August 12, 2007
what kind of inquiry is conceptual inquiry?
Welcome to the CW Blog!
ARC has decided to intensify blog discussions about concept-work. Perhaps a good way to begin further explorations of concept work could be to discuss the difference between concept work and theory – between the kind of inquiry concept work is tailored for and the kind of inquiry that is driven by theoretical questions.
Last month I was invited to give a talk somewhere in Germany (formidable place, excellent research conditions, nice people). The aim was to make myself and my work known, to get in touch with German anthropology. I spent a couple of days there, presenting myself to various people (my talk was on the emergence of the global health movement but most of the time we talked about my dissertation, an anthropological analysis of the emergence of adult cerebral plasticity and the conceptual turbulences it caused in neurology).
On the last day I had a – terrible – interview in which one recurrent question was how I, as ethnographer, see the relation between “empirical work” and “theory” or “conceptual work.” The situation was a perplexing one. I frequently explained that in my work, I have focused on conceptual motion and that I think the task of fieldwork is to capture the singularity of a field site – and of the theme one studies, of course – by way of designing concepts that capture this singularity/this theme. Hence, I explained, my work is radically empirical in its orientation and fundamentally conceptual in its aim or attention. For reasons I could not figure out the three interviewers (two Germans, one Canadian) were profoundly unhappy with my response. Only later I began to understand why, namely when I received an informal letter. What had worried them was the absence of theory and theoretical writings in my talk, my empirical work, and our conversations.
I was baffled. After all, I had been talking about concepts all the while! What did they mean? Gradually, it began to dawn on me that “their” conception of inquiry – in its focus on theory and theoretical writings – is quite profoundly different from mine/ours. To elaborate this distinction, I think, is quite worth our while. For who really understands that what we are doing is “concept work” and not “theory?” Who understands what is at stake in this distinction? Do we? How would we explain it? To provide answers to these questions is helpful in order to understand what kind of business “we” are engaged in. And it is helpful for explaining to others what we actually do.
Here is (what I think of as) an ideal typical distinction: To “them,” any kind of research is informed by theories (or by theoretical works). The task of fieldwork, essentially, is to use these theories/theoretical works in order to make sense (in order to decode) and to thereby test them and, if possible, refine them. Fieldwork/inquiry, then, is a means to refine theories that frame a discipline (or a particular field of a discipline). Since I worked in STS anthropology but had quoted almost none of the classical STS theoreticians – neither Latour nor Shapin, Schaffer, Collins, Pinch, etc – and did not organize my work according to their theories it was clear to them that I do not know these works and hence that I could not possibly be a good STS anthropologist.
“My” conception of inquiry – the one I learned at Berkeley and the one I associate with ARC – has little to do with “their” fusion of theory and inquiry. Instead my/our work is characterized by an elevation of analytics over theory – and elevation of inquiry into the particular and singular, which needs to be captured by concepts, which cannot at all be captured by theories (insofar as they are always reductionist sense-making explanation models).
Theories are not helpful to my/our inquiry because they reduce the always particular – particular in its composition, in its dynamic (slow or fast, emergent or residual) – to always the same (a theory always explains a phenomenon in terms of something else one already knows before, be it the social or the cultural or power, etc.). To get at this singularity, to capture it, to coin concepts or narratives that capture it, to make it comprehensible as a moving, open element of reality reducible to no kind of theory – this is the (or one of the several) task(s).
Perhaps one could say: Of course our work is informed by theories and theoretical works. I/we know them. And yet, the task is not to advance theories but to give an account of a phenomenon – of a “piece of reality,” as Weber would say – which is always too complex to be successfully accessed by any kind of theory. To be sure, I may learn something from theoretical writings and they surely are heuristically valuable but where the goal is to identify, understand, and name the particular singularity of a site/phenomenon (and that’s what ethnographic fieldwork is tailored for) theories are not actually helpful. Instead of furthering or refining theories one needs to find adequate forms to capture the particular quality of the phenomenon one analyzes (and these forms are necessarily dependent on the site and hence a product of inquiry).
If one were to be provocative – and arrogant – one could say: Theory is not our business. Our business is inquiry. But that’s not only provocative and arrogant. It is as well insufficient. For “they” think that they in fact are doing “real” inquiry (they are all engaged in “theoretically sophisticated” fieldwork). So how to capture the difference I try to indicate here?
One way to do so, perhaps, is to stress the difference between (in Jim’s terms) non-referential (tendential) conceptual tools and theories. It is here that concept work the way we have defined it – namely as discussion of conceptual tools like problematization, emergence, mode, assemblage, etc. – gains its full significance. Conceptual tools differ from theories in many but especially one respect: They are not explanation models.
