethnography.

This collective monograph, edited by O. P. Kolomiets and I. I. Krupnik, is dedicated to the memory of the colonial administrator of the Anadyr district Nikolai L. Gondatti as one of the founders of the ethnographic study of Chukotka. The collection of papers is the result of the work of a team of 18 authors and includes texts of different genres: analytical works, including historical and sociolinguistic papers, publications of archival documents by N. L. Gondatti, field essays, memoirs, biographical sketches, essays, letters, and articles about museum collections. In addition to the biography and heritage of Gondatti, the authors focus on traditional ecological knowledge, the local history of the settlements of Chukotka, indigenous languages, and cultural heritage. The authors propose rethinking the concept of applied ethnology and understanding it more broadly. The book is an example of co-authorship with representatives of indigenous communities. The review provides an overview of the chapters of the monograph, the structural features, and genre diversity of the articles in the book. Also in focus is the authors’ understanding of the term “applied ethnology” and, in particular, the expansion of this concept.

The study takes its point of departure in the notions of life story, narrativity and context. It is based on extensive life story interviews with well-educated professionals in Poland – academics, teachers, managers, physicians, artists – during the period of transformation (or transition) from ”real socialism” to democracy and a market economy. The aim is to analyse the multilayered process of constructing a personal identity, as the narrators interweave stories about their lives with images of history and society. The central approach is narrative analysis, focusing on the interview interaction as well as the wider cultural, societal and political context in which the self-presentation takes place, and which it simultaneously creates. Concepts of cultural and paradigmatic narratives are combined with a gender perspective and selected terms from Pierre Bourdieus theory of practice. The narrators’ life experiences are shaped and evaluated in an implicit dialogue with cultural narratives of ideal biographies, professional careers, gender roles and family models in Poland during socialism and the transformation. In family background stories, the ancestors’ gendered biographies are depicted in relation to the underlying paradigm of the romantic-patriotic tradition. In childhood stories, the evaluation models used are psychological, social and based on political correctedness. The interviewees often shape their nostalgic, bitter and ambivalent memories against a background of the power relations between the family and the state, using nostalgia, dark rhetorics and a well-established genre of coping strategies during the socialism. In narratives about formal school-education during the socialist period, two paradigms are seen as highly incongruous: the intellectual-elitistic tradition and the socialistic citizen-schooling. Also stories of being a part of both formal and oppositional organisations and networks are told. In narratives about careers and working life, the pride in doing a good work is prevalent, but the narrators also depict complications in the professional paradigm due to the proliferation of politicised and informal power relations; en influence still lasting during the transformation period. The troubled issues of legitimacy, status and economy are discussed. In stories about close relationships, there is an underlying paradigm of love, marrital happiness and being a good parent, even though the stories follow a variety of plots. The evaluations become complex and sometimes contradictory. By presenting their life-experience in a proud, ambivalent, defensive or ironic way, the narrators reproduce, deconstruct and challenge the dominant cultural narratives, shaping their unique personal paradigms.

