Out of the Study and into the Field: Ethnographic Theory and Practice in French Anthropology

Parkin (social anthropology, U. of Oxford, UK) and de Sales (National Centre for Scientific Research, U. of Paris Ouest Nanterre, France) collect 11 essays that originated in a conference held at the Maison Francaise d'Oxford, UK, in April 2005, with three chapters written after the conference. They examine common perceptions about French anthropology among the British, specifically that it is dominated by theory based mainly on rationality and deductive reasoning and that it is not concerned with fieldwork, (which is seen as a strength of the British), and how these are distorted views. After a brief survey of the history of French fieldwork, a group of French and British anthropologists provide intellectual biographies of French anthropologists like Arnold van Gennep, Adolphe Hanoteau, Aristide Letourneux, Jean Rouch, Paul Rivet, Lucien Bernot, and Louis Dumont to explore the relationship between ethnography and theory and the uses of ethnographic practice in France. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Robert Parkin is a Departmental Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. In 2002 he delivered five lectures on the French school of anthropology at the opening ceremony of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany, since published as part of Fredrik Barth et al., One Discipline, Four Ways (Chicago UP, 2005). His other principal interests are in kinship, religion, and identity, and he has conducted field enquiries in Orissa (India), Poland, Italy, and Brussels.