If one would look for an adequate metaphor one could turn to the (perhaps already worn out) medical repertoire: Conceptual tools could be described as scissors, as scalpels, as dissection tools. They allow the fieldworker to dissect a phenomenon, to analyze it in its composition and dynamic, without already inscribing it into an explanation model (the social, the cultural, etc); they leave (at least ideally) the singularity of the site/phenomenon untouched.
Evidently, what I offer is tentative. It needs further explorations and elaborations. How to aptly capture the difference I try to make visible? How to explain our mode of inquiry, our version of concept work?
Tobias, thanks for the post. It strikes me that part of the explanation could include emphasizing the importance of the site or subject of research - for instance the importance or interest in thinking about adult cerebral plasticity now. Whatever one thinks of Riles work, she is right that the drive to theory is essentially an aesthetic requirement. Within that aesthetic, a good inquiry must end on a generalizable theoretical observation. Yet it strikes me that the emphasis on concept work instead foregrounds a different ending to the story - or rather a story that posits a genealogy (for instance) in relation to a present, a present that is interesting not because it rectifies Latour’s theory but because it is interesting (you know, to people who have lives).
Imagine, reading a book about adult cerebral plasticity because one was interested in adult cerebral plasticity - what a concept! But this means not doing research on banal topics. Ironically also it implies a greater emphasis on the aesthetic qualities of the topic - *making* the thing interesting rather than just extracting some modicum of theoretical interest.
Finally, the other problem is, how do we talk to others? Theory functions by making available a space of sociality. If we are not debating theory, we are only talking about your project, for a time, and then my project, and then maybe somebody else’s. So in effect, the threat of concept work’s radical empiricism is that usually one person in the room winds up talking all the time (they’re the only one with the experience, after all). I don’t think this is insurmountable. After all, the space of the art gallery implies rather multiple projects that resonate with each other each in its specificity. (Again, a recourse to aesthetics. I don’t know what to make of this.) (Is this what Paul is calling adjacency? How to be near others?)
Jerome, thanks for you great comment. I fully agree about the significance of aesthetics – and I agree that theory is a form of aesthetics. But what I tried to point at is the particular aesthetics (if you will) of analytic ethnographic inquiry, which is interested in the particularity of a site and not in theory (insofar as theories reduce a complex reality to a single explanation model, insofar as for a theoretician the terms of inquiry are already determined before doing inquiry). Three comments immediately come to mind:
(1) The first is on the specificity of ethnographic research (of conceptual inquiry). Here is a quote from George Marcus:
“Indeed, my problem with much contemporary historicized, and historically sensitive ethnography is that its arguments and significance are not produced or given within the frame of ethnographic work itself but by the contextualizing discourse and narratives in which the ethnography comes to be embedded.”
Whatever you make of the critical attitude inherent in GM’s words, the specificity of ethnographic inquiry he points to is exactly right (or so I think): To find something in the field, as a result of fieldwork – for the task of fieldwork is, in many ways, to follow the particular story that is emergent.
To me, that’s all about aesthetics, namely the aesthetics of doing inquiry, of leaving behind the already known (e.g., theory); of submitting to a foreign milieu; of being captured by a gradually emerging story (constructed of chance encounters, interviews, anecdotes, observations, etc) while trying to capture it. And, eventually, the aesthetics of composing a narrative adequate to this emergent story and its particularity – of finding a form (I don’t think that this kind of research is restricted to “interesting, non-banal” sites). The problem is – how does this talk to a discipline (or at least to a room full of people)? Does it? Could it?
(2) Concept work as SJC, AL, and PR have defined it aims at overcoming the “only one person speaks” problem that you point to. A key point they have been making is that scientists need commonly shared norms of what a “problem” is and of “how” to study it because only such standardized norms are capable to direct – on a disciplinary or at least collaboratory level – research in such a way that an individual researcher can contribute to the discussion of general problems (because only then she knows what a problem is and how to organize her research in such away that it speaks to her fellow colleagues, that it contributes to the knowledge of the discipline and hence to progress of knowledge). Such standardized, shared norms – that’s precisely what concepts like “problematization,” “assemblage,” “event,” “collaboratory,” etc. are meant to achieve. So in fact, a key point of ARC has been to move beyond the “individual brilliance model” and to open up a collaborative space.
(3) To end on general terms, why would this be theory? I think I don’t understand what you mean. Do you mean that what we say in our texts, at least eventually, has to talk to some general problems or questions that frame the discipline? I fully agree but I don’t see why this would require theory (given that a theory is always an explanation model).
Would you agree with this? Yes? No?
Thanks, Tobias, for the clarification. Your emphasis on emergence is especially compelling since, if this is a problem of the narratives anthropology is able to spin, the emphasis is on the sense of being in the story, I mean in the action such that we don’t know where it will lead.
