Verstehen und Befremden. Objektivierungen des ‚Anderen’ in der ethnographischen Forschung

Central to the present essay is the question,
how the ‘other’ is constituted as a topic
of ethnographic research. This question
is addressed by using the example of ethnographic
migration research. The different
ways of objectifying the ‚other‘ are discussed
within the context of two different
methodological strategies of ethnographic
research which are currently the most
prominent strands. Those strands refer in
various ways to the guiding ethnographic
difference between strangeness and familiarity:
on the one hand the approach of understanding
the supposedly ‘strange’ lifeworlds
and perspectives of various social
actors and on the other hand the approach
of rendering the familiar strange. It is seen
that these ways of objectification tend to either
transcend a postulated difference between
the own and other or consciously
produce precisely that break from what is
allegedly familiar. In conclusion, also the
similarites of both strands are discussed
against the background of the emphasized
differences between the ways of objectification.
By doing so, the question is also
raised to what extend it is actually a matter
of categorial different varieties of an
ethnographic access to reality.