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exposing the moral self in Montenegro: the use of natural definitions to keep ethnography descriptive
Author(s) -
BOEHM CHRISTOPHER
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1980.7.1.02a00010
Subject(s) - morality , ethnography , sociology , exemplification , epistemology , articulation (sociology) , context (archaeology) , anthropology , linguistics , philosophy , politics , law , history , political science , archaeology
Special epistemological problems arise when exotic systems of ideas and affects are studied by a foreigner. Difficulties in knowing “the native view” are discussed, and a partial solution for this epistemological problem is proposed. Exemplification through substantive semantic analysis of a key morality term used by Montenegrin tribesmen results in a descriptive portrait of the moral self. In contrast to certain trends in ethnographic semantics, which are antiseptically formal, overstructured, unduly self‐contained, or static, emphasis here is placed upon open‐ended semantic inquiry and fuller articulation with the general ethnographic context by taking native decisions and social processes into direct account. [methodology/theory, morality, psychological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, Circum‐Mediterranean]