Beskrivningens metodik. Om att sätta ord på det ... - Sveriges Museer

should also be able to bring our time to life in another time, that is tosay, be comprehensible and credible in a diffuse future.In his article “Ethnological Descriptions: A Questions of Credibility”,Christian Richette reflects on the process of creating textsbased on a field. He looks at selected anthropological and ethnologicalresearchers and penetrates their view of how one can present researchfindings. Richette believes that we too seldom question the credibilityof the descriptions we read. He also considers the fact that descriptionsoften seem independent of the underlying theoretical reasoning, whichleads to a risk that the descriptions will be interpreted as unproblematicand to a view that theoretical discussions unnecessarily encumberthe presentation.Owe Ronström, in “Describing the Alien: Reflections on a StudentAssignment”, argues that cultural scholars have to work with a fundamentalparadox when they try to make the alien comprehensiblewhile simultaneously preserving and communicating this alterity. Ronströmbrings together two discussions, one concerning what descriptionsare and do, and one concerning how ethnicity and cultural diversityare presented. When he asked his students of ethnology to producea de scription based on arenas in which people by various means portrayethnic origin, he obtained what he thought was in many ways similarmaterial. On the basis of this result, he reasons about how expectationssteer what one actually observes and discusses what we reallydo when we describe.These four authors all gave lectures to the Descriptions and Musealizationcourse. Their articles are based on the arguments presentedthere. It is to be hoped that the articles together will provide assistanceand conceptual tools as regards what descriptions are and how we canuse them. It is not our intention to give unambiguous answers or providea manual. Instead the book urges people to reflect on descriptionas a method, and the authors wish to contribute to the development ofdescription in the museums.79