Aprender Antropologia (Learn Anthropology)

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Title: Aprender antropologia (Learn Anthropology)

Author: François Laplantine

Number of Pages: 175 pages

Work done by: Naima Larissa Pereira Lopes Delgado

INTRODUCTION

In this study we will discuss eight chapters of the book " Learning Anthropology"of the French anthropologist François Laplantine (1943), who turns his research to the fields of the anthropology of disease and religions, besides giving his attention to the relations of anthropology with writing. These approaches, by him are studied, mostly in Latin America (and with more prominence Brazil). These chapters are: A methodological break: the priority given to the personal experience of the "field"; A thematic inversion: the study of the infinitely small and everyday; One requirement: the study of totality; One approach: comparative analysis; The conditions of social production of anthropological discourse; The observer, an integral part of the object of study; Anthropology and literature; The constitutive tensions of the anthropological practice, and having them as base, we seek here to recover the main aspects that involve the process of research work in anthropology. For this, we will cover each of these topics respectively.

A METHODOLOGICAL BREAKDOWN: priority given to the personal experience of the "field"

This first chapter deals with the basic anthropological approach, which concerns the " direct observation of social behaviors from a human relationship" (Laplantine), which emerged to deconstruct the speculative anthropology that hitherto prevailed with properly philosophical characteristics, already that in its methodology did not predominate the experience and the interaction between the observer and the studied group - observed - (constituting, as it were, a cabinet anthropology). This basic anthropology then prioritizes the experience gained in field research and in this first conjuncture encompassed only the most ostentatious social groups.

Still in this context, we understand that it is important to articulate some of the points that have been highlighted in this chapter. They are: ethnography, ethnology and anthropology. In the following they are characterized as follows:

The ethnography - it is the direct collection, and as thorough as possible, of the phenomena that we observe, for a lasting and continuous impregnation and a process that is carried out by successive approximations (...);

The ethnology - consists of a first level of abstraction: analyzing the collected materials, bring up the specific logic of society that is studied;

The anthropology - consists of a second level of intelligibility, "building models to compare companies with each other ...".

A THEMATIC INVERSION: the study of the infinitely small and everyday

After the methodological rupture that gave priority to the personal experience of the field, an inversion appeared in the thematic of the anthropological study. For he who studied global themes, began to turn his gaze to the small groups of daily life, to micro societies.

This thematic inversion that aims at the simplest (which seems often irrelevant), ordinary, and often so banal is overlooked in the eyes of the observer, influenced much of the innovations that occurred in the human sciences and with an emphasis on history , which in turn became an anthropological history. This change occurred because the field method, and the study of the micro deconstructed taboos and consequently offered openness to the other areas.

A DEMAND: the study of totality

This chapter concerns one of the characteristics of anthropology that requires more care: the study of wholeness. This is because, as has already been mentioned above, the anthropological study, after the thematic inversion, started to look at the ordinary, and this brings with it the responsibility of not letting anything go unnoticed. So if the anthropologist studies the totality, he must elaborate a study altogether, aiming at all perspectives. This approach to the whole explains what Mauss wrote in 1960: "man is indivisible" and "the study of the concrete" is "the study of the complete." To the detriment of this, in the words of Laplantine.

AN APPROACH: comparative analysis

In this progressive path that anthropology has gone through a lot has been altered. After the aspects already mentioned here, we will articulate on "comparative analysis", which has an extreme value for anthropology, because this approach makes us see that in relation to the "other", we discover that "it" and its tendencies may also be within my context and not just on the other side (as is often understood), and with this we perceive in the familiar the exotic and so vice versa.

Moreover, comparative analysis has the mission of deconstructing prejudices, many of them from ethnocentrism, which is one of the great problems faced by anthropology. This is because observing customs, habits, trends, etc., of other societies makes us understand particularities of our society. Laplantine, in order to defend this comparative approach, cites the example of Malinowski, who spent his entire life studying a single society - that of the Trobrianders - and for this undermining his studies. Although this analysis is so primordial, Laplantine points out that it can not be the first action of the practicing anthropologist, he first needs to collect the data, to understand the logic of society, among other things, and then to carefully compare with other studies.

THE CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL SPEECH

In this thematic articulates that there is always a context where research (whatever) is possible. To elucidate this thought Laplantine expounds a passage written by Levi-Strauss, " if society is in anthropology, anthropology in turn is in society" (1973). In these conditions anthropology, according to Laplantine, "does not exist in a pure state" and therefore can not be isolated in its own context. And this anthropology of laplandian view argues that "our belonging and our social implication, are far from being an obstacle to scientific knowledge, may on the contrary, in my view, be considered as an instrument. They allow us to put the questions that were not put in another era, to vary theperspectives, to study new objects. "