ABSTRACT
This chapter endeavors to examine the key features of engaging realism, which aims to bolster a coherent epistemological foundation for the accumulation of ethnographic knowledge for scientific reasoning. It is argued that engaging realism is premised on three main theses: i) a researcher’s context-dependent endeavor to explain the alterity of the other; ii) an ontological realism answerable to epistemology; and iii) an epistemic relativism validated by judgmental rationality. The authors also endeavors to demonstrate how the engagement with the scientific community constitutes an epistemological path conducive to the growth of consensual (though always fallible) knowledge, and of “paradigms” in a particular Kuhnian sense. Along this line, the author recasts the time-honored Sahlins–Obeyesekere debate in light of engaging realism in order to see how two rivalry theory–data pairs compete with each other in the scientific community, which leads to adjudicative judgments, and ultimately, the growth of scientific knowledge.
