Where is the Border? Fieldwork Biases and Problems of Scale in Ethnic Structuration in Sápmi

Abstract

This essay explores an aspect of the fieldwork experience which is often neglected in autobiographic reviews of the research processes: the formation of the ethnographer's theoretical sensibility, as a consequence of fieldwork practice. Based upon research carried out in a town in Northern Norway, Guovdageaidnu, which is considered to be a kernel of the ``saami{''} culture, this essay presents the process of reconstruction of the author's analytical sensibility: the transformation of his theoretical prejudices into analytic tools endowed with a greater interpretative strength. The previous theoretical judgement, in this case based on the knowledge of a bibliography relevant for an analysis of the interethnic relation far away from essentialism and reification, is presented here as insufficient. That previous readership does not prevent the author from operating in the field with a sensibility that is still oriented toward comprehending ethnicity as a relation between dichotomous, reified social subjects.