ethnography

From the margins to which he was confined, Georges Devereux (1908-1985) formulated some of the most original scientific work of his century. In the wake of Freud, whose legacy he firmly defended, Devereux initiated the transcultural practice of psychiatry. François Laplantine, one of his former disciples, reconsiders the legacy of ethnopsychoanalysis’ founder.

In an unusual genre between fieldwork account and memoir, Sudhir Venkatesh proposes a sociological exploration of the informal economy of New York City. His ethnography of drug-dealers and sex-workers constitutes an occasion for him to reflect upon the limitations of “academic sociology”.

Andreas Glaeser’s Political Epistemics is an account of the rise and fall of the East German Socialism as a field of consciousness. Relying on extensive archival research and interviews (including Stasi officers, secret informants & political dissidents), Glaeser offers a “theory of understandings” to provide a new angle on the question of how worldviews become institutionalized.

For Sandrine Revet, we need to move beyond statistics to see the ethnographic side of disasters. It is a necessary step if we are to understand their effects not only on public policies, but also on the behaviors and beliefs of the populations they affect. In the following interview, she examines the current revival in Disaster Studies and explains how they have come to be structured as a field.

How do you recognize a happy person? A team of ethnologists recently tried to answer this question, in a volume that considers topics ranging from neo-rural communities in southern France to desert marathon-runners. The results are mixed, but the study manages to lay the groundwork for an ethological approach to happiness as a social experience.

The latest issue of the St Petersburg based social science journal, Laboratorium, is devoted to gender sensitive ethnographies in the post-Soviet space. Despite the fact that it lacks an overarching thesis, it convincingly questions the notion of private sphere in a space clouded by the legacy of an ideologically intrusive communist system.