The ethnography as category of thought in modern anthropology

Abstract

The innumerous possibilities and
issues, put forward by ethnography to epistemo-
logical reflection in anthropology, makes it an im-
portant category of thought, capable of revealing
the meaning of anthropologists works, i.e., their
making. theerefore, ethnography can be seen as a
genre of performance whose meaning surpasses the
frontiers of native culture reaching the cultural field
of the anthropologist. Performance, in this study,
represents a mode of social auto-reflexivity in which
the anthropologist, by making use of narrative,
searches to enlarge the “field” of anthropology. the
goal of this text is to point out a few moments in
this process of ethnographic reflexivity, pointing
out the writings of Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) as a
privileged example.