EKSTERN ALISME OG INTERN ALISME I ANTROPOLOGIEN

Resumé

Finn Collin: Externalism and Internalism

in Anthropology

In anthropology, there is a long-standing

debate between intemalists, who insist that

anthropology must use the categories of the

natives when describing native societies, and

extemalists who allow that other and

sometimes conflicting categories are

permitted. The intemalists derive some

support from a contructivist argument to the

effect that society is generated by the

descriptions that the natives apply to it;

hence, it is claimed, the anthropological

account must faithfully reflect this

description lest native social reality be

missed altogether. I argue that this argument

is not strong enough to show that anthropological

accounts which transcend or even

contradict the native ones are always

illegitimate. A parallel argument, to the

effect that unless he sticks to the natives’

categories, the anthropologist will inevitably

commit an ethnocentric injustice in describing

native societies in categories that are

ultimately derived from his own, is similarly

rejected. What emerges is a position that

agrees with the intemalists that the point of

departure must be taken in the natives’ own

self-descriptions, but accepts the extemalists’

point that these categories must subsequently

be transcended.