Two or three things I know about Ethnographic Theory

Abstract

In the introduction to this collection, I aim to outline the debate sparked by Tim Ingold (2014) on the relation between ethnography and theory. I outline a few methodological principles that ground the idea of “ethnographic theory” by distinguishing it from some cognate approaches, including the so-called “ontological turn” and Ingold’s idea of correspondence. Rather than pursuing an isomorphism between thing and concept, between happenstances and their description, I argue that ethnographic theory rather aims to reach “satisfactory” (cf. Wittgenstein [1953] 2009) and “felicitous” (Austin 1975) effects, which account for the productive uncertainty at the core of human sociality and the anticipatory, subjunctive, and metapragmatic dimensions of any interaction.