Abstract

VISACOVSKY, Sergio E.. Ethnography and Anthropology in Argentina: Suggestions for the Reconstruction of a Research Program on Universality. Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol. [online]. 2017, n.27, pp.65-91. ISSN 1900-5407.  https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda27.2017.03.

From the beginning of Anthropology in Argentina, ethnologists and folklore specialists conducted various forms of fieldwork. In the 1960s and 1970s, a heterogeneous group of researchers created renewed research styles and approaches closer to the Anglo-Saxon Social Anthropology. But only in the early twenty-first century, fieldwork based on participative observation and the creation of monographs ("ethnographies") became the socially accepted and normal way of production of anthropological knowledge. On one hand, I intend to expose this process of transformation, combining my biographical experience as a native of Buenos Aires Anthropology, together with, research on the history of the discipline in the country. On the other hand, I will consider the current situation of Anthropology in Argentina as an opportunity to question the ways we think and carry out the discipline. I argue that the ethnographic perspective has led the wayto understanding our realities in an original manner, but it has also delayed the effect of others. Through dialogue with the international critical literature which has questioned the current disciplinary situation, I suggest reviewing the way we understand the connection between Ethnography and what I refer to as an anthropological agenda, so that writing and fieldwork stay subordinated to problems and theories. From my viewpoint, a new program should encourage us to conduct riskier research, which would embrace real intellectual challenges. This will naturally imply turning the very ethnographic approach into a more uncertain and experimental approach.

Keywords : Anthropology; ethnography; Argentina; theory (Thesaurus); universalism; scientific research program.

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