I hope I didn’t give the impression that I dislike the aesthetic dimensions of the problem - on the contrary I want only to recognize the tendency to theory as a problem of the ending of the story. In writing, how do we know when we’re done? I found helpful the image of the art gallery, the collection of works (curated, for example) that somehow speak to one another without resolving into something complete and finished. If we are working with emergent phenomena then we don’t yet know the denouement. And, at the same time, concerning interesting versus banal topics of research - well this too is the problem of the artist - the problem of how to present a visual apprehension (for instance) that is internally coherent but not necessarily obvious to others. Artists teach how to apprehend, whereas the banal is a condition of the subject (the disposition of knowing too much, for instance, which resolves into boredom - the boredom of theory, of being able to explain everything).
As for your final point, you’re correct that there are different ways of ending on general terms - explanation versus reflection on shared problems.
I want to raise the question of whether most of what gets glossed as theory (actor-network theory, for instance) is more relevant as method. This emerges in your original post when you mention that of course I/we know the theories of Latour and Shapin and so forth - our work is informed by them but their concerns do not necessarily drive our concerns.
Finally, if there are shared problems, does this mean that we are cooperatively engaged in creating a description (or multiple descriptions) of the contemporary? I find this compelling for much of the same reasons raised in my first comment - a diagnosis of what is important or interesting now. That selective description of the contemporary, then, would be the locus of energy driving a conversation among different projects, of coalescing the momentum of a discipline or at least a room full of people. In teaching this has been key: The world is changing in fascinating ways. We need tools to understand this (even to notice it) - this is the domain of concepts or methods (but not theories). But it is the fascination that constitutes the disciplinarity of anthropology, its shared concerns (”norms,” you say, though I’m skeptical of the tendency toward standardization). We are in the end fascinated with anthropos. (”we” - “in the end”) This makes us anthropologists rather than just ethnographers.
Very interesting reflections. Here are a few thoughts, questions, and possible cautionings:
I’m interested in the way you frame the distinction as one between “conceptual tools” and “theories”. I’m curious about your attempt to articulate this distinction in terms of “concepts” as interventions, analytics, and dissections versus “theories” as explanations. I’m tempted to push you a little bit on this ‘instrumentation’ versus ‘explanation’ distinction. Because it’s not entirely clear that ‘explanation’ cannot be a part of instrumentation in the conceptual tool sense that I think you are describing. One might argue, and some of those skeptical about your approach are likely to argue, that we can talk about explanations in the pragmatic and instrumental sense that you are urging without trying to float the old metaphysical-sounding thesis that our explanation reaches all the way down to the way things really are. Why, some people might ask, can’t we take explanations as tools which are fashioned/fabulated for the sake of specific interventions in specific situations? Do explanations really have to be “reductive” in a pernicious sense? Can’t we accept that reductions and abstractions are useful so long as we carefully specify that they are being made for the sake of a specific intervention? So a question: do you think that explanation, reduction, and abstraction can be useful in the context in which you are working? If not, then why not? And if so, then how do we effectively delimit the contexts of use of such ‘maneuvers’?
Rajchman says in his book on Deleuze: “A great critic is not one who comes armed with prior theory, but rather one who helps formulate new problems or suggests new concepts” (2000, p.115). But I wonder if this very helpful point can be made without invoking the troublesome ‘theory versus concept’ opposition and instead focusing on the ‘prior thought versus new thought’ distinction which seems to me what people like Deleuze are really interested in. Is it “theory” that bugs us? Or is it a certain form of “intellectualism” which tries to foreclose thought before it gets going by delimiting in advance what forms thought can take? If the latter (which is what bugs me), then I wonder if one can’t make this point without polemicizing against theory?
Lurking behind these questions are broader concerns about your distinction as one between “concepts” and “theories” instead of between “bad concepts/theories” and “good concepts/theories” (to put it rather simply). One way to put my concern is to ask a simple question: Why the disdain for the word “theory”? Lots of people like to say that they isn’t theory, but I often worry that this kind of move does a disservice to work that is very interesting both theoretically and empirically. Sometimes I wonder if these people should try and talk about “why not to do a certain kind of theory” instead of trying to be convincing about an old argument concerning “why not to do theory at all“. This could be construed as just a minor terminological observation, but in terms of interfacing with other people (people who are baffled by positivistic-sounding claims like “I don’t do theory”) it is often useful to bear this sort of terminological point in mind. It may also be a good way of chastising oneself against the positivism that is always lingering around the sort of pragmatist or poststructuralist approach that I understand you (perhaps incorrectly?) to be taking.
