A néprajzi és az antropológiai terepmunka perspektívái a rokonság kutatásának tükrében

The study of kinship occupied a central role in anthropological scholarship for more than one hundred years. in the 1970s, after the deconstruction of kinship as the inherent logic of social structure, studies on kinship faced a number of new epistemological problems. in this article, based on the author’s experiences gained during subsequent fieldworks in Yakutia, he tackles a few of them. He argues that Wittgenstein’s idea on language games (Sprachspiel) may help anthropologists in theorizing the epistemological status of fieldwork. During fieldwork anthropologists together with local people construct language games in which they mutually interpret and react on each other’s activities. The way this language game is constructed relies heavily on the local image of anthropological study and fieldwork. In Yakutia, due to the legacy of Soviet type ethnography, people even in the remotest villages usually have a firm idea on what anthropological fieldwork is about. By reflecting on his fieldwork strategies in Yakutia while studying local kin relations, the author argues that anthropologists should not leave the expectation of local communities on the target and the means of fieldwork unconsidered.