Repensar las relaciones sociales en la etnografía: una aproximación desde el enfoque relacional

Abstract

Although ethnographic work has been premised on elucidating the nature and forms of social relations, the relational approach in social theory has opened up new lines and horizons of problematization to explore this topic from a different perspective. As we will discuss in this article, this orientation has had a significant impact on ethnographic practice, as it has reformulated its objects of study, its methods of inquiry and its narrative structure. In particular, we believe that this approach can be central to the understanding of contemporary ethnic recognition processes in women and men who identify with an indigenous people of the American continent. As such, this paper points out the possibilities of another way of dealing with social relations —relational pathways— which will contribute to the debate on ethnographic futures. We seek to elucidate the shifts in contemporary ethnographic practice, based on a methodological discussion of conceptual change, a reflection on the heuristic possibilities of this process in ethnography, and a case study from our own experience of working with the Mixtec population of Oaxaca, Mexico. We argue, in this paper, that based on the problematization of the uses and meanings of the notion of social relation and its implementation in current ethnography, styles, themes, and ways of understanding social phenomena have been renewed, while simultaneously offering other approaches to current ethnic processes, such as the one we are studying in the Oaxacan Mixtec region.