In this paper, from certain negative reaction to the publication of an ethnography about family feuds in the hinterland of the River Pajeú (state of Pernambuco, Brazil), we propound an approach on reflexivity of the anthropological work inspired, theoretically, by the historicization of the place of fieldwork and ethnography inside the discipline and, empirically, through a retrospective sight of the specific conditions in which that research was made. The same case produced also pragmatic effects, which operated unexpected displacements in the relationship between researcher and subject of research. These displacements were perceptible, for instance, in the idiom used in the agonistic exchanges of accusation and defense; they also provided new perspectives regarding the conditions of sociability that we intended to describe.
fieldwork; ethnography; reflexivity