Suchergebnisse

This review surveys an emergent methodological trend in anthropological research that concerns the adaptation of long-standing modes of ethnographic practices to more complex objects of study. Ethnography moves from its conventional single-site location, contextualized by macro-constructions of a larger social order, such as the capitalist world system, to multiple sites of observation and participation that cross-cut dichotomies such as the "local" and the "global," the "lifeworld" and the "system." Resulting ethnographies are therefore both in and out of the world system. The anxieties to which this methodological shift gives rise are considered in terms of testing the limits of ethnography, attenuating the power of fieldwork, and losing the perspective of the subaltern. The emergence of multi-sited ethnography is located within new spheres of interdisciplinary work, including media studies, science and technology studies, and cultural studies broadly. Several "tracking" strategies that shape multi-sited ethnographic research are considered. The review concludes with observations about the reflexive persona of the ethnographer as "circumstantial activist" in which methodological discussions about multi-sited research in anthropology are now being developed.

Different national traditions define disciplines in different ways, and ethnology, folklore, and anthropology are separated in the Finnish university system. The great divide between the more universally oriented anthropological research and the local, especially Eastern and Northern European ethnological traditions is sometimes conceptualized by defining the latter as nationalist. The emergence of Finnish and Finno-Ugric studies in Finland complicates the difference in a way that is relevant to urgent questions of globalization and its relationship to cultural diversity. At the same time this emergence raises important questions about the significance of ethnographic knowledge. Historically oriented ethnological and folkloristic studies in Finland have formulated a multidisciplinary approach analogical to the four anthropological fields for research into the history of Finnish and Finno-Ugric cultures and languages. Researchers have used the accumulated data in new and novel ways, which has opened up perspectives instead of limiting them to the field of area studies. The development of Finnish ethnographic studies clearly demonstrates the necessity of comparison and the comparative perspective.

More than half the population of Iran is under the age of seventeen, but despite these more than 30 million children and adolescents, social scientists know little about their experiences, culture, or history.This ignorance is a reflection of what social scientists deem important. The dismissive attitude toward research with children is similar to earlier attitudes toward research with women: at best women were quantified and described. Most social scientists were male, seeing women from a male point of view. Out of the innocent arrogance that a male-dominated science breeds in its practitioners, women's own culture was largely ignored; "culture" was male culture. This changed only when women social scientists started to look at women through their own eyes.