Philosophy on Fieldwork

Case Studies in Anthropological Analysis

Nils Bubandt, Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Nils Bubandt, Thomas Schwarz Wentzer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781350108325
• eBook ISBN: 9781000182484
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Anthropology

How do we teach analysis in anthropology and other field-based sciences? How can we engage analytically and interrogatively with philosophical ideas and concepts in our fieldwork? And how can students learn to engage critical ideas from philosophy to better understand the worlds they study?

Philosophy on Fieldwork provides "show-don't-tell" answers to these questions. In twenty-six "master class" chapters, philosophy meets anthropological critique as leading anthropologists introduce the thinking of one foundational philosopher – from a variety of Western traditions and beyond – and apply this critically to an ethnographic case. Nils Bubandt, Thomas Schwarz Wentzer and the contributors to this volume reveal how the encounter between philosophy and fieldwork is fertile ground for analytical insight to emerge. Equally, the philosophical concepts employed are critically explored for their potential to be thought "otherwise" through their frictional encounter with the worlds in the field, allowing non-Western and non-elite life experience and ontologies to "speak back" to both anthropology and philosophy.

This is a unique and concrete guidebook to social analysis. It answers the critical need for a "how-to" textbook in fieldwork-based analysis as each chapter demonstrates how the ideas of a specific philosopher can be interrogatively applied to a concrete analytical case study. The straightforward pedagogy of Philosophy on Fieldwork makes this an accessible volume and a must-read for both students and seasoned fieldworkers interested in exploring the contentious middle ground between philosophy and anthropology.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Philosophy on fieldwork: analysis as bifocal wonder
• 2 Agamben and the Chinese forced-confession ritual
• 3 Arendt in the Lord’s resistance army and the ICC
• 4 Austin and pandemic performativity: from cholera to COVID-19
• 5 Bataille and the “mindfulness revolution”
• 6 Benjamin on the trail of the Armenian genocide
• 7 Butler and political (in)correctness
• 8 Césaire in Cape Town: the surreal ethnography of ocean pollution and social media fakery
• 9 Confucius in a self-help group
• 10 Deleuze attends an art festival on a small, North Atlantic Island
• 11 Derrida and the death of my mother in buli
• 12 Foucault foments fieldwork at the university
• 13 Gadamer in Black Los Angeles
• 14 Harman, a prophet, a church, a name: a portrait of four objects
• 15 Heidegger and freedom in the anti-drug war movement
• 16 Husserlian horizons: moods in yap
• 17 Ibn Rushd/Averroës in Mexico City’s Kiosco Morisco
• 18 Jabès amongst Songhay Sorcerers
• 19 James and radical empiricism in rural Indonesia
• 20 Kopenawa and the environmental sciences in the Amazon
• 21 Kristeva, anorexia and the hunger of abjection
• 22 Merleau-Ponty among the charismatics and peyotists
• 23 Peirce among the Muslim saints’ graves in Java
• 24 Sontag and the image machine in Iran
• 25 Stengers meets an Andean mountain that is not only such
• 26 Waldenfels among spirits and saints in Morocco
• 27 Wittgenstein among the Santeros: finding my feet with Tomás
• Index