Ethnography and Description Theory
Can the ethnographic approach be reconciled with scientific aims in social sciences ? Using examples of descriptive work and methodological insights that can be drawn from them, we set out to demonstrate the need to reconsider the conceptualisation of the phases of the ethnographic process, moving from the heuristics of discovery to the construction of an explicitly transmissible object of knowledge. This exercise of conceptualizing certain aspects of the ethnographic process leads us to put forward the following proposition : a projected theory of description of social life in its older or newer formulations, far from being a straitjacket for the ethnographic approach, would be an excellent avenue for bringing the process into a scientific ambit. In addition, the ethnographic approach could well make a significant contribution to social sciences, whose scientificity remains problematical.