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- Convenors:
-
Helena Patzer
(University of Warsaw)
Tomasz Rakowski (University of Warsaw)
Anne Line Dalsgård (Aarhus University)
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- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- R3
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 August, -, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
In this workshop we would like to explore how to use phenomenology within anthropological research and, especially, within its practice. We hope to find a language to communicate our professional skills of participating in the pre-textual reality of ethnographic fieldwork.
Long Abstract:
The last two decades have brought about multiple attempts to apply phenomenological concepts in the social sciences in order to create a new model of anthropological knowledge and capture these aspects of social life which still escape interpretation. In this workshop we would like to explore the potentialities of using this perspective within anthropological research and, especially, within its practice.
Stepping beyond the usual procedures of fieldwork and pursuing a new ethnographic practical knowledge are precisely what we would like to focus on. As we assume, this kind of ethnographic knowledge is obtained exactly through multiple aspects of the body and bodily practices, the movement and existence of things, elements of social memory and various sorts of hidden narratives. They form, together with the pre-reflexive structure of cognition, a kind of a silent, pre-textual knowledge. Thus, the ability to participate in such pre-textual reality is our basic professional skill. During the workshop we hope to find a language to communicate this level of ethnography.
The questions which we would like to address are as follows: How do we engage in and remember events from the field? How do we form our first understandings of the studied phenomenon? What is observation to us? How do we observe and how do we write it up in our field notes? How much attention do we pay to the 'ethnographic detail'? What is the meaning of objects in our work?
All interested in these methodological questions are welcome to submit their abstracts.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
This paper will concern anthropology based on a kind of silent, phenomenological knowledge which is usually obtained during fieldwork. I will present processes of learning ethnographic skills and details that I have passed through during my fieldwork step by step.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will concern anthropology based on a kind of silent, phenomenological knowledge which is usually obtained during fieldwork. I find this level of ethnography extremely important for our work, however at the same time it constitutes a sphere of experience very hard to communicate or describe. Once I have described it as a 'mixture of professional ethnographic knowledge and ignorance' which is usually not communicated to professional audience and remains hidden. It remains hidden because this kind of ethnography is directly related to the non-verbal, mnemonic, and bodily sphere of practice, while only a small portion of this knowledge can be written down in explicit meanings.
Thus, I will present such silent processes of learning ethnographic skills and details that I have passed through during the long-term fieldwork among the unemployed miners of Wałbrzych in Southwest Poland. As it turned out, a cluster of seeing, hearing, sensing, chatting, and making decisions and diversions from 'the Ethnographer Path' (Sanjek 1990) was the very core of this process. I will try to show this pre-textual basis of ethnographic knowledge as opposite to the 'writing culture' paradigm in modern cultural anthropology.
Paper short abstract:
I propose to examine the production of anthropological knowledge by use of a combined phenomenological and praxeological approach through sensory kinetic experience and daily shared embodied practice.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I propose to examine the production of anthropological knowledge by use of a combined phenomenological and praxeological approach (Warnier 1999, 2001) that consider the sensory kinetic experience as a way of knowing the world through the body. I shall use these methods in the context of the 'making' and 'doing' of the Dogon domestic landscape of the Bandiagara Cliffs. I describe my experience of the place through shared, pragmatic, collective and routine embodied activities undertaken by Dogon women. These mostly concern the collection of resources such as water and foodstuff in the bush, cultivating and gardening. The landscape is here considered as the locus of shared participatory and embodied practices (Tilley 1994) that constitute the fabric of Dogon everyday cosmologies. Praxeology and phenomenology are not only used as an analytical framework but also as a method of 'doing' fieldwork that is by following people in their daily life, learning and discovering 'childlike' a brand new environment through the senses. This, I subsequently recount in an embedded dialogic and phenomenological form of writing (Jackson 1989, 1996, 1998) that is empirical, descriptive and reflexive. It is based upon my fieldnotes, my journal and some visual material that enable to recollect embodied memories such as smell, taste and emotions about the place and people and which all, in my view constitute crucial material in the writing of ethnographies.
Paper short abstract:
Combining a phenomenological approach with the methodology of carnal sociology (Wacquant), this paper discusses the momentary abandonment of observation through intense participation in the team sport under study and its significance for remembering, writing and representing culture.
