Abstract
This chapter aims to relaunch the question of ethnographic practice trigged by Geertz’s manifest. Did Geertz’s reflections undermine the authority of the ethnographic paradigm in its connection with the field as it had hitherto been known and practiced? In his collected works, do the “parochial facts” allow the emergence of the “broad principles” in which the possibility of understanding them is embedded? Can we say that the interpretive paradigm has been truly revolutionary, innovative, alternative or that it must be repositioned in the discipline’s historical trajectory oriented toward assuming diversity within the framework of cultural creativity? The author emphasizes the critical issues of the interpretative and ethnographic perspectives that emerged in the twentieth century, in particular research contexts, such as those in which corruption and organized crime are articulated.
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Resta, P. (2021). Stumbling Blocks: The Irruption of the Interpretive Approach in Twentieth-Century Anthropology. In: Matera, V., Biscaldi, A. (eds) Ethnography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51720-5_9
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