L’activité attelage est en plein essor. Actuellement, l’expertise de cette discipline reste aux mains de quelques meneurs. Or le regain pour cette activité nécessite de former un nombre plus important de meneurs en veillant à proposer une offre de formation moderne et de qualité. De plus, il s’avère que le menage est une activité complexe et difficile à enseigner. C’est dans un environnement rénové de formation que s’inscrit cette recherche. Les meneurs-formateurs aux côtés de chercheurs revoient leurs méthodes d’enseignement, testent de nouveaux outils, cherchent à établir une cohésion dans la progression entre les deux écoles en charge des formations longues. Ils ont besoin de connaître les effets de ce nouvel environnement d’apprentissage sur les meneurs-stagiaires. L’objectif de la recherche est de quantifier l’efficacité d’une méthode innovante d’apprentissage dans le domaine de l’attelage afin de pouvoir la généraliser dans d’autres domaines. Les objectifs de cette thèse sont d’ordre à la fois épistémique et transformatif. Il s’agira de mieux comprendre les processus de développement des compétences au menage afin que les différents outils et situations de formations créés y correspondent. Cette recherche à visées compréhensives et transformatives s’appuiera sur une enquête ethnographique, un recueil de traces d’activité in situ, des entretiens d’explicitation, des entretiens d’auto-confrontation. Sur la base de l’ensemble de ces données, l’analyse en « cours d’action » (Theureau, 2004) des meneurs débutants en situation de simulation et d’entraînement sur le terrain sera menée afin de reconstruire et de modéliser les dimensions typiques de leur activité d’apprentissage-développement. Cette recherche s’inscrit dans un équilibre entre trois champs : l’utilisation du visionnage vidéo en formation professionnelle, l’exploitation des environnements simulateurs et les situations pratiques. L’analyse des « cours de vie relatif au projet de se former à la conduite des chevaux attelés » a permis de pister les processus d’appropriation et de transformations silencieuses influençant les trajectoires des cocher-meneurs stagiaires. Premièrement, cette recherche a permis de confirmer la thèse selon lesquelles les transferts d’apprentissages émergent au sein de l’activité des stagiaires. Deuxièmement, cette recherche a montré que l’ensemble de l’environnement de formation à la conduite attelée gagnait à être conçu comme une organisation au sein de laquelle ce qui transforme l’activité des stagiaires c’est le sens qui circule entre les contextes. Nos résultats invitent à poursuivre les recherches sur l’activité des stagiaires en interaction avec des contextes réels et simulés afin de préciser les phénomènes qui participent de l’enrichissement des créations de sens
The carriage driving is growing. Currently, the expertise of this discipline stays in the hands of some leaders. Yet the renewal for this activity requires to train a more important number of leaders being careful to propose an offer of modern and quality training. Furthermore, it turns out that the carriage driving is a complex and difficult activity to teach. It is in a renovated environment of training that joins this research. The leaders-trainers beside researchers see again their teaching methods, test new tools, try to establish a cohesion in the progress between both schools in charge of long trainings. They need to know the effects of this new environment of learning on the leaders-trainees. The objective of the research is to quantify the efficiency of an innovative method of learning in the field of the carriage drinving to be able to generalize it in other domains. The objectives of this thesis are at the same time to grow up the research and to act on the field. It will be a question of understanding better the processes of development of the skills in the carriage drinving to ensure that the created various tools and situations of trainings correspond to it. This research with comprehensive and transformative aims will lean on an ethnographical survey, an in situ annual report, explicitations interviews and autoconfrontation interviews. On the basis of these data, the analyse of “cours d’action” (Theureau, 2004) novice leaders in simulation and training situation on the field will be led to reconstruct and model the typical dimensions in their activity of learning – development. This research joins in a balance between three fields: the use of the video viewing in vocational training, the exploitation of the environments simulators and practical situations.The analysis of the “courses of life related to the project of training to the driving of the harnessed horses” allowed to track the processes of appropriation and silent transformations influencing the trajectories of the co-leaders trainees. First, this research has confirmed the thesis that learning transfers are emerging within the activity of trainees. Secondly, this research has shown that the whole driving training environment is better conceived as an organisation in which what transforms the activity of trainees is the meaning that flows between experiences. Our results invite to continue research on the activity of trainees interacting with real and simulated contexts in order to specify the phenomena that contribute to the enrichment of the creations of meaning

Ernesto de Martino (1908–65) could be described as one of the founding figures of Italian ethnology. Until his work was translated into English, he was fairly unknown to English-speaking anthropologists. Since then, however, the importance of his contributions to the field has received wider recognition. In the book Terra del Rimorso: Contributo a una storia religiosa del Sud (The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism), de Martino unravels how alterity may be found “at home,” through a study in the southern peninsula of Salento of rural people seasonally affected by tarantismo, a form of possession attributed to the bite of the tarantola spider.¹ The affliction is cured by the performance of “choreutic” dances followed by pilgrimages and offerings made to Saint Paul. For de Martino, tarantismo is the living presence of an other-than-Catholic history—an echo of earlier pagan, erotic ritual forms. Tarantism can be understood only when placed within the context of Catholicism’s regional history, its broader social and economic conflicts, and tensions around gender, kinship, and sexuality within the home. The cult is one that the Catholic Church has “purged” but also resignified and appropriated in an effort to contain its vitality. As de Martino shows, however, the church’s engagement with the cult in the first half of the twentieth century colludes with scientific and medical—particularly psychiatric—discourses. The relevance of this work for a modern anthropology of Catholicism is plain in its historical breadth and the richness and detail of de Martino’s ethnographic research. But it is also interesting for the way it highlights how questions of science, magic, and enchantment have posed challenges of different types for the modernizing, bureaucratic church.