New article on Geertz and Foucault.
http://perspectivesinanthropology.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/foucault-and-g…considerations/
Anyone who has conducted ethnographic research understands the importance of the participant-observer methodology. When gathering information, it is essential to have an informant that is able to…Continue
Started by Neil Turner Apr 24, 2014.
The concept of the interpretation of cultures in anthropology is associated with the work of Clifford Geertz during what has been termed the “interpretive” or “literary’ turn in contemporary…Continue
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Traditionally, the practice of anthropology required leaving one’s home country for long periods of time, learning a new language, immersing oneself deeply in another culture for the purpose of…Continue
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For the better part of this week, I have been reading posts from many of the groups and discussions that attract my interests and have found many of the forums interesting and exciting. It is against…Continue
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Comment
It may have been here on OAC or on Savage Minds; a few weeks ago someone pointed us to Anna Cerwonka and Liisa H. Halkki, Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork. This book pointed me to the magisterial figure of Hans-Georg Gadamer, whose Truth and Method (1960) was a powerful influence on Geertz. That led me to look for books by or about Gadamer that I could download to the Kindle reader on my iPad, which led me to The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, edited by Robert J. Dorstal. There I not only found a lucid introduction to Gadamer. I also was awakened to the importance of this thinker, who in many respects anticipates what Neil has written about both Foucault and Geertz.
I am in the process of reading The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer and can claim no expertise. But early impressions suggest the following.
1. Gadamer was deeply aware of the historical specificity of knowledge, i.e., the language, categories and assumptions specific to historical periods and places that shape the starting point for all scholarly thought.
2. Gadamer was, however, also aware that knowledge is not trapped in the prejudices that scholars living in particular times and places bring to their subjects. New knowledge is generated with scholars with various prejudices interact with each other and/or the texts produced by others with different prejudices.
3. If, however, they can open themselves to what the others have to say and question their own assumptions, they can enter into fruitful conversations that generate new knowledge.
4. Thus, the hermeneutic circle is not a circle at all. It is a dialogue that, if practiced properly, spirals upward, generating new knowledge and deeper understanding of what has gone before.
5. Conceived in this way "truth" is neither trapped in the prejudices of particular times and places, nor does it require axiomatic grounding in what are taken to be immutable and inescapable assumptions that, on closer examination, turn out to be the prejudices of this or that particular tribe at this or that particular moment. It remains, while capable of expansion, forever partial and in need of further questioning.
As a self-justifying myth for scholars, it is hard to imagine anything better.
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