February 2, 2007
Last Thursday’s (Jan 25th) Meeting
Following up on the writing group meeting from last thursday…
Mary, Anthony, Mattias and I met at Henry’s to discuss a chapter from my dissertation (see previous post).
Beyond being personally helpful (again, my thanks to all who took their time…), we hit upon some issues that seemed to resonate with everyone’s work. The main thing was the integration (or lack thereof) of…let’s call it “theory” and “description”… in my chapter. From there we had a wider discussion about how ethnographic form:
- the chapter currently exists in, as Mary called it, an “ethnographic sandwhich” (argument/theory–story/ethnography–conclusion/theory).
- what are the problems with this organization? Mattias said it reminded him of Don Kulick’s work, for better or for worse.
- would “mere description” have been enough? The “theoretical” portions of the chapter were latter additions, based on certain readers’ reactions, yet the “ethnography” remains the most successful part of the chapter.
- what are the ways that “theory” and “ethnography” could be put into dialogue, especially in a chapter where so much of the “ethnography” is about “theory”?