Метода посматрања са учествовањем: пример Социјалног центра Рог, Љубљана

Abstract

Идеал антрополошке методе – потпуна емпатија, уживљавање у начин живота и мишљење неке туђе културе, захтев да је субјективно доживимо изнутра као да је објективно гледамо споља, недостижан је, јер ако се оствари, постаје некомуникабилан. Истраживач се затвара у идиолект, приватни језик нове културе. Знакови постају симболи и, самим тим, неразумљиви онима који не припадају проучаваној култури. Дескрипције постају имена, и самим тим партикуларне и непреводиве. Међутим, друштвеним конвенцијама се превазилази проблем ексцентричности кроз остављање могућности да ствари остану недоречене, имплицитне и симболичке, а тиме се и отварају врата наредним интерпретацијама, новим виђењима света.

This paper discusses several related problems regarding anthropological fieldwork, from the perspective of linguistic anthropology. An example of Social Center Rog in Ljubljana serves to indicate several problems in contextualization of a fieldwork, especially so a method of participant-observation and a problem of transferring knowledge acquired at a fieldwork to those not familiar with the given fieldwork (including scientific and general audiences). This transfer is marked as being totally non-scientific and within literature is labeled under several appellations, for instance, “ethnographer’s magic” after Malinowski, or “intuition” after Sperber (who by the way argues that anthropological data could not be perceived but only intuitively grasp). The “ethnographer’s magic” could reduce a gap between what a researcher has learned and what he/she is able to transfer further on, but in this process, a lot of learned become lost. Therefore, the basic problem is data communicability. A way to overcome the problem is to reduce descriptions to a common denominator, that is, by diverging context (given that a data has a meaning to the members of the studied community) into a sign which new context will be something that makes sense to the recipients of such message (that is, to the members of a researcher’s community). A procedure to achieve this is determined by social conventions that define scientific methods, and also by a subject itself, which could be given jurisdiction for “translation” of a context into sign, i.e., a researcher.