Título: Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive
Autor: Johannes Fabian
Sinopse: The Internet allows ethnographers to deposit the textual materials on which they base their writing in virtual archives. Electronically archived fieldwork documents can be accessed at any time by the writer, his or her readers, and the people studied. Johannes Fabian, a leading theorist of anthropological practice, argues that virtual archives have the potential to shift the emphasis in ethnographic writing from the monograph to commentary. In this insightful study, he returns to the recording of a conversation he had with a ritual healer in the Congolese town of Lubumbashi more than three decades ago. Fabian’s transcript and translation of the exchange have been deposited on a website (Language and Popular Culture in Africa), and in Ethnography as Commentary he provides a model of writing in the presence of a virtual archive. In his commentary, Fabian reconstructs his meeting with the healer Kahenga Mukonkwa Michel, in which the two discussed the ritual that Kahenga performed to protect Fabian’s home from burglary. Fabian reflects on the expectations and terminology that shape his description of Kahenga’s ritual and meditates on how ethnographic texts are made, considering the settings, the participants, the technologies, and the linguistic medium that influence the transcription and translation of a recording and thus fashion ethnographic knowledge. Turning more directly to Kahenga—as a practitioner, a person, and an ethnographic subject—and to the questions posed to him, Fabian reconsiders questions of ethnic identity, politics, and religion. While Fabian hopes that emerging anthropologists will share their fieldwork through virtual archives, he does not suggest that traditional ethnography will disappear. It will become part of a broader project facilitated by new media.
Contexto da obra
Quando a classificação é mais ampla, o contexto do livro costuma depender ainda mais de autoria, tema e edição. “Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive”, de Johannes Fabian, publicado pela editora Duke University Press, em 2006 e com 124 páginas, integra a categoria Livros Variados. Por isso, autoria, edição e tema acabam tendo ainda mais peso na forma de apresentar o livro.
Editora: Duke University Press
Páginas: 124
Ano: 2006
Edição:
Linguagem: inglês
ISBN: 0822381206
ISBN13: 9780822381204
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Duke University Press apresentam uma leitura densa e crítica, frequentemente ancorada em análises históricas, sociais e políticas. As obras exploram temas como raça, gênero, sexualidade, colonialismo e movimentos sociais, com narrativas que combinam rigor acadêmico e abordagens inovadoras. O catálogo oferece desde estudos que problematizam mitos sociais até relatos pessoais que ampliam a compreensão da experiência política e cultural. O tom varia entre o ensaístico e o narrativo, com textos que convidam a reflexões profundas sobre estruturas de poder e identidades. Essa diversidade sugere um interesse em obras que dialogam com debates contemporâneos e históricos, muitas vezes com um viés crítico e interdisciplinar.
