Etnografiska utfärder i 1700-talets Stockholm

Etnologi, historia och metod

Abstract

Originally, ethnology identified itself as a historical discipline. Today, however, ethnology has, with few exceptions, become contemporary oriented. While others and new disciplines after the linguistic turn recognized the advantages of combining a historical perspective with an anthropological concept of culture, ethnology seems to have withdrawn itself from the past as a field for cultural analysis. What does it mean to do fieldwork in a disappeared reality? And what — if something — distinguishes a culture analytical approach from other history oriented disciplines? The article's starting point is a model, inspired by Paul Ricoeurs scale variations, and of Roland Barthes method for analyzing three levels of messages. Drawing on the model of different perspectives on and analyzing levels of history, I wish to recapitulate the methods that distinguish a cultural analytical approach to historical materials and to sketch on a method, clarifying different parts of the research process. The aim is to structure and draw up some guidelines for my own work — but also to call for and to initiate a debate, that I consider to be necessary.