Abstract

CABRAL, João de Pina. "Scents of heather and mud": reflections on the ethnographic gesture. Etnográfica [online]. 2007, vol.11, n.1, pp.191-212. ISSN 0873-6561.

This essay deals with the ethnographic gesture - that movement, both physical and intellectual, in the course of which the social scientist is socially decontextualized in order to re-contextualize himself in the "field". This movement demands both creativity and dynamism (engenho) on his part. The processual ambiguity between identification and differentiation is essential, so that the lived world that is studied may be postulated as a possible human world before a number of other possible worlds. The ethnographer is necessarily confronted with questions concerning the relevance of the small scale interactions he studies for the understanding of the human condition as a whole: a problem of scales which require mediation. At the end, the article argues for a new universalist outlook for anthropology.

Keywords : Ethnography; human condition; symbolic mediation; deadchildren.

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