EKSTERN ALISME OG INTERN ALISME I ANTROPOLOGIEN

Abstract

Finn Collin: Externalism and Internalism
 in Anthropology
 In anthropology, there is a long-standing
 debate between intemalists, who insist that
 anthropology must use the categories of the
 natives when describing native societies, and
 extemalists who allow that other and
 sometimes conflicting categories are
 permitted. The intemalists derive some
 support from a contructivist argument to the
 effect that society is generated by the
 descriptions that the natives apply to it;
 hence, it is claimed, the anthropological
 account must faithfully reflect this
 description lest native social reality be
 missed altogether. I argue that this argument
 is not strong enough to show that anthropological
 accounts which transcend or even
 contradict the native ones are always
 illegitimate. A parallel argument, to the
 effect that unless he sticks to the natives’
 categories, the anthropologist will inevitably
 commit an ethnocentric injustice in describing
 native societies in categories that are
 ultimately derived from his own, is similarly
 rejected. What emerges is a position that
 agrees with the intemalists that the point of
 departure must be taken in the natives’ own
 self-descriptions, but accepts the extemalists’
 point that these categories must subsequently
 be transcended.