Practitioners as Theorists

Para-ethnography involves collaboration with organization members who are themselves producers of cultural analysis rather than sources of raw data. It begins from the premise that contemporary workplaces involve internal theorizing that, although distinct from academic theorizing, can inform and ground organizational theory. Modern organizations, as highly professionalized, and based on conceptual design and legitimation, are a natural match for para-ethnographic methods, which have nevertheless been absent from organizational scholarship. As part of a general revisionist program in ethnographic theory, para-ethnography offers a way of reconceptualizing the role of the researcher, the nature of cultural knowledge, and the spatial boundaries of culture. After describing the similarities and differences between revisionist ethnographic approaches, I outline how para-ethnography differs from other forms of ethnography in practice. Finally, I discuss the challenges and opportunities of para-ethnography, suggesting that this methodological development may form part of a larger reconceptualization of the relation between theory and practice, and offering practical mechanics to ground such a reconceptualization.

Antropologia multissituada e a questão da escala: reflexões com base no estudo da cooperação sul-sul brasileira

Como a antropologia pode abordar fenômenos transnacionais, dado que seu método e o tipo de conhecimento construído a partir dele foram originalmente estruturados com base no estudo de pequenas comunidades locais? O artigo tratará do trânsito entre escalas micro e macro a partir de uma das vertentes (meta)teóricas que tem sido propostas desde a "virada interpretativa" nos anos 1980, inspirada na obra de Marilyn Strathern. Essa perspectiva, baseada no primado da relacionalidade e da reflexividade entre as duas faces do ofício do antropólogo (trabalho de campo e escrita etnográfica), aborda operações de produção de conhecimento rotineiramente empregadas tanto pelos antropólogos quanto por seus "nativos", envolvendo o acionamento de escalas, contextos, domínios e analogias. O artigo buscará operacionalizar esse instrumental analítico no caso da cooperação Sul-Sul brasileira com o continente africano, entendida enquanto composição (assemblage) emergente marcada por esforços de produção de contexto e busca de robustez relacional.

Universalist rationality and Simmel’s sacrifice model of value

At the turn of the century, Georg Simmel published critical commentaries on what he considered a misguided faith in socialism in the Viennese newspaper Die Zeit. In this article, the implicit presence of Simmel’s own sacrifice model of value in these commentaries is highlighted and its utility for a critical engagement with state efforts to promote a universalist rationality demonstrated. Through measures that promote a universalism, qualitative distinctions between ritual occasions and the everyday are rendered problematic and irrelevant. Resistance to such efforts, it is argued, can be suitably interpreted by way of Simmel’s sacrifice model of value. The discussion is illustrated through case studies of burial practices from late socialist Vietnam where the Party State has long curbed competitive consumption and nowadays promotes cremation as an economical funeral.