ABSTRACT
This chapter starts by turning the argument towards anthropology itself, looking at how art can inform anthropology, not just as a methodological tool, but in more general terms, in rethinking what constitutes its very work process: how does it proceed, what does it achieve, which are its outcomes. It proposes to consider this relationship in the long term. Before discussing the changes and innovations in recent ethnography, and how conceptual and participative art practices are being incorporated in anthropology, the chapter considers how, all along, since its origins in the early twentieth century, the practice of modern anthropology started from a radical shift in its forms of work, analogous to avant-garde art. Ethnography is not only used by anthropologists and artists, but it has also become a very popular “method” among many different forms of social research.
