文章基本信息

标题：Ethnography and its Boundaries
本地全文：下载
作者：JOHANNES ENGELS
期刊名称：HISTOS
印刷版ISSN：2046-5963
出版年度：2015
卷号：9
页码：lxxx-lxxxvii
出版社：Department of Classics, University of Durham
摘要：Ethnography, as a scholarly term defining a distinctive discipline that describes,in a scientific way, nations and races of men, their customs,habits, and differences, was coined only in the nineteenth century. Inancient Greek and Roman literature there was no precise equivalent literarygenre nor an acknowledged separate discipline, although several branches ofhistoriography and cultural geography (chorographia), collections of strangecustoms, laws, and constitutions among different people (politeiai, nomima barbarikaetc.) and of miraculous stories and events (paradoxographia), as well asworks from a range of other genres (including poetry) in all periods of antiquity,showed a lively interest in ‘ethnographical’ material and topics, as definedby the modern discipline.1 Therefore, from a strictly methodologicalpoint of view, attempting to write a history of ancient ethnography todayremains a questionable undertaking. Nevertheless, some scholars have undertakenthis task, starting their overviews as early as Homer with his broadethnographical interests, or more often with Hecataeus and Herodotus as thetwo disciplinary prose ‘godfathers’ of a hypothetical ancient ethnography.2The editors of this volume, E. Almagor and J. Skinner, and their contributorsknow well the intricate terminological and methodological problems stemmingfrom the simple fact of the absence of any ancient term referring specificallyto the study of foreign people.