2025年3月19日 周三
Coevalness and thick description: A methodology for writing ethnographies of artifacts in small-scale societies
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    Abstract:

    The artifacts of small-scale societies hold special cultural significance, such as dancer masks, ancestor sculptures, headdresses, and ornate staffs, which displayed in elaborate ritual contexts. These objects become key cultural study texts for anthropologists. How should anthropologists write ethnographies of non-Western small-scale society for artifacts? This is a kind of narrative perspectives and methodologies which regarding non-Western objects. The study of objects in anthropology is termed ethnography of objects. Traditional approaches aim for objective truth, while postmodernism seeks to write culture. In anthropology, ethnography of non-Western objects is aimed to trace the history, meaning, and symbolism carried by these artifacts. It not only writes the objective truth of objects but also provides a thick description of local knowledge. Anthropologists treat objects as cultural texts, exploring their connections to social structures, religious beliefs, and aesthetic concepts, and examining their social life and meanings in cross-cultural contexts. Coevalness is a post-structuralist view of time in anthropology, posits that civilizations are not hierarchically ranked by time periods, viewing primitive and civilized concepts as coeval and equal. This narrative perspective reflects a critique of evolutionism, and emphasizing dynamic studies of non-Western art and the social life of artifacts, also demonstrating an understanding and respect for other cultures. This research proposes an inter-constructive methodology of coevalness and thick description, suitable for ethnographic writing on non-Western artifacts, termed coeval thick description. This method enables a multidimensional ethnography through vertical and horizontal studies, providing a new experimental writing approach for cultural texts. As an experimental ethnographic methodology, coeval thick description not only offers a cultural research methodology for small-scale society artifacts, but also reflects contemporary anthropological thought on object narratives.

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罗易扉.共时与深描:论小型社会物的民族志书写方法论[J].重庆大学学报社会科学版,2024,30(6):164~174

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  • Online: February 13,2025
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