anno XVI (2013), n. 15 (2) ARCHIVIO ISSN 2038-3215 ANTROPOLOGICO MEDITERRANEO ARCHIVIO ANTROPOLOGICO MEDITERRANEO on line anno XVI (2013), n. 15 (2) SEMESTRALE DI SCIENZE UMANE ISSN 2038-3215 Università degli Studi di Palermo Dipartimento di Beni Culturali - Studi Culturali Sezione di Scienze umane, sociali e politiche Direttore responsabile GABRIELLA D’AGOSTINO Comitato di redazione SERGIO BONANZINGA, IGNAZIO E. BUTTITTA, GABRIELLA D’AGOSTINO, FERDINANDO FAVA, VINCENZO MATERA, MATTEO MESCHIARI Segreteria di redazione DANIELA BONANNO, ALESSANDRO MANCUSO, ROSARIO PERRICONE, DAVIDE PORPORATO (website) Impaginazione ALBERTO MUSCO Comitato scientifico MARLÈNE ALBERT-LLORCA Département de sociologie-ethnologie, Université de Toulouse 2-Le Mirail, France ANTONIO ARIÑO VILLARROYA Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Valencia, Spain ANTONINO BUTTITTA Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy IAIN CHAMBERS Dipartimento di Studi Umani e Sociali, Università degli Studi di Napoli «L’Orientale», Italy ALBERTO M. CIRESE (†) Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy JEFFREY E. COLE Department of Anthropology, Connecticut College, USA JOÃO DE PINA-CABRAL Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal ALESSANDRO DURANTI UCLA, Los Angeles, USA KEVIN DWYER Columbia University, New York, USA DAVID D. GILMORE Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook University, NY, USA JOSÉ ANTONIO GONZÁLEZ ALCANTUD University of Granada, Spain ULF HANNERZ Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Sweden MOHAMED KERROU Département des Sciences Politiques, Université de Tunis El Manar, Tunisia MONDHER KILANI Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Culturelle et Sociale, Université de Lausanne, Suisse PETER LOIZOS London School of Economics & Political Science, UK ABDERRAHMANE MOUSSAOUI Université de Provence, IDEMEC-CNRS, France HASSAN RACHIK University of Hassan II, Casablanca, Morocco JANE SCHNEIDER Ph. D. Program in Anthropology, Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA PETER SCHNEIDER Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Fordham University, USA PAUL STOLLER West Chester University, USA UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI PALERMO Dipartimento di Beni Culturali - Studi Culturali Sezione di Scienze umane, sociali e politiche 5 Gabriella D’Agostino, Costruire o de-costruire il campo/Constructing or de-constructing the field Indice De-constructing the field 9 Vincenzo Matera, Ethnography: experiences, representations, practices for studying cultural diversity. Introductory notes 19 Thomas Fillitz, Spatialising the field: Conceptualising fields and interconnections in the context of contemporary art of Africa 29 Michela Fusaschi, Le silence se fait parole : ethnographie, genre et superstes dans le post-génocide rwandais 41 Ferdinando Fava, “Chi sono per i miei interlocutori?”. L’antropologo, il campo e i legami emergenti 59 Nigel Rapport, The informant as anthropologist. Taking seriously “native” individuals’ constructions of social identity and status 69 Paolo Favero, Picturing Life-Worlds in the City. Notes for a Slow, Aimless and Playful Visual Ethnography 87 Francesco Pompeo, «We don’t do politics». Rhetorics of Identity and Immigrant Representation in Rome City Council Documentare 99 Mariano Fresta, Proprietà intellettuale, marchio e cultura popolare. Riflessioni sul caso dei bottari di Macerata Campania e Portico di Caserta 107 Leggere - Vedere - Ascoltare 109 Abstracts In copertina: Photographing the Taj (© Paolo Favero) Vincenzo Matera Ethnography: experiences, representations, practices for studying cultural diversity. Introductory notes During the second half of the twentieth century, dosi ancora eroe solitario, si cimenta con una lin- anthropologists increasingly addressed the issues gua differente dalla propria, in condizioni talvolta De-constructing the field of conflict, cultural and social change and, in more rudi e, più di tutto, con forme altre di vita; oppure general terms, the merging (or, better, the creoliza- oggetto testuale, costrutto narrativo rivelatore tion, see Hannerz 1996), of different cultural and piuttosto dei codici e dei dispositivi retorici che social traits. Hence, at the turn of the century, the ne hanno governata la scrittura, rianimato infine making of hybrid (or creole) cultures, the conflu- solo dalle riletture di chi cerca in esso l’illusione ence of separate and different traditions – that is, nostalgica di mondi sempre a lui lontani? traditions with historical roots in different conti- nents at the moment of their creolization – became A similar question is the one posed some years the main dimension of cultural analysis. This turn ago by Steven Feld, in the first lines of the second signalled that older notions of