Recent methodological approaches in ethnographies of human and non-human Amerindian collectives

Abstract

I examine recent ethnographic attempts to address alterity among Amerindian worlds—attempts that produce a critique of indigenous relationships with external or foreign agents. While some of them are concerned with describing what there is in those worlds, others illustrate different forms to approach it. The former studies carry out their descriptions through two contrasted types of fieldwork data: abstract indigenous concepts and material things. The latter studies are examined as illustrations of differentiated methodological advances: on the one hand, a writing experiment proposing an avant-garde engaged unruly ethnography; and on the other hand, what seems to be a mere accommodation of academic theoretical trends. The final picture of these current anthropological ethnographies depicts the contrasted contents and forms that are nowadays present in Amerindian studies.