Etnografia/etnologia polska w okresie „realnego socjalizmu”. Od niemarksistowskiej ortodoksji „etnografizmu” do postetnograficznego pluralizmu

• Authors: Michal Buchowski

Title variants

EN

POLISH ETHNOGRAPHY / ETHNOLOGY IN THE PERIOD OF “REAL SOCIALISM”. FROM NON-MARXIST ORTHODOXY OF “ETHNOGRAPHISM” TO POSTETHNOGRAPHIC PLURALISM

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

In this article I describe the convoluted history of Polish cultural and/or social ethnography/ethnology/anthropology in the period under the rule of “really existing” socialism. In the intellectual history of ethnology just after World War II, methodological pluralism, inherited from the interwar period, made its mark. Soon it was superseded by a specific orthodoxy, named here "ethnographism", which was informed by positivist principles of research that did not require theoretical and interpretative analyses going beyond description. For at least two decades this methodology, or rather a method elevated to the status of theory, was accepted as an academic orthodoxy. However, it did not have much in common with the imposition of dialectical materialism as a normative theoretical explanation. It was thus a sort of politically unorthodox academic orthodoxy. Although in "Early Socialism" there were discussions about the methods of interpretation and the object of ethnographic research, they did not lead to changes in the paradigm of the discipline. This occurred in the period of "Late Socialism", when the discipline, in reaction to the naive realism and empiricism of ethnography, began to search for methods of interpretation and of theory going beyond those perceived as commonsensical, positivist schemata. If we characterise the 1950s and 1960s as dominated by "ethnographism", then the Sturm und Drang observed in the 1970s and 1980s can be seen as the birth of "postethnographic pluralism".

Keywords

EN

POLISH ETHNOGRAPHY/ETHNOLOGY; "ETHNOGRAPHISM"; HISTORY AND THEORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY; KNOWLEDGE AND POWER

• Publisher: Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze
• Journal: Lud
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 95
• Pages: 13-42

Contributors

author

Michal Buchowski

• Instytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, ul. Sw. Marcin 78, 61-809 Poznan, Poland