ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

Ethnology „Revisited” oportunities and challenges for the 21 st century 191and approaches, own laws)” 5 . The well-known Romanian sociologist conductsan analysis of Anthropology and Sociology from the perspective of “theepistemological conditions of validating any science”: object of study, usedmethodology, the level of the nom-othetical character, the temporal dimensionaimed by each investigative action, and the appropriate type of knowledge thatcorresponds to the respective discipline.The analysis will prove its efficiency if it manages to feature somespecific characteristics to each type of investigation earlier discussed,respectively Ethnology, Anthropology and Sociology. The didactic issues of theform of presentation are seldom contradicted by the contemporary researchesthat go over the rigidly marked theoretical barriers 6 . For example, with a view tothe specific type of knowledge of this “triumvirate of investigating the sociohumanefield” – Ethnology, Anthropology and Sociology, Dumitru Stanconsiders that Anthropology “reaches a speculative kind of knowledge”,Ethnology produces a “descriptive and explanatory knowledge” whereas“Sociology adds the profundities of the comprehensive type of knowledge”. Onthe other hand, it is well-known the existence of some “interpretative” attemptsin American Anthropology. Then, it is rigorously approached “the issue raisedby the statute of the object of knowledge, of its intrinsic intelligibility and of theforms and ways of understanding it” within the new direction represented byInterpretative Anthropology founded in the ‘70s-‘80s; “there were loads of paperworks that referred to the field research, to the ethnographical writings, topolitics and to cultural clashes that added a reflexive dimension to thecomplexity and diversity of the field of research” 7 .With a view to the relation Ethnology-Sociology, Jean Copansconsidered “Ethnology directly meets Sociology, both of them studying identicalrealities” 8 . We find the critics of Anthropology that, because of its speculativeside, has been accused of “alienating from the concrete and implicitly, fromSociology and Ethnology, in this way endangering the authority of the“triumvirate” made by the social sciences (Dumitru Sandu) much toocategorical. And that by being mentioned as “the weak ring”, the most exposedto the “traps of making Philosophy” creating de-responsibility from bothEthnology and Sociology’s epistemological point of view.The pattern of Natural Sciences, taken over by the socio-humaneSciences, seems to be outdated, despite obtaining relevant results, but in favor ofhaving a more adequate and flexible closeness to the object of study- the mobile,changing, alive, social reality. This orientation emphasizes the excerpt of reality5 Dumitru Stan, Foreword of Jean Copans, Introduction in Ethnology and Anthropology(translated by Elisabeta Stănciulescu and Ionela Ciobănaşu), Iaşi, Polirom, 1999, p.12.6 Dumitru Sandu, op. cit., p.17-19.7 Pierre Bonte, Michel Izard (coordinators), op. cit., p.331.8 Jen Copans, op. cit., p-47.