Here, then, are two warnings which might be useful to bear in mind:
1. A great many smart people do a great deal of interesting work which they like to call “theory”. The work is truly interesting. Dumping the term “theory” can make it hard to talk to these smart people and the other smart people who read them.
2. There are also a great deal of other smart people who are very good at picking up any piece of inquiry and describing it as theoretically-informed and theory-laden (any well trained analytic philosopher should be able to show in 5000 words or less that anyone doing interesting inquiry “really does have a theory” and most of them can also convincingly point out “which theoretical tradition you really are working within”). The people who do this usually try to seek out as targets other smart people who say that their work isn’t theoretical. Saying “I don’t have a theory” invites this sort of (often pedantic) criticism, though that claim does have the advantage of being provocative. Saying “I don’t have a bad theory” is hardly provocative, but has the advantage of not inviting unwanted criticism concerning those parts of one’s work that one really isn’t trying to call attention to in any event.
Thanks to those who have posted the first responses on this discussion. Hopefully they will trigger further response. I have two comments in, I think, a rather different direction.
(1) It might be helpful to focus a bit on the other side of things, not “theory” but the terms “singularity” and “radically empirical” that Tobias uses to oppose his (our) approach to theory. My observation is a rather simple one. Namely, that we tend to use these terms, but of course we don’t really mean either one, or at least we don’t mean them they are normally meant. To identify “concept work” as an essential part of inquiry would seem by definition to acknowledge that “empirical work” requires concepts; that one can not observe objects, or be objective, without concepts. So what in this context does “radically empirical” mean? In a similar vein, it seems that the “significance” of concepts lies precisely in the fact that they point to something that is not singular, at least in the sense that it brings to light something that might be significant across a range of different sites. I know why we fall back on “singularity” and “radically empirical” but it gets us in trouble. I remember when Aihwa and I were writing the Introduction to Global Assemblages, which, in an early draft, contained about 200 uses of the word “empirical.” We sent it to Marilyn Strathern who was baffled: What work is “empirical” trying to do? Andy raised a similar question in the Dewey and Latour discussion to my use of the work “specific.” It seems to me that we might need a bit more discussion of what this focus on the “empirical” or the “singular” gets you in terms of a payoff at the conceptual level. Can we find ways to do without them, given the baggage they carry? Could we specify what we mean by them?
(2) Perhaps one step along the path in that respect would be to think more about different kinds of concepts, or concepts that work in different ways at different levels. There are “conceptual tools” that Tobias mentions, like problematization, emergence, mode, assemblage. But then there are other kinds of concepts like social modernity, vital systems security, advanced liberalism and so on that have a different status and function. They are lower flying, as Geertz said; they are closer to specific apparatuses and assemblages. And they serve to make crucial distinctions in a field, that allow its singularity to be understood something that terms like assemblage or emergence really don’t do in the same way. It might be helpful, in thinking through these initial problems of category, to find some terms that would mark the distinction between these different kinds of concepts; and then perhaps we might also have a clearer idea about the different work each does in inquiry.
First, while I basically agree that quarreling or positioning over the theory/concept distinction in and of itself is worthless, there are issues here. To name just two
(1) The history and philosophy of science in the XXth century can be read as a turn from theory to concept and experimentation. Bachelard, Canguilhem, Foucault and others saw and showed the importance of this shift in the deepest and most empirical understanding of what truth practices consist in. The later distinction was never accepted by Latour who mocks “epistemology” to his detriment. So concept and experimental practice are a core break through toward the way things work.
(2) Heidegger’s critique of theory as the history of metaphysics in the West, is echoed on a totally different tonal register, as Rorty argued, by Dewey who wrote many many things arguing against theory understood as metaphysics. It may be that these lessons have been learned but I see very little evidence to support that claim.
If we look at Koselleck’s work on the history of concepts it differs from the French tradition but has many valuable points.
So attempting to appease the dominant chattering classes of the University is a game for someone else. I do think we want to specify more what concepts are and how they work. Deleuze? William James? Rheinberger? etc.
Collier’s points are well-taken and fertile topics to explore.
I would add that something like ‘adjacency’ as a practice and a critical caution is both a concept and a practice that might help to some degree.
Gaymon and I have provided some preliminary discussion of the difference between ‘things” and “objects” i.e. conceptually mediated things taken up in a specific mode of veridiction.
