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Paper short abstract:

Based on a double experience of conducting fieldwork and writing historical studies (in Native American, Arctic, and Oceanian topics), I will discuss aspects of methodology in an attempt to achieve socially more engaged ways of writing the history of anthropology in one’s own country (Hungary).

Paper long abstract:

This talk is based on a double experience of mine as a researcher, anthropologist as well as historian. On one hand, it relies on a former study of mine, entitled ’No Visitors Beyond This Point:’ Rules of Conduct for Tourists in Native American Reservations and Their Cultural-Political Contexts in the USA”, published in 2017. On the other hand, it draws on some of the methodological lessons and conclusions of my earlier historical studies about Native American, Arctic, and Oceanian topics. I have been exploring the representation of indigenous peoples by European, in my case, Hungarian authors in the 17th-19th century, paganised, demonised, barbarised, and exoticised representations through the lense of which European authors approached non-European otherness. Those representations reached the early modern Kingdom of Hungary too, by means of translations, compilations and other ways of textual – and visual - transmission. Applying the suggestions of indigenous scholars (Fixico, Mihesuah and others) I would argue that the dichotomy discussed by G. Stocking between a ’historicist’ and a ’presentist’ approach in writing the history of (local) anthropologies can be challenged, and can perhaps be diminished by a socially more sensitive thinking and writing about indigenous peoples. I would like to talk about some of my own methodological observations (also, dilemmas) in order to achieve a more self-reflexive, more responsible, socially more engaged way of writing the history of anthropology in one’s own country.