Participant Objectivation*

Abstract

Scientific reflexivity stands opposed to the narcissistic reflexivity of postmodern anthropology as well as to the egological reflexivity of phenomenology in that it endeavours to increase scientificity by turning the most objectivist tools of social science not only onto the private person of the enquirer but also, and more decisively, onto the anthropological field itself and onto the scholastic dispositions and biases it fosters and rewards in its members. ‘Participant objectivation’, as the objectivation of the subject and operations of objectivation, and of the latter's conditions of possibility, produces real cognitive effects as it enables the social analyst to grasp and master the pre‐reflexive social and academic experiences of the social world that he tends to project unconsciously onto ordinary social agents. This does not mean that anthropologists must put nothing of themselves into their work, quite the contrary. Examples drawn from the author's own research (with special focus on field enquiries carried out concurrently in the far‐away colony of Kabylia and in his home village in Béarn) show how idiosyncratic personal experiences methodically subjected to sociological control constitute irreplaceable analytic resources, and that mobilizing one's social past through self‐socio‐analysis can and does produce epistemic as well as existential benefits.