I think we are moving closer to the spirit and questions of the original post, which seemed to me a kind of provocation to all of us to reflect on what it is we mean by “concept work” and to think about how this fits in to a particular style of inquiry. Initially, let me propose that there are at least two questions on the table:
(1) What is a “concept” in this discussion? There are at least two initial domains in which answers could be discussed. (a) They are things in the field of inquiry that we study. This is the spirit of Paul’s distinction between “things” and “objects.” We (second order anthropologists of the contemporary) study concepts that are active in the field of inquiry. (b) They are tools of inquiry for an anthropology of the contemporary. And here we are already beginning to see a distinction among different levels of such tools: (i) high level, possibly “non-analytic” concepts like “assemblage” and; (ii) lower level concepts like vital systems security or social modernity that mark something’s particular qualities in a field of or series of distinctions. I might also add that the relationship between (a) and (b) seems to be the question raised by “adjacency”, at least in part.
(2) What is the distinctive contribution of, in Tobias’ term, conceptually oriented inquiry? My sense is that to answer this question, or to even begin to pose it, we need more specification of how concept work fits into the process of inquiry. Here also I would make a distinction: (a) Concepts can be tools of inquiry; (b) They can be the product, the result of inquiry. My sense is that it may have been Tobias’ interlocutors to understand the latter point — that conceptualization can be the product of successful inquiry — that was at the source of mutual non-understanding. But it would be worth thinking through.
Here some case material would be helpful.
Here is some case material taken from recent empirical work: the word ‘epidemic’ is a concept of ancient Greek origing and has always referred to a disease spreading among people (epi - demos). Now what ‘disease’, ’spreading’, and ‘people’ meant from the middle ages until today has clearly varied considerably. As Foucault has shown, ‘people’ meant in the modern period primarily a ‘population.’
So a focus on a concept like ‘epidemic’ becomes particularly interesting when it becomes the historical location for the articulation and elaboration of what a ‘people’ is.
In addition to a history of concepts, anthropological inquiry can clarify what the concept of an ‘epidemic’ means today and how this meaning relates to particular kinds of practices.
Having followed this discussion for a few days now I would like to articulate some associations on different issues that have been raised by now:
1) One of the hallmarks of theory seems to be the bird’s eye perspective of a distant observer on a totality. One question at stake in the debate Tobias has sparked off is the ethics of this enterprise. The idea of a bios theoreticos implied that being an uninvolved spectator is a way of life bringing with it a certain kind of happiness. From participant observation to adjacency, anthropological fieldwork has been at odds with this ideal of detachment. But what exactly is the subject position of an adjacent fieldworker and what normativity orients his or her approach? Why focus on singularities rather than making up the wonderful coherence of theories? Apart from the aesthetics involved I wonder about the ethical dimension of this discussion?
2) Concerning the issue of singularity: Tobias’ quotation of George Marcus concerning Marcus’ problem with “much contemporary historicized and historically sensitive ethnography” struck me. I assume that the question is not if one makes use of historical material but how. If the significance of an ethnography is mostly derived from a pregiven historical context the field site hardly matters and one wonders why that time-consuming activity was necessary in the first place. But picking up historical threads encountered at the field site can certainly help to demarcate what is specific about it as a contemporary phenomenon (what difference does today make with respect to yesterday – and which elements of the past are incorporated in the present and how?). They also establish relationships to narratives of different origins. To me that seems to be a good thing.
3) Here, concepts (as first order analytic tools, not as objects of second order observations) matter because they break up the singularity of the field site. Concepts open up the limited scope of one’s empirical work to wider concerns (as Stephen has pointed out).
4) Sometimes, these concerns have been articulated in the form of theories. Some of the concepts that have been circulating among those associated with ARC were taken from elaborate theories such as Luhmann’s work on systems. It seems that this kind of exchange is both fruitful and problematic: fruitful because originally theoretical concepts have often proven to be useful to analyze a particular field site and to connect it to different sites, discussions outside of lab, discipline, etc.; but also problematic because these concepts carry a lot of ballast and it’s not always obvious how to deal with that.
5) Other analytic concepts have been derived from the field of inquiry itself. Take Paul’s term “equipment,” for example, which has emancipated itself from being merely an object of historiographical research (in French Modern) to serving as a concept linking discussions of method and meditation, Wissenschaft and Lebensführung in Anthropos Today. When discussing the difference between conceptual work and theory it might also be worth paying attention to this particularly interesting type of concepts that does not fit into theory as it is normally practiced.
6) To introduce a new thread into this discussion we might give some thought to the role of Blumenberg’s “nonconceptuality” in our conceptually oriented inquiries. When examining “ecologies of ignorance” (including our own work) it’s certainly worth looking at what escapes conceptualization and clear-cut distinctions (being expressed by metaphors and other tropes different from concepts instead).
Carlo’s “epidemic” is a term not a concept. Term= word concept referent.
He shows how the same word can be part of a quite different arrangement with shifting concepts and shifting referents. BY making this type of distinction we can at least produce analytical work and diagnostic work.
Of course, Carlo is one of the leaders in this type of work.
