Biographical interview and anthropology of the good: points of contact

Abstract

The article examines the place of the biographical interview method in the history of anthropological research, criticism of the «récit biographique» by P. Bourdieu, as well as the use of autobiographical texts by C. Geertz in his work «Works and lives: The Anthropologist as Author» (1988). The author demonstrates the capabilities of biographical interviews within the framework of a new direction of anthropological research –»anthropology of the good» (Robbins, 2013). A biographical interview tends to present a positive image of events, as well as a positive explanation of customs and practices. This allows us to contrast such an assessment with the «local» or «emic» assessment of «dark anthropology», widespread in the English-­language anthropological tradition since the 1980s and in Russian ethnography since the 1990s. This positive view on contemporary local (ethnographically specific) practices corresponds to the ethics of academic work, when a scholar cannot present the subject of his research in a negative perspective. Together with non-­Eurocentric methodology, biographical interviews can lay the foundation for anthropological studies within the framework of the «anthropology of the good.» The key elements of this type of research may be: 1) positive self-representation of respondents in biographical interviews; 2) the horizontal dissemination of ethnographic knowledge: ethnographic works oriented to a wide range of readers and 3) a decolonized, non-­Eurocentric theoretical framework for research. The proposed ideas will be used in a study of cross-­border peoples of Siberia and the Far East within Russia.