Abstract

CUNHA, Manuela Ivone. The redefinition of an object: from changes in the field to changes in anthropology. Etnográfica [online]. 2014, vol.18, n.2, pp.403-413. ISSN 0873-6561.

An ethnographic revisit, the comparison between two ethnographic inquiries conducted in different decades in a same prison institution, as well as between the discrepant, yet altogether consistent, results of those inquiries, provide an occasion to reflect on the limits and possibilities of ethnography for capturing historical processes. Is a systematic description of change possible in the light of the situated nature of ethnographic research and, more specifically, of its own historicity? This historicity will be reflexively considered at three levels: (i) in relation to the realities being ethnographed, (ii) in relation to the ethnographer and to the intersubjective encounter with his/her interlocutors, (iii) in relation to anthropological theory, researchers’ intellectual trajectories and changing theoretical Zeitgeist.

Keywords : ethnographic revisits; ethnographic re-study; historicity; prison ethnography; reflexivity.

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