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Workshop "to compare the close"
Representatives : D. Liberski-Bagnoud, S. Dugast
There is within the laboratory researchers' pole who many years lead their investigations to populations located in the same geographical zone (the basins of Three Volta), speakers of languages " Généalogiquement " related (cf. G. Manessy) and who introduce a big number of resemblances both in the mode of social organisation and in the political and ritual institutions, the territorial system or else the nomenclature of the consanguinity. Noticed and described since the first quarter of the XXth century, these "voltaic" said societies very quickly made the object of many tries of cultural classifications (Tauxier, Delafosse, Baumann and Westermann, etc.) without no being entirely satisfactory : the firm having collided with the double reef that constitute erroneous idea, on one hand, that a culture is a simple notice of constituting features and, on the other hand, a deficient theoretical reflexion on the report which can exist between linguistic consanguinity and cultural consanguinity. Both the density of the ethnographic cover and the considerable mass of materials collected on very many facets of these societies gives an opportunity today without a lot equal in the history of the africanisme to study in a methodical way, with the adequate tools, the nature of resemblances between societies recovering from the same linguistic family, and to approach them in other words as those of inheritance, of common cultural bottom or reciprocal loans. Whatever is the field of study approached (prophesying, sacrificial system, organisation of the territory, practices of foundation, institutions linked to power, etc.) the researchers of the workshop all have, at instant or in other, been able to determine the existence of convergences between facts of vocabulary than their inquiries with others cleared elsewhere, there brought to light other "voltaic" societies . The analysis of the notional fields covered by these terms will have them then, most often, driven to note that, while tallying in some points, these designations form as semantic crotches between which the report is not immediately given and that returns to the ethnologist of (Re) to construct. By a series of joint monographic studies on the fundamental words of the (religious and political) lexicon of populations taken to be comparison, the members of the group wanted to dedicate a part of jobs of the workshop to this task of "reconstruction" while instituting a reflexive step on the theoretical tools (as much linguistic as ethnological) which this type of comparatisme implicates. The main object of the workshop is recovering however from another form from comparison. Previous jobs which some members of the group could drive on classical topics of ethnography try to prove the legitimacy of a step where what is put opposite, these are not only perceptible institutions a priori as similar (e.g., the workmanship of the earth in the voltaic aerie) or same type of ritual (e.g. the ritual fulfilled by a homicide) but peculiar shapes of facts, such as makes them come into sight research on a given topic (foundation, murder). Once having isolated these groups of facts, it is necessary not to raise the picture of possibles by trying to construct structural convergences, but to follow in all its logical consequences the way which opens the rapprochement between these series of different data. The main object of the workshop is recovering however from another form from comparison. Previous jobs which some members of the group could drive on classical topics of ethnography try to prove the legitimacy of a step where what is put opposite, these are not only perceptible institutions a priori as similar (e.g., the workmanship of the earth in the voltaic aerie) or same type of ritual (e.g. the ritual fulfilled by a homicide) but peculiar shapes of facts, such as makes them come into sight research on a given topic (foundation, murder). Once having isolated these groups of facts, it is necessary not to raise the picture of possibles by trying to construct structural convergences, but to follow in all its logical consequences the way which opens the rapprochement between these series of different data. It is as well, for example, as a study on the extremely complex operations which requires the foundation of a village space this face of the beginning will show in the foreground, in such population, as other one that of the géomancien, poltergeist of sand, linked to the oracle of the Earth is the master of the earth and in such. A comparison urgent term would be really sure absurd. But if, as the analysis of facts grows to it, they bring back the founder attribution of each of these inauguration faces in models different from relations in power Earth, they begin seeing freeing a logical sequence which, it, could constitute the element of comparison. It is by this type of analysis that the workshop began its jobs in April, 2001. Two topics were kept (prophesying, « places of the territory ») and will be alternately worked, according to the individual concerns of the researchers. This comparative job of the close could eventually renew reflexion on the notion of cultural aerie the conception of which, in anthropology, hardly changed any more since jobs of F. Boas and of his distinguished pupil A. Kroeber. By putting jobs of the workshop under title « to Compare the close », intention was not to compare an analysis based on the bet compared with "close « societies in an analysis comparing materials gathered in societies moved away in the space or in time. Indeed, it