Congratulations to Dr. Langlitz or is it Herr Doktor Doctor?
Thank you very much for the wonderful – and indeed very helpful – discussion.
My comment is very long – I apologize for that. I tried to make the aim of my little text clearer (by way of addressing some of the concerns you all expressed) and this allowed me to articulate with more precision (if this is the right term) what I think the key question of concept work currently is.
The initial aim of my text was to make sensitive to the fact that we have no language available – not yet – to the kind of inquiry we practice. In order to explain the problem I had to explain what our inquiry – as I understand it – is actually about. In this context I used terms and expressions like: being sensitive to the particular dynamic of ones field, to its singularity, to the emergent story and its always unique dynamics. I suggested that an anthropological inquiry sensitive to “the singular” rather uses “conceptual tools” than “theories.”
Colin has provided a very helpful warning. He transformed the “tentative” distinction I made in order to distinguish between two kinds of inquiry into a “total” one and provocatively asked where the difference between “theory and inquiry” really is, thereby making clear that the words I used may evoke the impression as if I play inquiry versus theory, description versus explanation, narrative versus abstraction and reductions, etc. To be sure, I neither play theory versus inquiry (I think there are quite wonderful and inspiring theory driven kinds of inquiry) nor do I “disdain” or “dump” theory (that’s why I emphasized how valuable and important theory often is – and Nick alias Dr. Dr. Langlitz rightly observed that “conceptual tools” have been deduced from theories, for example the distinction between risk and danger, I think that PR is quite successfully doing this). And furthermore my aim is not at all to be “provocative.” Rather, I really would like us to develop a language in which we can explain – to ourselves and others – what we actually do, what kind of inquiry many of us practice.
I think the problem is pertinent. Not because I want to please or appease others but because I (and I know that this is true for many of us) have frequently made the perplexing experience that other anthropologists seem not to understand what we do. PR: “It might be that these lessons have been learned but I see very little evidence to support that claim.” (And as this blog shows we’re not at all clear about what it is we’re doing).
After having made explicit that what is at stake is not theory versus inquiry or explanation versus description I would like to return to the initial problem (and I will take up some of the suggestions Colin, Prof. Rabinow, and Steve have made): describing the kind of inquiry we do, trying to adequately capture it.
In a certain way, classical anthropological inquiry (let’s say fieldwork or ethnography) is about the other (I know the term is problematic but please follow me for a minute and leave your doubts behind). The aim is to find out how “they” are thinking; how they conceptualize the world (the so called “native point of view”). This inevitably implies that I cannot know in advance what my research will be about. It depends on “them,” on the questions and ideas and concepts central to “them.” It requires that I pay attention to the particular groups I study, to the particular dynamic of their society, of how they take up and – if implicitly – conceptualize things. Hence, the theme of my research just like the way to describe it – the key words with which to capture it – are a product of the fieldwork, are found in the particular field. “The truth is in the field” – this is, in many ways, also true for anthropological inquiry today, if in way more specific terms.
Example I: If I work – because it came up as a problem in the course of my fieldwork, as a discovery I made – on how the fusion of biology and genomics (the emergence of “genomic biology”) causes a reconfiguration of established biological concepts and categories, then my work is focused on the kind of problems my interlocutors are concerned with, on how practitioners work, on what kind of knowledge they produce, on how they classify and order it. Example II: If I work – because it came up as a problem in the course of my fieldwork, as a discovery I made – on how the discovery of large scale adult cerebral plasticity sets in motion an assumption that has organized neurology for a century, namely that the adult brain is an essentially fixed and immutable structure and that therefore we have to study the synapse as the only dynamic element of this structure, and if I further study how plasticity research gives rise to a new kind of thinking and knowing the brain, then my focus is inevitably on the neurologists and their work and thought. The only way to get at it is to follow their experiments, to listen to their conversations, to take part in their lab meetings and conferences, etc. E-P said we need to study “primitive philosophies” (meaning primitive conceptualizations of life and the world) and PR wrote that we have to conduct “fieldwork in philosophy” (meaning that we have to study our ways of conceptualizing life and the world).
How to do so if not by paying attention to the concrete, particular site? To its dynamic and its particular composition? To the questions pertinent to “them?” If I want to learn what new categories or concepts genomic biology brings about, what new concepts and categories plasticity research brings about, then I have no other way then submitting to the field, listening to them. The emergent – even where I study the residual – is always, indeed exclusively to be found (to be discovered) in the particular, just like the changes one studies are never total or epochal but – particular. Hence, the focus on “the singular.”
