L’ascolto antropologico: epistemologia, etica e (in)giustizia

How do anthropologists listen? What is the epistemological “status” of listening in anthropological research? The author presents listening as a practice that cannot be reduced to a mere socio-cognitive and semiotic process or methodical prescription. Anthropological listening always turns out to be conformed in its modus operandi by the theoretical frameworks in which anthropologists inscribe themselves and which selectively define the aims of the research itself as well as the relevance of the ethnographic materials collected. The author proposes to consider anthropological listening as a foundational social act in which the time and space of its becoming is the medium where the interpretation of the collected material takes shape. And it is in this becoming, “in and out” of the field, that the distinctive ethical dimension of the anthropological listening manifests itself.