From field to text. Publishing ethnology and its images
Exhibition on file at the Institute of Civilizations
From November 14 2025 to February 6 2026
Free admission
Observing, listening, noting. Walk alongside others to better understand them. An ethnologist's work always begins in the field. But how do you trace ? How do you record what you've seen, heard and experienced ?
The exhibition Du terrain au texte. Publier l'ethnologie et ses images invites visitors to discover two collections published by The Collège de France Publishing Department's Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale (LAS) : the Cahiers d'anthropologie sociale (éditions de L'Herne) and the collection Ethnologiques (éditions Mimésis), both directed by Philippe Descola. They echo two major journals founded in 1961 : L'Homme, created by Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Études rurales by Isaac Chiva.
The collections presented here each have their own specificity :Cahiers hosts collective reflections from the laboratory's study days on major contemporary issues, whileEthnologiques publishes monographs based on field surveys.
Focusing on major LAS figures Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), Françoise Héritier (1933-2017) and Philippe Descola (b. 1949), the exhibition shows the different facets of the ethnologist's profession :
- field notebooks in which everyday observations are recorded,
- the images associated with the various volumes, revealing the diversity of the places and cultures studied,
- and the objects collected on site by exchange, gift or purchase, whose importance lies in the gestures, values and symbolic functions they embody. The objects presented in this exhibition are related to the various anthropological themes covered by the Cahiers d'anthropologie sociale and the Ethnologiques collection .
Guided tours and lectures : program to come
