297-316

Resocialization as a process of the researcher's adjustment to a different society

• Colajanni, Antonino

Since the beginnings of the ’60s, one of the most important innovations in the field of anthropological studies has been the «discovery» by anthropologists of the subjective factors involved in fieldwork, i.e. difficulties of adjustment to the society under examination, insecurity, conflicts, errors, emotional reactions.The idea of the research as an extraordinary and unique experience emerged through the description of the above mentioned realities. At the same time, an issue of rather social than subjective character began to emerge: the issue of the moral and political responsibility of the researcher towards the society that he studied. It was believed that the researcher, in order to achieve the best results possible had to renounce his own cultural heritage and try to adjust himself, as much as possible, to the social environment in which he was working.For a long period of time, fieldwork was viewed in a bipolar way: the observer and his culture, the observer and his personality, the observer and the culture under observation.Less attention was paid to the consideration of the problem of fieldwork as a relationship between roles or, better, as a juxtaposition and mutual influence of roles in a temporary theatrical performance.Fieldwork is based on the active relation that the observer establishes with his subject, i.e. social life, behaviours and opinions of the members of the society under examination. He himself adopts certain patters of behaviour so as to be tolerated by the members of the community. In order to achieve his goal, he must manage to think with the mind of someone else, while continuing to think with his own mind and see through the eyes of someone else.Consequently, we cannot talk of a process of socialization or resocialization, but rather of a complex process of learning new behaviours. The researcher cannot and should not abandon the role of the foreign researcher. He is not and cannot be nothing but a «temporary native» who, sooner or later, will go back to where he started, without having gone through the process of a new socialization.Thus, fieldwork is a unique case of «knowledge through approach». Not only the anthropologist plays certain specified roles for the attainment of best results, but the society itself acts numerous roles. Passing form one role to the other is what allows the researcher to gather information that would otherwise be inaccessible to him.During the fieldwork, the attitude of a specified society toward the foreigner is of particular importance: this very element constitutes the key that helps us understand better the dynamic of the roles that are formed and developed during the fieldwork. It is precisely because of this interdependence among acted roles that the anthropologists should describe in detail the attitude of the society toward them as well as the roles that they themselves play during their stay. As a rule, the process of «encounter» and adjustment of the researcher to the society under examination and vice versa is determined by the type of the social system (class or egalitarian). Because of this, the cases of adjustment of the researchers vary form society to society.Through the many examples offered by the relative bibliography, what seems to be of particular importance is the fact that the anthropologists should be able to distinguish what they can accept from a different culture, before starting to present difficulties of adjustment on the level of their own personality.

• Other social sciences
• Social Sciences

• Ανθρωπολογία
• Εθνολογία
• Κοινωνικές επιστήμες
• Επικοινωνία

Το άρθρο είναι δημοσιευμένο στο περιοδικό L'Uomo, τόμ. IV, αρ. 2, 1980, σσ. 393-408, Περιέχει βιβλιογραφία