Theoretical kinds of inquiry – or theory driven kinds of inquiry – are unfolding in a (I am inclined to say “very”) different way. The aim here is – and again I am opening up an ideal-typical distinction – to go and do research in order to test a theory. For theory driven research the particular composition and dynamic of a site, the way ones interlocutors think, the conceptual interconnections in which they are immersed (what Max Weber brilliantly called gedankliche Zusammenhänge) is of no or only of minor significance. Sure, theory driven inquiry is inquiry. It is empirical. But it does not require a researcher to discover a theme in the field (and hence they do not have to submit to a field) and to invent – as result of and as a means of fieldwork – terms capable to describe and capture such a discovery (therefore I said their work is “empirical” but not “radically empirical”).
Example III: One of the most prominent theories in STS has been the argument (clearly articulated by the Edinburgh school) that scientific truth is socially constructed and one particular element of this argument have been the tacit knowledge papers by Collins, Pickering, Pinch, Sibum, Schaffer, and others. The claim is that the production of scientific truth is not detached from time and place and person, as traditional philosophy of science has it, but in fact dependent on a person and his/her tacit knowledge of an experimental procedure or a machine and on making this tacit knowledge explicitly available to others, for otherwise the experiment doesn’t work and the other scientists won’t believe the results produced. If, as researcher, my aim is to prove that scientific truth is socially constructed (and that scientific knowledge is hence always dependent on or contaminated by the social) and depends on the effort to make tacit knowledge explicitly available to others, then the particular site/field in which I do research doesn’t necessarily matter. If I work with physicists (Sibum, Pickering) or with Xerox technicians (Collins, Orr) or with biologists doesn’t really matter. Also, how my interlocutors try to come up with new experiments, how they produce what kind of knowledge, how they seek to classify the knowledge produced, etc. – all of this does not or only marginally matter. For theory driven inquiry — or for theory dependent inquiry — the “questions,” the “theme” is pre-given, just like the analytic terms and categories are. At best such research provides further refinements of the already existing theory and its key terms (which often results in excellent books and articles, cf. especially Sibum). Theory driven kind of inquiry is different from the kind of anthropological inquiry I tried to assess above (but it can be valuable and inspiring for the kind of anthropological inquiry I try to describe here).
One can push this further: Some authors use Latour in order to decode why, for example, the world is the way it is – because we carefully separate nature and culture and thus are ill-prepared to deal with nature/culture hybrids. Or they use Agamben as explanandum: The world is as it is because our society is deeply inscribed in a primary biopolitical pattern in which naked life is constantly excluded from qualified life, etc.
And there are even stronger theoretical claims: Manuel DeLanda recently wrote (repeating arguments of Peter Winch) that only when we have a spelled out assemblage ontology of the social (or assemblage theory of the social) a good and clear social analysis is possible. And Niklas Luhmann seems to have been convinced that empirical inquiry never leads anywhere. What is needed in order to understand how societies work is a theory capable to provide a language adequate to the ways societies function.
To be sure, that’s all fine and valuable and inspiring and wonderful. But I think the primary task of “the anthropologist of the contemporary” is: To be sensitive to that curious thing called field: Anthropology is about the other – about what they do, how they see things, how they classify them, etc. And out of this research the theme and the way to describe it should emerge. That’s exactly what (I think) George Marcus brilliantly captures (cf. the quote I used in my reply to Jerome).
At that point the next and perhaps crucial problem emerges, one taken up especially by Steve and Colin (and Carlo and PR). Evidently anthropological research does not happen in an empty space, it is no vacuum research. Like any other kind of research it is inseparably related to a scholarly discourse, to particular questions, concepts, debates, methods, etc. And as Steve and Colin observed, the fact that this is the case makes it difficult to speak about singularity (or the radically empirical) as if I or we would get at “how things really are, in all their complexity, undisturbed by theory.” (I hope to have made clear how I use these terms and that the opposite of “the singular” is not “the general” and of “theory” not “the real”).
In the initial text, I proposed that anthropology, at least the way we at ARC seek to practice it, makes use of “conceptual tools” (rather than “theory”) and that the specificity of these “conceptual tools” (as opposed to “theory”) is that they leave the singularity of ones site untouched (what theories don’t do because they submit the field to the theory) while assuring that ones work nonetheless speaks to a general community (or collaboratory) of anthropologists.
If I understand the comments of Colin, Prof. Rabinow, Stephen, and Carlo correctly, then this is exactly what we have to elaborate on: What are conceptual tools? How do we use them? What is their specificity? Where do they come from? And in what sense are they characteristic of the kind of inquiry we practice? In a certain way, as Steve has pointed out, these questions amount to another one: What is concept work? What do we mean by this term? Do we mean concept sensitive inquiry (i.e., a kind of inquiry which focuses on conceptual motion, an anthropology of reason, cf. example I and II above) or do we mean the invention of (low and high flying) conceptual tools like problematization, assemblage, event, etc (these are all concepts initially invented in order to analyze conceptual motion)? What is the relation between the two?
