The Concept of Objectivation and the Anthropological Contributions to the Inter-Scientific Dialogue

The anthropological fieldwork is an intense experience that questions the role of the researcher as well as the scientific status of knowledge. The involvements of the ethnographers in the research processes and in the relations with their interlocutors question the neutrality that other sciences idealize or can more easily take for granted and challenge the ideals of objectivity. From this perspective the article discusses the privileged position held by the discipline, nicely summarized by Lévi-Strauss’ expression “anthropology is without a doubt unique in making the most intimate subjectivity into a means of objective demonstration’ the article considers how the mimetic adoption of models taken from the natural sciences and the use of quantitative methods, did not succeed in resolving the relations between subject, method and object. It proposes the notion of objectivation – i.e. the analysis of the conditions of the constitution of scientific objects - to think the scientific status of knowledge and the inter-scientific dialogue.