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No fieldwork without theory

Fieldwork provides the ethnographer with ordinary or special objects which become "evidence" of a people and its customs. Collecting such objects is inseparable from the interpretation of these signs of life. Seeing Roman Antiquity in the form of objects brought back from Romania, Eugène Pittard inscribed the population itself in the long time frame of unchanging traditions.

Recording the breath of life

Recording the breath of life. The recording session we see here is a metaphor for the theoretical apparatus used by an ethnographer. What is collected necessarily passes through a screen. This has an impact on the life being observed.

A recording session in Rafira Iurcovan’s house in Drăguş, Transylvania (Romania). Left to right: Mihai Pop, Constantin Brăiloiu, an informant, Matei Socor, RafiraIurcovan. Photograph by Iosif Berman, 1929. ©Archives MEG, AIMP