Anthropology and history: Notes for an ethnography of the past

Abstract

This article centers around the relationship between anthropology and history, specifically around how the past is dealt with in ethnographic processes.  Several authors are reviewed, who have approached history and/or the past from ethnographic perspectives.  Such approaches are then studied in organizational political processes, in ethnographic accounts of fights for land, and in the re-interpretation of past events from the perspective of different actors and agents.  By this means, it will be clear that historical narratives can be told from different angles and can have different goals, from rendering  power relationships evident to attempting to achieve practical wins. Ethnography is, thus, a useful tool for approaching such processes.