The problem of the ethnographic real

pp. 212-232

in: I. C. Jarvie, Thinking about society, Berlin, Springer, 1986

Abstract

Stated simply, the problem of the ethnographic real is, what exactly is it that the ethnographer sets out to record and study? It is a serious problem not because ethnographers do not know what reality is, but because they constantly invoke it as a standard (Heider 1976: 79); this renders vicious the otherwise possibly innocuous and unavoidable fact that the activities of perceiving, recording and thinking are fraught with distortion. It is an interesting problem because the aims of ethnography are vague, and the philosophical assumptions behind those aims poorly understood. By looking at this problem from the angle subtended by ethnographic film, rather than that of clasic one-man field work, it may be possible to illuminate philosophical issues in the basis of anthropology as well as of film.