culture as a holistic edition of Sound and Sentiment (1990). and integrated entity, and especially as a localized entity, were replaced with a new awareness regard- Recent commentaries on anthropological writing ing the creole nature of cultural processes. This have argued that ethnographic texts involved a turn had (and still has) important consequences formidable sense of allegory. The genre is said on ethnography. In part, such consequences, al- to tell us significant things about ourselves, our though they were evident in ethnographic reports modes of constructing “otherness”, our idealiza- (often in non-official ethnographic notes like Ma- tions and self-deceptions, our gender and class linowski’s Diary, for example) or at least in the biases, our time and historical positions. These ethnographic awareness of many scholars, did arguments are undoubtedly true in a general way not emerge fully until the publication of Writing […], but it is also true that an ethnography is Culture and its growing circulation within the an- something more than a Rorschach test of writing thropological community. Still not yet completely conventions, intellectual fads, and tacit prejudic- clear in contemporary anthropology is that, if we es. An ethnography is a report of a unique expe- accept the idea of creolization as the major factor rience. It is about the dialogue of sensibilities im- in the production and circulation of cultural mean- plicated in encountering and depicting a people ings, we have also to deal critically with the idea and place. The work and the writer are thus spe- of an organic relationship among a population, a cifically accountable not just to the interpretive territory, a language, an identity, a form of political preoccupations of scholarly readers, but to that organization, and one of those organized packages people and that place, and to need for incisive of meanings termed “culture” whence the classic and honest depiction (Feld, 1990: X). concept of “field” has been drawn. As Thomas Fillitz writes in his paper, indeed, This point recalls the one underlined by Greg- «Malinowski’s concept of fieldwork has for long ory Bateson, several years ago, in the first pages of passed into the non-debated “archetype” of the his famous book, Naven (1936); Bateson warned discipline’s tradition». However, in more recent against constraining cultural complexity experi- ethnographic research practice, the conceptions enced on the spot, so to speak, into the rigid form that ethnographers have of their fields appear very of a written text made up of linear sentences, se- distant from that ideal. quences of words that can be read one after the Ferdinando Fava too, in his paper, asks a crucial other. Naven is an anomalous ethnographic text in question regarding the archetype of the “field” in which the effort to find a more articulated way to the anthropological tradition. write ethnography was evident. According to Bate- son the core of the ethnographic experience lies in Località geografica, dove l’antropologo, creden- the encounter with a fully multi-sensorial range of 9 ARCHIVIO ANTROPOLOGICO MEDITERRANEO on line, anno XVI (2013), n. 15 (2) human interconnections (see Finnegan 2002). It litical, epistemological and ethical self-awareness. has to do with complex rituals, material objects, This means that the central question at the turn of with all sorts of indexical links between space and the century was no longer only that of Representa- time. This gives a dense sense to this peculiar expe- tion. Another “R” had been added to ethnography, riential dimension of human life. All these multiple that is, Reflexivity. The latter entail an exploration communicative processes are mediated through not of the lived experience of the knowing subject, publicly-shared enactments, not through publica- but of the effects and limits of the (political and tion in written texts. Something similar has been engaged) act of representations (see, for example, claimed by Dennis Tedlock (1983) with regards to Bourdieu 2002; Clark 2004; Kempny 2012; Naza- the dialogical emergence of culture. Tedlock (and ruk 2011; Burawoy 2003; Salzman 2002). Bruce Mannaheim 1995) assign a status of priority Indeed, political and epistemological conscious- to dialogue with respect to monologue. The latter ness – reflexivity – entails a critical view of culture, is the real core of any ethnographic experience – no longer something that we observe as social sci- especially in storytelling and oral narrative studies entists and talk about and describe by writing, by – even though it will sooner or later be transformed a more or less plain (more or less unproblematic) into a monological written text following the norms use of writing. Rather, it is a position that we speak of the ethnographic genre.