Ethnography facing the current challenger of social sciences

Abstract

In the framework of a multidisciplinary meeting on ethnography held in 2017 at Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano in Chile, there was a question essential to open this dossier. That question was about what brings us together today, what makes us live together, sharing resources and being together. We reflect about possible answers from social sciences and on how to produce those answers. Ethnography undoubtedly seems to be the primary tool to study the "living," the permanence and in situ observation of the researcher. Practicing ethnography implies collaboration. It is considered as a technique of coupling instead of imitation that assumes the impossibility of confusing with the others as well as the intervention of the researcher in the observed communities: we are not neutral, we participate in that sharing; we are not omniscient narrators of life in society because we are a part. In order to answer these basic questions about living, ethnography is a process al-