Settings, Interactions and Things

A Plea for Multi-Integrative Ethnography

Bibliographic Data

ID2402148
AuthorsF Weber (0009-0001-1807-5938, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France, corresponding author)
Year2001
Volume2
Issue4
Pages475-499
Publication date2001-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1466-1381 • E-ISSN: 1741-2714
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/14661380122231000
OpenAlexW4247561391
LanguageEN
Citations received43
References cited66

The recent resurgence and prominence of ethnography in France is placed against the backdrop of key phases in its subterranean development during the past half-century, caught in the rift between sociology and anthropology and invoked in different ways by various theoretical schools. The author seeks a way out of the current impasse between the classical position of `integrative ethnography' (which purports to capture sociocultural totalities on the basis of localized observations) and the post-modern position of `narrative ethnography' (which dilutes its object in the chronicling of fieldwork and its aporias) that avoids the deficiencies of `combinatory ethnography' (which dissolves collective membership in favour of a generic actor facing `possible worlds'). Drawing on Norbert Elias and Gregory Bateson, but also on Max Weber and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, she clarifies and illustrates several key concepts - group of affiliation, social setting, person versus individual, object versus thing - needed to develop a `multi-integrative ethnography' that grants primacy to interactions (and the interdependences they materialize) while reactivating sociological tools indispensable for the analysis of interlocking social memberships

Epistemology · Ethnography · Key (lock · Linguistics · Narrative · Object (grammar · Plea · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Anthropology · Computer Science · Diverse Cultural and Historical Studies · Education, sociology, and vocational training · French Urban and Social Studies · Law · Philosophy