ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

ETHNOGRAPHYETHNOLOGY “REVISITED” OPPORTUNITIES ANDCHALLENGES FOR THE 21 st CENTURYGABRIELA BOANGIUDespite being quite a “young” science, just as the other Social Sciences,together with Ethnography, Anthropology and Sociology, Ethnology ischaracterized by an impressive richness with a view to their specific theoreticalviews and attempts. The issues derived from the need of clarifying possibleconceptual and methodological limitations pass through a large spectrum,leaving from the positivist kind of intention of the nineteenth century to thecontemporary ideas that finally agree Ethnology has a relative epistemologicalautonomy without radically separating it from the above-mentioned fields. Thiskind of categorical delimitation between Ethnology and the other SocialSciences can be placed but in an area of a dull didacticism that is meant to voidand detour the scientific discourse to dry abstract ideas by artificiallydelimitating the area of preoccupations accessible to the mentioned field insteadof clarifying some issues.In spite of the limited space of this research, we nevertheless try toemphasize some major features of contemporary Ethnology that seldom findthemselves - from the methodological and conceptual point of view- at theintersection of Ethnology with Archaeology, History, Anthropology, Sociologyand so on.Thus, away from a forced “fight for territory” from the epistemologicalpoint of view, Ethnology seems to be threatened by a much too greater libertyconcerning its association with other social sciences, by the loss of its scientificfoundation, if we talk about a multidisciplinary approach. Still, the solid groundoffered by the results of the so far made researches do not seem to be troubledby the multidisciplinary approach, but, on the contrary: it will open newperspectives if there is a balance between the characteristics of the observedsocial reality and the conceptual set of instruments properly designed from themethodological point of view. In this way, both the danger of reiterating someconcepts specific to Ethnology and the subordination of a strictlymethodological study apparatus are avoided.With the aim of exceeding the rigid set of rules specific to themethodology of research and to socio-humane sciences, Elisabeta Stănciulescu,a well-known Romanian sociologist, stated in the Foreword of FrançoisARHIVELE OLTENIEI, Serie nouă, nr. 21, 2007, p. 189–198