Jean Guiart, Methodology, Fieldworker, Debates and Politics in Ethnology
Résumé
Guiart designed a methodology that, instead of working with a single or a few informants, consisted in collecting exhaustive records or 'inventories' of all formalized social relations, which is necessary to understand kinship and social systems, and to translate the complexity of behaviours, strategies and relativity of norms, in the frame of various relational levels. Thus, he criticized structuralism's kinship models and functionalism's a-historical societies, with people following, possibly unconsciously, unchangeable ancestral rules. His long fieldwork practice made him aware of the various ways indigenous people use anthropologists, including himself, to get advantages from colonial administration, based on 'manipulations' of oral tradition. He is also well known for his frequent bitter criticisms of his colleagues and heated debates that ensued, particularly about New Caledonia.
Mots clés
Jean Guiart
Anthropologycal methodology
Structuralism
Kinship systems
Authenticity
Debates
Vanuatu
New Caledonia
Jean Guiart Anthropological methodology structuralism kinship systems authenticity critics Vanuatu New Caledonia
Jean Guiart
Anthropological methodology
structuralism
kinship systems
authenticity
critics
Domaines
Sciences de l'Homme et SociétéOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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