The Ethnographer’s Ethnicity

E. Starova
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Abstract

Introductions to ethnographic research for university students in Macedonia are understandably starkly different from the often idealized ‘first encounters’ we read in classical anthropological texts, what Hammersley and Atkinson call “the Western ‘rite of passage’”. Students from Macedonia, during their four-year studies, conduct fieldwork in urban and rural areas of their home country, usually focusing on a different geographic region every year. Through this experience, students are introduced to a ‘foreign’ field that is often very familiar – the language is common and the general cultural context is shared. In such a fieldwork context, the question of ethnicity, as a general category of importance in the self-identification of communities and citizens of the region, as well as a category frequently present in the rhetoric of various political groups, cannot be withheld. As such, the aim of this paper is to highlight the need for including ethnicity in conversations about fieldwork in Southeastern Europe, especially in introductory courses on research methodologies. In this sense, it is not only the ethnic identity of our interlocutors that comes to interest, but that of the researcher as well, for whom it can represent either a barrier or a tool with the ability to aid the research process. The paper will examine introductory reading materials and practices in ethnography, and attempt to synthesize understandings of auto-reflexive examples of fieldwork in multi-ethnic communities or multi-ethnic ethnographic encounters by anthropologists from Macedonia to propose methods that ethnicity can be included as a significant factor and characteristic of the researcher in teaching ethnography in the Southeastern European region.
人种学家的种族
可以理解的是,马其顿大学生对民族志研究的介绍与我们在经典人类学文本中读到的经常理想化的“初次相遇”截然不同,汉默斯利和阿特金森称之为“西方的‘成人仪式’”。来自马其顿的学生,在他们四年的学习期间,在他们祖国的城市和农村地区进行实地考察,通常每年关注一个不同的地理区域。通过这种经历,学生们被介绍到一个通常非常熟悉的“外国”领域——语言是共同的,一般的文化背景是共同的。在这种实地工作的范围内,种族问题作为该区域各社区和公民自我认同的一个重要的一般范畴,以及在各种政治团体的言辞中经常出现的一个范畴,是不能隐瞒的。因此,本文的目的是强调在东南欧实地考察的对话中包括种族的必要性,特别是在研究方法的入门课程中。从这个意义上说,不仅对话者的种族身份引起了我们的兴趣,研究人员的种族身份也引起了我们的兴趣,对他们来说,种族身份可以代表一个障碍,也可以代表一个有能力帮助研究过程的工具。本文将考察民族志的介绍性阅读材料和实践,并试图综合对马其顿人类学家在多民族社区或多民族民族志遭遇中进行实地考察的自反性例子的理解,以提出方法,将种族作为研究人员在东南欧地区教授民族志的一个重要因素和特征。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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