My Kind of Ethnology/Anthropology : On the Determined Schism between Micro- and Macro-scale Perspectives

Abstract

Ethnology/Anthropology is for me an academic field constituted from the two epistemologically distinct horizons of the ultra-macro and the ultra-micro. There is no need to unreasonably conjoin these two horizons, nor is it necessary to casually fill in the gap or chasm between them. Rather, I celebrate this gap and estrangement. And, while looking squarely at this schism as such, I believe that, regarding human existence and action, ethnology/anthropology has its own scholarly approach that differs from those of related academic fields. With this as premise, I take the opportunity of having received the 2009 Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology Award to discuss what position "resources" have had as research object in the wider anthropological field. I do so employing the four main themes of death, (material) "things," ethnos and evolution. It is thus possible to view resources as objects compressed from between these themes. From the ultra-macro time-scale of evolution, ethnos and death-which each are involved in a circuit binding the (macro) species and the (micro) individual-pass beyond being themselves tightly intertwined and more directly become resource related "things." My hope for ethnology/anthropology is that it will break away from its anthropocentrism in research on "things," and that-within the equilateral triangle formed by the three themes of evolution, ethnos and death-it will pursue the processes of morphogenesis, which may be seen to reach their pinnacle in the form of extinction.