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Settings, Interactions and ThingsA Plea for Multi-Integrative EthnographyÉcole normale supérieure, Paris, France The recent resurgence and prominence of ethnography in France is placed against the backdrop of key phases in its subterranean development during the past half-century, caught in the rift between sociology and anthropology and invoked in different ways by various theoretical schools. The author seeks a way out of the current impasse between the classical position of `integrative ethnography' (which purports to capture sociocultural totalities on the basis of localized observations) and the post-modern position of `narrative ethnography' (which dilutes its object in the chronicling of fieldwork and its aporias) that avoids the deficiencies of `combinatory ethnography' (which dissolves collective membership in favour of a generic actor facing `possible worlds'). Drawing on Norbert Elias and Gregory Bateson, but also on Max Weber and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, she clarifies and illustrates several key concepts - group of affiliation, social setting, person versus individual, object versus thing - needed to develop a `multi-integrative ethnography' that grants primacy to interactions (and the interdependences they materialize) while reactivating sociological tools indispensable for the analysis of interlocking social memberships.
Key Words: totalization integrative ethnography narrative ethnography person individual setting interaction Norbert Elias French ethnography
Ethnography, Vol. 2, No. 4,
475-499 (2001) This article has been cited by other articles:
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