This question may appear superficial but it deeply touches on the question of how, today, we can invent and practice a sophisticated anthropological inquiry focused on – the field or the other or the emergent or on however we want to name it. And this question is central for the one I initially tried to ask: What kind of inquiry are we actually seeking to practice?
I propose that we drop the term “other.” It has a diverse and not very helpful history and semantic field.
Its use in anthropology has been thoroughly critiqued.
Its use in philosophies such as those of Levinas are not what is at stake in our work.
Perhaps something like “partial difference” is what Tobias is getting at. Keep in mind that in the type of concept work and inquiry we are engaged in, neither the subject nor the object nor various assemblages are taken to be stable. Hence the issue is never grasping the essence of the Other. Or facing the Other, etc.
As to the “singular” I am hesitant. The Singularity is a term of jargon in the world of the webbies.
Perhaps we can suggest different terms that might indicate different concepts.
Yes, partial difference is good.
One of the things I hoped to capture by “the other” is — to use another problematic term — something like the “outside,” thereby evoking a certain kind of passivity. That’s why I emphasized “the field” or the “foreign milieu” and the necessity to “submit” to it. If inquiry is to yield results we cannot foresee, if it is organized around something we don’t yet know, then one has to emphasize the importance of a certain kind of active passivity. The particular “logic of discovery” that characterizes my/our research has little to do with the heroic adventurer, who goes and actively discovers “the other,” who maps the “outside.” Rather, we, as fieldworkers or inquirers, get involved in something, are captured by something particular, confronted by something peculiar (so activity is crucial but passivity decisive).
The “other” seemed to me to capture this aspect of the “unforeseeable,” this aspect of being captured (passive) by something that comes from the “outside,” something in which one gets involved, which carries one away. But of course you are totally right. Using terms like “other” or “outside” is potentially more confusing than helpful. Both terms are evoking a traditional anthropological attitude, one that seems to imply that somewhere out there are cultural wholes and essences to be discovered and conquered (or, in the case of Lévinas, to be faced, thereby making me realize a space of total otherness as otherness, opening up a space beyond or not reducible to being/terms of being).
So “partial difference” is very appropriate. The question would be — but this anyway depends on how far one would follow my suggestions — to what degree the expression is capable to capture the kind of “coming from the outside/passivity” that characterizes, I think, our kind of research.
What about replacing the singular by “the particular?” Weber uses the term “individuality” (which, at least in German, sounds strange, a bit dusty). Another option could be “peculiar” and “peculiarity.”
My instinct at the moment is that this has been a helpful initial stab, at least in orienting us to multiple points of underspecification in what it is that we actually want to talk about. Perhaps the next step would be to take one of the many themes that have been raised and address it more specifically. Tobias?
I fully agree. Within the next few days I will post a new text. But at the same time I would like to encourage everyone to continue the discussion of terms and expressions that help us to adequately describe our kind of research!
I rather think that this question about specificity, singularity, particular is rather interesting. Both Weber (Methodology) and Foucault (What is Critique) accord to “singularity” a certain kind of privilege. It might be worthwhile thinking about what they mean. I am sure it has to do with problems of conceptualization. There might also be some good concept work to do on these terms themselves. I would, for example, be most interested to know what the philosophically inclined among us have to say about “specific” (which seems to be the one among these I prefer, because it has a relationship to analytic).
Since ‘particular’ refers to a part, and hence to a whole, we might prefer ’specific’.
Anglo-Norman particuler and Middle French particulier, particuler, particullier (c1265 in Old French as particuler; French particulier) limited to a part, not universal (c1265), distinguished from other individuals or elements, special (c1265), concerning only an individual, private (c1300), relating to the property or characteristic of an individual (1314), turned in on oneself, egotistic (end of 14th cent.), odd, bizarre (1549), familiar (1559) and its etymon post-classical Latin particularis of or concerning a part, particular, not universal (4th cent., esp. in logic), partial (6th cent.), separate, individual (c1197, 1459 in British sources), detailed (1242, c1564 in British sources)
The specific seems to refer to ’species’ and hence to the common attributes or qualities of a class of things. ‘Species’ is between ‘genus’ on the one hand and ‘individual’ on the other hand. It doesn’t refer to a whole but to a class of things which have something in common and are therefore and insofar ’specific’.
Carlo — that is very helpful, and it is quite apropos of what I had in mind (although I didn’t quite manage to say it).
In any case, I think that we agree that “specificity”, “singularity” etc. are worth talking about more, likely in a separate thread where we can focus the conversation.