Paper long abstract:
My paper will discuss some methodological issues emerging from long-term fieldwork among south american football players in Seville (Spain). Combining a phenomenological approach with the methodology of carnal sociology, I am interrogating football as embodied competence and individual and collective practical reason. Learning to play football from my Bolivian team colleagues puts the ethnographer into the "point of production" of practice (Wacquant 2005: 466).
I will claim that the active engagement during fieldwork in a competitive team sport reveals some interesting insights into the pre-reflexive structures of knowledge and personal identity. The sensual and social logics of the game make conscious visual observation very difficult to maintain. Instead of it, the production of ethnological knowledge is achieved through a dialogue on body techniques and the sense of the game. The corporal identity of the ethnographer is challenged. She shares the higly emotional moments during the tournament. Both aspects intensify the fieldwork experience so that the ´headnotes` have the potential to be especially rich.
Building on some experimental works in cultural anthropology and sociology, I will try to offer one option to write down this "mnemonic triggers of total bodily experience" (Shilling 2007:12) of the individual ethnographer without losing sight of the social and cultural dimension of any practical reason.
Paper short abstract:
This article investigates phenomenological and socio-cultural aspects of adolescent obesity.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on a sample of young patients who have participated in a long-term qualitative research-project in medical anthropology, investigating social aspects of paediatric obesity in Oslo, Norway - certain somatic and semiotic issues are discussed. Living a particular type of obese body may induce impediment to motility, with implications for the ability/desirability towards exertion as a means to weight-loss. Arguably, there is little cultural nuance in circulation as to how various types of bodies are variously adapted to movement - and these factors combine to make obesity a double whammy for some individuals.
Paper short abstract:
The paper invites attention to the acoustic dimension of fieldwork
Paper long abstract:
In recent anthropology, visual material has been dealt with fruitfully, and the same happens with all kinds of artefacts - starting with material things and ending with songs and narratives. Acoustic material has been confined to music anthrophology or to recorded interviews, the content of which was analyzed, but rather not their acoustic shape. However, this and sounds and noises that just happen and are produced without being thought of as artefacts can also be highly informative. Yet they are so far underexploited by anthropologists. This paper discusses their scope, including technical questions of sound recording, its temporality, its specifics and the challenge to represent sounds in anthropological production (which is, after all, mostly writing). It is based on fieldwork and recordings in /from India, US and Europe.
Paper short abstract:
Actually, my tentative is to describe and interpret the phases of an anthropological research in phenomenological terms as these were established by Brentano, Husserl, and Heidegger, namely: pre-science, intentionality, phenomenological reduction, eidetical reduction, and intersubjectivity.
Paper long abstract:
Undoubtedly, the phenomenological doctrine exerted a fruitful influence over the various domains of human knowledge along the twentieth century. I have in view such scientific disciplines as psychology, sociology, linguistics, aesthetics, or the study of religions. Particularly significant from the wiewpoint of the mirroring in phenomenology is the discipline of anthropology. In this paper I present a structural model of a classical anthropological research, starting with the fieldwork and ending with the assimilation of ethnographical text by (in Kuhn's terms) the "scientific community" of anthropologists. Actually, my tentative is to describe and interpret the phases of an anthropological research in phenomenological terms as these were established by Brentano, Husserl, and Heidegger, namely: pre-science, intentionality, phenomenological reduction, eidetical reduction, and intersubjectivity. Some of these phases (intentionality, as well as the two types of reduction) may be generally detected in any science, but the special relationship - based on participant observation - between the epistemic subject and its object of study confers on anthropology a singular phenomenological nimbus.
Paper short abstract:
How is a description of “things as they are” at all possible? Is there a way - if just for moments - to bypass the habits of the natural attitude? In this paper I discuss the anthropological relevance of the notion of the epoché, drawing upon my experiences from long-term fieldwork in Brazil.
Paper long abstract:
Phenomenology is "an investigation into the structures of experience which precede connected expression in language" (Ricoeur 1979:127). It implies a rigorous description of things as they appear to consciousness, and thus is seems closely linked to the effort undertaken in anthropological participant-observation. But we may ask how such a description is at all possible? And also, how anthropologists can make use of this method, knowing how bodily habits and emotional attitudes are closely linked to language and thought. Is there a way, or perhaps a rather a search, that allows us - if just for moments - to bypass these habits and attitudes? Merleau-Ponty writes that ´only at the cost of losing the basis of all my certainties can I question what is conveyed to me by my presence to myself´. In this paper I shall ponder upon the notion of the epoché, drawing on my experiences from long-term fieldwork in Brazil.