CE NU SPUNE ETNOLOGUL. DILEME ETICE ÎN REDAREA INTERDETERMINĂRILOR SUBIECT – OBIECT – CONTEXT, ÎN CERCETAREA DE TEREN

Romanian ethnology has yet to find a way to deal with important issues regarding the ethics of field research and field presentation. My article points to some of these issues. Starting from a theoretical discussion about what gets to be expressed versus what is suppressed in an ethnological document, I have tried to cover as many nuances as possible, in a sort of pheno-menology of ethnologic (self)censorship. The researcher cannot and should not hide behind the authority of his (field) interlocutors, nor should he or she rely solely on the fidelity of metadata, or on the national scientific traditions. One should own the truth of his or her research. The final product of any field research is, generally speaking, a text (documentary, film etc.) and the only responsible for its content is the researcher. Textualising the field information is a complex process, the implications of which I have tried to acknowledge through some examples taken from my recent research. The closing part questions our field description routine and the equivocal results we get in Romanian ethnology through the much too pious set of rules we are supposed to follow.