ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

192Gabriela Boangiuby going over the barriers imposed by a disciplinary limitation and to whom theresearcher has to adapt from the methodological point of view.In this situation, the object of study is “sovereign” and we observe theinterchangeability between the approaches of different sciences. The sciencesthat based themselves on quantitative data discover the qualitative ones and viceversa. For example, there were times when Anthropology used Statistics.Sociology reconsidered the role of Observation as an approach once considered“a speculative method and technique” and today it “stands among the main usedmethods and techniques that can offer information with an added-value of factsbut opinions” 9 .Sociology does not reduce itself to quantitative analyses and to valuing“the law of big numbers”. In this regard, we can mention the studies conductedby the School of Chicago that used the technique of life – narrating – aqualitative approach meant to research the small social groups 10 . “Someanthropologists that study the familial relations have come to use Statistics inorder to better define the characteristics of matrimonial bondages. Such“borrowings” are efficient in what concerns the obtained results, expanding thetheoretical- methodological basis, in this way facilitating a more adequateapproach of the studied reality.Even if we can see this kind of methodological interdependence, SocialSciences do not “dissolve”, losing identity in a rigor less, amorphous mass ofclearly defined conceptual links. Although it seems to be a bit fragmented,Contemporary Ethnology tends to explore new spaces, new thematic segments,responding to these challenges by continuous adjustments, progressing “throughborrowings and successive theoretical distances, constituting a cumulative andcritical science about the cultural and social being” 11 .Some researchers make a clear distinction between the European and“the exotic” Ethnology, the opposition between “the civilized” and “theprimitive” that arose with Ethnology. In European Ethnology, this idea finds itsequivalent in the opposition between “scholars-like” and “popular” that stillfinds its place in the centre of numberless researches conducted by a greatnumber of folkloric and national Ethnology schools 12 . Some researchers, ofwhom we name Marc Auge though, consider “exoticism has died”, “the otherone is me myself, on one hand because the others have the right to express theirown opinion in their turn, (…)”; the following issue naturally raises: “this new9 Cristina Gavriluţă, Foreword at Henri Peretz, Approaches in Sociology. Observation,Iaşi, European Institute, 2002, p. 16.10 Marie-Odile Géraud, Olivier Leservoisier, Richard Pottier, op. cit., p. 16; NicolaePanea, Cultural and social Anthropology –vademecum, Craiova, Omniscop, 2002; Nicolae Panea,The Gods of Asphalt. Anthropology of the Urbane, Craiova, Editura Cartea Românească, 2001,p. 33-46; Philippe Corcuff, New Sociologies, (translated by Ion. I. Ionescu), Iaşi, EuropeanInstitute, 2005, p. 108-120.11 Marie-Odile Géraud, Olivier Leservoisier, Richard Pottier, op. cit., p. 19.12 Pierre Bonte, Michel Izard (coordinators), op. cit., p.227.