Die Grenze als Standort der Ethnologie
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 122.1997:121-130
The border as position and location of anthropology
##The present essay offers a discussion of the importance of the concepts of border, periphery, and marginality for the positioning of ethnology/cultural anthropology within the fields of the humanities and social sciences, but also within society at large. It is argued that (similar to the role of the Turnerian "frontier" in American history) marginality has defined and informed the discipline. Marginality is seen as the result of an attempt to overcome Eurocentric constructs of knowledge while remaining within the tradition of Western scholarship and science, and of an identity-forming struggle with relational cultural "otherness". Rather than perceiving the present diversity of ethnology/social anthropology as a threat to the coherence of the discipline, the apparent absence of a clear consensus on theory and methods should be gratefully accepted as part of its bridge-building capabilities. The paper also discusses the consequences of paying more than lip service to the historicity of cultures and accepting the challenges of looking at cultural processes and cultures as processes against the background of the historical record. Given the fact that the majority of known cultures - including most that make up the classical canon of the discipline - and of cultural variation are no longer directly observable, fieldwork as the distinctive method of ethnology/cultural anthropology is increasingly called into question. Historical ethnography, which thus becomes one of the new frontiers of the field, must address the need for improved methods of exploring and interpreting historical cultures within a framework based on theoretical insights based on the study of living cultures.##
Keywords: border as anthropological perspective, location of anthropology, anthropology and historicity, ethnography and history, otherness, alterity, fieldwork, marginality
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