was a question of giving for object of question setting the nature of the operations of comparison which are implemented since they try to construct the ethnography of a given society, not such an unlikely monad, but such as she is generally, that is to say a particular spatiotemporal development of common elements in group of close societies by language, history, geography. No method more than simple official report, the members of the workshop share idea that it is possible to pretend to describe a particular society (nor even a fragment of this society) without putting opposite the facts that are met with those, of the same nature, notings down in these societies so defined as "fellows" there . The movement of return ticket between particular ethnographies, constituting of this ethnographic step, and which testifies a "radical" comparatisme , in the sense that it is in the root of the development of materials, is generally more or less methodical. The definitions of school regarding comparative step (or more exactly, comparative steps) such as reminds very well, for example, of it G. Lenclud (« Around Line of foundation. Some reflexion on the problem of comparison », s.l.s.d., ms.) do not have big utility in this case. Besides the fact that he is generally supported that ethnography would not be concerned by comparative operation (according to the épistémologique cut universally recognised between ethnography and ethnology), it seems obvious that between ethnographic plan (as ethnological) which is « to gather data correctly » « to make speak facts themselves » (according to the way drawn by Wittgenstein, 1982) and anthropological plan to clear universaux, comparative step is not, cannot, be the same. In the first case, they are dealing in about a comparative description where the appeal in the operations of comparison at various times keys of the development of materials comes to serve the need to include and, therefore, the necessity to translate a reality (in other one, a language in other one, etc.) . In the second case, they are confronted with theories which use comparison with a view to explaining, and thereabouts even, justifying their existence as producer of an added sense (historical, typological, statistical, etc.) . That the category from the point of view of which they compare or a category of the regional language, a standard category of ethnology or a category of common sense, comparative operation consisting of a movement of return ticket between the particular ethnographies of societies related (by language and/or history and geography), allows to bring back to the surface not indigenous "models" , some more hypothetical proto-typical elementary forms, but « effects of sense » - jobs of the workshop proved it repeatedly. Effects of sense as much as sliding of the sense, which, each time they appear, demand of the ethnologist a resumption of its data, to follow the new in all their consequences seed so brought to light in each of the societies taken as units of comparison. It is not a question, at the end of these progressions, of trying to fabricate a chimera which would include « all seed them » met along itinerary, nor to search between these "senses" of paradigmatic relations to construct a picture of possibles (sliding of sense do not come down to series of binary oppositions). The purpose of such "comparative" step is, certainly, to light the data which were gathered in a particular society, and to allow so to organise them "correctly " , but she also allows re and just as much - to mobilise (as it is said about a member stayed too much for a long time in some position), so that they avoid at least one time the destiny of any knowledge, that is to say that to see themselves frozen in archetypal forms, become space of sense.
Besides, it was planned to link the team, mainly constituted by researchers working on the "voltaic" said linguistic region , on the new workshop offered by O. Journet (« Approaches compared of the division of ritual labour according to sexes »). Alternately with inquiries into sacred sites and territorial link in the voltaic aerie, it will be a question therefore of centering comparative researches on the themes of the division of ritual labour according to sexes, by taking for support, this time, the societies of the region said about the « Rivers of the south ». In the one as other one of these teams, it will be in the holding of research, to adopt a reflexive step aiming at highlighting the specificity of comparative method when units taken to be comparison are closely linked by language, history, geography (critical use of linguistic tools, highlighted by the implicit of "resemblance" and of "difference" ). Comparative operation will so be crossed doubly : first of all, from the point of view of themes (how as it is fabricated of the territory in the societies of the rivers of the south and, conversely, that he is of the division of ritual labour according to sexes in the voltaic populations), but also from the point of view of very regions (in a case, most neighbouring societies is linguistically related, in other one, they are in the presence of a linguistic mosaic).
See the column of the workshop accomplished by R. de Selva
In the same rubric :
- Anthropology in questions. Critical reading on « borders of sciences »
- Workshop " La danse comme objet anthropologique"
- Singularity and technology
- Approaches compared of the division of ritual labour according to sexes in the societies of the "Rivers of the south"
- Ongoing manuscripts
- Workshop of the doctorants of Donatecarcenter.com-IVRY
- Archives of seminars, workshops and conferences
- Column of workshops
- Run the risk
