“Knowledge production in disciplines of Social Sciences and Humanities is emerging out of the everyday practices of human beings,” according to Dr. P. Sanal Mohan, former Director, Kerala Council of Historical Research (KCHR) and Professor of Social Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU). Prof. Sanal was speaking on “Ethnography in Social Science Research” at the Human Geography Web-Lecture Series organized by the Inter University Centre for Social Science Research and Extension (IUCSSRE), MGU. Prof. Sanal said that it is important to understand “culture as something that evolves out of such everyday practices of people and not something divinely ordained.” A critical understanding that ethnography provides “would enable us to disentangle culture from the fetishized position bordering religious category in contemporary discourses in India and elsewhere.” Prof Sanal pointed out that ethnography “deals with culture as constructed and often treats it as a contested terrain. Obviously, it has dimensions of power involved in it.”
Speaking on the contested terrain of positivist methodology and its uncritical celebration of data, Prof Sanal said that “ethnographic research has become a new turn in and a byword for qualitative research in social sciences.” “Although the origins of ethnographic practice are connected with anthropology, it has gained significance as a method across different domains of social sciences.” “Ethnographic studies can be explored in different cultural and geographical locations depending on the choice of the ethnographers. The development of field work goes back to the time of Bronislaw Malinowski(1884-1942) who conducted field work—participatory research—in the Trobriand islands in the Pacific. Subsequently he published his well-known work, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922). He is known for his functionalist interpretation of culture. His tradition was followed by his student, E.E. Evans Pritchard and many others subsequently,” Prof Sanal said.
Today, ethnography is viewed as “an emergent disciplinary phenomenon.” In disciplines where culture has assumed significance, ethnographic practices have become indispensable. As such ethnography in its various dimensions has become “a defining element of academic enquiries.” Some of these fields are historical ethnography, cultural poetics, cultural criticism, and the analysis of everyday life among others.” In all this, “culture has become a significant component. In Indian social sciences particularly in social anthropology, field work-oriented research became very important. In order to grasp its significance, one needs to read the classic of MN Srinivas, The Remembered Village (1976). Most sociologists and social anthropologists in India conduct field work and practice participatory observation of the social phenomenon.”
Prof. Sanal noted that “field work and participatory observation are also conducted by historians who are engaged in ethnographic research along with archival research and other methodologies. Today we have many historians who are good practitioners of social anthropology too. They in fact made possible a conversation between history, ethnography and social anthropology.” He said that “historians by virtue of the nature of their disciple can’t engage in participatory observation as they are dealing with past. However, it is possible for a historian to undertake an ethnographic reading of the texts she reads in the archives. In certain cases, reading of the archival materials could be construed as a reverse ethnographic practice.” Prof Sanal said that “in a situation where one comes across detailed descriptions of events, personalities and larger institutional structures or social practices, it is possible for historians take a detour of the bygone days. Here, what is more fundamental is to understand historical archives as a contested terrain of meanings and historians should be more concerned with the conditions of production of historical document and their complex features and linguist conventions,” he added.
