Paper short abstract:

Coincidence is not a typical research focus in anthropology, but ethnographies often trade in stories of coincidence, taking as their tasks the explanation of hidden relationships between contradictory processes. Why is the negation of coincidence so central to anthropological analysis?

Paper long abstract:

Coincidence is not a typical research focus in anthropology. And yet, ethnographies routinely trade in stories of coincidence. Consider how many ethnographies open with a vignette, in which two ostensibly unrelated or mutually-exclusive forces bear down upon an unsuspecting anthropologist. The presence of such coincidences, paradoxes or contradictions, is both analytically and empirically thrilling, seeming to constitute by their sheer existence the possibility of radically different worlds. A narrative hook, to be sure – but how these mutually-exclusive or contradictory forces coincide typically becomes the central analytic maneuver of the text. Across the plurality of its research focuses, ethnographic writing regularly takes as its task the explanation of hidden or surprising relationships between seemingly independent but co-occurring events or processes. Coincidence, we might say, is the central object of anthropological study, but only by its negation. And yet, this seems like yet another seductive paradox demanding resolution: how could coincidence and its negation be central to anthropological analysis? The abstract I’m writing seems to propose that I will contribute an argument to explain how such a paradox could emerge, and why it is actually not so contradictory. Instead, I want to ask: what happens to our ethnographic imaginations if our discipline is so focused upon the eradication of coincidence?