CONTEXTUALIZATION WORKSHOP
Susan Whyte and Morten A. Pedersen
Description
Contextualization is widely considered to be one of the trademarks of good ethnography, and yet there is surprisingly little agreement among anthropologists about what contextualization is, let alone how best to do it. The aim of this workshop is not only to explore what ethnographic contextualization might be in theory, but also to try to concretely practice it. Participants are invited to engage with this double agenda by addressing one or more of the following questions: What constitutes the primary context(s) of my doctoral research? What is the relationship between field and context? Is the context of my research empirical, theoretical, or both? What is the relationship between presenting a new context and constructing a new argument in anthropology?
Participants
The workshop is primarily for Ph.D. students who have at least started, if not completed, their fieldwork. Each will be asked to make some ‘contextualizing moves’ with support from the rest of us. Numbers permitting, a few Ph.D. students who have not yet begun assembling field data may join the workshop. The number of participants may not exceed 15.
Practicing contextualization
Each participant is to write a 3-4 page ethnographic description that is (or could be) iconic for the research project. This might be a description of a situation, a person, or a case that seems to exemplify the tensions, puzzles, and themes you wish to explore in your thesis. Think of it as a prologue to your dissertation or to a chapter and write it so as to capture the reader’s imagination and curiosity. Then write one page about how you plan to contextualize this ethnographic data. What other empirical material is relevant for understanding the themes inherent in your ‘chunk’ of ethnography? What is the theoretical context for your work? What choices are involved in contextualizing? What will you leave out?
Those who have not yet embarked on fieldwork should submit a 3-4 page description of the problem they plan to address and the possible contextual aspects that may be relevant. Contextualizing involves choosing, so describe several alternatives and their implications.
A compendium of 5-6 articles should be read ahead of time and will provide a common framework for discussion. In addition, the short papers from all participants will be circulated in advance. Those Ph.D. students selected for ‘treatment’ will briefly present their considerations about how to contextualize and a fellow participant will kick off the discussion.
Time plan
Register for the workshop not later than 14 September 2009 to line.jorgensen@anthro.ku.dk. Indicate whether you have started or completed fieldwork. This will help us to plan.
Literature
Comaroff, Jean and John L. Comaroff. 1999. Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from the South African postcolony. American Ethnologist 26 (2): 279-303.
Dilley, Roy. 1999. Introduction: the problem of context. In The Problem of Context, ed. R. Dilley, Pp. 1-46.
Englund, Harri and James Leach. 2000. Ethnography and the meta-narratives of modernity. Current Anthropology 41 (2): 225-248.
Pedersen, Morten A. and Lars Højer. Manus. Lost in transition: fuzzy property and soul loss in
Schlecker, Markus and Eric Hirsch. 2001. Incomplete knowledge: ethnography and the crisis of context in studies of media, science and technology. History of the Human Sciences 14 (1): 69-87.
Whyte, Susan Reynolds and Herbert Muyinda. 2007. Wheels and new legs: mobilization in