Self-reflective Historical Anthropology

Research project P 13837 Self-reflective Historical Anthropology Michael MITTERAUER 24.10.2000 Historical anthropology uncompromisingly practised must needs be self-reflective, which means to aim an analysis of ist particular (cognitive as well as institutional) scientific practice by means of its particular instruments of research. Such historical anthropology of historical anthropology is a consequence not only of he theoretical premises pf historical anthropology itself, but also of present research on science and of self-reflective approaches in various humane and social sciences, the aim of which is an exemplary disclosure of sciences - including one`s own - in their social and cultural dependence and restraints; therein the knowledge produced by each and any science is conceived as a specific model for the interpretation of the world, the reality, the human, the social, the cultural, etc. The project here presented, which is based on many preliminary studies accomplished in the field of historical anthropology at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Education (IFF), will make the historical- anthropological scientific practice of the last three or four decades the subject of its research. What lies in the centre of interest is the question about biographical experiences of historical-anthropologically oriented scientists, as a focus of social structures and processes. In the first place we will ask in how far four socio-culturally relevant categories - social origins, sex/gender, localities, and generation - have determined the biographical experiences of those who are actors and actresses in historical-anthropological scientific practice, and in how far, in the sequel, historical-anthropological scientific practice itself has been structured (cognitively and institutionally) by this. Our sources are, first and foremost, the actors and actresses themselves. In the form of a `mixed` method, containing elements of an open, narrative interview as well as of a guided one, some thirty historical-anthropologically oriented scientists of different ages, both sexes, and from various disciplines and various European countries (including Eastern and South-Eastern European ones) shall be interviewed. Hereafter, the transcribed interviews shall be analysed according to the central questions, and related to each other, in a differentiated procedure, including, among other methods, interpretation in team-work.