Evidence of and for what?

Abstract

What kind of language game do we initiate by making ‘evidence’ the focus of methodological discussion? Drawing on the example set by Wittgenstein, our first step might well be to consider the senses in which we can use the notion of evidence in anthropological writing. These senses must be different if we are asking for evidence of the existence or nature of a phenomenon (such as, for example, totemism or kinship), or evidence to test a hypothesis from the standpoint either of validation or falsification. The sense must also be different if evidence is to be understood in a juridical sense or an experimental sense. Again, evidence may be understood to be synonymous with data, or could imply a sense of what is evident, or even self-evidence - the immediacy of experience as examined by phenomenology. To determine how these different senses of evidence color our understanding of the ethnographic enterprise is the ultimate goal of this discussion.