From Absences to Spongy terms

Last time we set out to walk in Abcoude. We discussed 'absences', while great weather, an inspiring atmosphere and a beautiful landscape were present among and all around us. We would like to thank those who were present for your valuable contributions. Also, We would like to invite to our next edition on June 5^th (from 13:00 o’clock until early evening, depending on the chosen destination).

The theme of the seminar on 5. June will be 'Spongy terms':

The words that as social scientists we work with may, in the course of long years and as they move between discourses, come to absorb ever more meanings. They may become ‘spongy terms’. Take examples such as care; body; health; but also power; culture; local; global; or empirical and theory.

When to avoid such terms as they have become all too fluid, gassy even, so that they come to evaporate? When to revitalise them? Throwing away – avoiding – a term sounds fine, but where to find other words, and don’t they have similar problems? And revitalising a term sounds fine as well, but how to do so – by attending to all its layers and meanings at the same time – or by just carving out a single, simple definition, sticking to it, and hoping you can master your text and your readers?

And the problem is not just confined to conversations between academics. There is also the traveling of terms between academia and informants. When to go along with the ways in which your informants use a spongy term – when to avoid using this term yourself, because your informants use it already (in another meaning) – when to work hard to reshape, push and pull, craft, invent and invert, terms and their meanings – as you think this might be good to do, a possible contribution?

And now for the walking seminar questions: what are the spongy terms that you come across in your work? Which ones bother you? What are so far your tactics in relation to them? What, in this respect, would you like to improve on? How might you want to do this?

First walking seminar edition 2015: Absences

There will be another edition of the Amsterdam Walking Seminar on 8 May 2015!

The theme of this first edition of 2015 is Absences.

As a researcher, one tends to remark on what is present in one’s field. You may talk about this with informants; observe it ethnographically; read about it in earlier literatures. But how to also remark upon the absences? How to notice what is not said and what is not done and what is not present – for better or worse?

Here are the questions we would like to address: 
what might be relevant absences in your research field? Do you think it would be worthwhile to attend to them? If so, which kinds of absences might be most relevant?  How have you tried so far to ‘catch’  them? What other possibilities deserve to be explored? Which ways of writing might help in highlighting relevant absences? And what about the concept absent/present, does that help (as it sensitises to the traces of what’s absent in what’s present) or hinder (as it holds on to this paired opposition)?

We are looking forward to walking and talking together.

next walking seminar

The next walking seminar will take place on the 19th September.

During the last one we talked about different ways of knowing...

  

... and un/doing, the themes of two workshops we had had.

The difference that makes a difference...

A couple of days ago we headed off to the Amsterdamse Bos where we walked and talked about:

The difference that makes a difference…

As ethnographers we go into the field, observe what happens there, talk, listen. What we learn is not the same from one site or situation to the next. Different kinds of things happen and one ‘kind’ of thing may still take a different shape in a subsequent moment or another setting. One informant says that all X are P and the other tells they are Q instead. What is a problem here, seems a blessing a bit further along – and vice versa. How to deal with such differences?

What kind of differences are relevant in and to your field? To you? To ‘the literature’? Which ones do you follow? Which ones do you let go? In which ways are these differences different?

In the social sciences some differences get a lot of attention: geographical ones (between countries), socio-economic ones (between classes), functional ones (between professions, or fields, or systems). How do you relate to such differences?

So what to do, what do you do, with differences? And it is differences that you start with to then show similarities? Or is it the other way around, you begin with what seems similar and then reveal that there are differences attached? And what about translations and travels where one thing turns into another and becomes different to its former self?
And how does all this relate to how your work is different from earlier writings; and to the difference that you hope to make with it?

 

new dates

Unfortunately not in the scenery that you see above, but we will walk again! The next two walking seminars will take place on the 

25th April and  

2nd June.

We are looking forward seeing you!

Beginning at the beginning

Last Friday we set out for another walk. This time we did not head off to Breukelen, but to a place called the Zaanse Schans.

Compared to Breukelen it has even more and even prettier "typically Dutch" windmills. 

 
But this was not our topic of conversation. We talked about beginnings. And these were our questions:

How to start?

The introduction of a paper/article/chapter is crucial. The first sentences set the tone. They frame what is to come afterwards. And they might decide whether a reader lays to the side the paper or actually continues reading.
So, how to start a paper or chapter? How to write the introduction?

Take the paper/chapter you are working on at the moment with its topic, material and argument.
How do you plan to start the paper?
What might be a good first sentence? And more generally, how do you introduce the topic?
Do you begin with the case? A general problem? A puzzle? A gap in the literature?
What do you give away in the beginning? What do you need to spare for later?
Have you thought about possible alternatives for this paper/chapter? What else might work?

And how have others solved these problems? How did the introductions of the articles you have read recently look like? Can you remember introductions that were in some way or another extraordinary? What made them particularly seductive, interesting, memorable?

update

Some of you might have wondered why there has been no walking seminar for the last couple of months. This was for two reasons. Annemarie can't walk. She has problems with her feet. And I decided that I should not walk, but write up my thesis instead.