Comment

Comment by Neil Turner on August 22, 2011 at 8:59pm

Thanks John for your response...well said...tchau.

Comment by John McCreery on August 22, 2011 at 4:19am

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.

 

Comment by Neil Turner on August 21, 2011 at 8:39pm

Yes Jan, I was referring to the 1973 English publication.  I made the update to the blog.  Thank you...tchau.

Comment by Jan Begine on August 21, 2011 at 12:26pm

Foucault's The Birth of the Clinic was first published in French in 1963. The English translation was published in 1973. That's something you might want to change in your blogpost on Foucault and Geertz.

Comment by bashkim lajçi on November 24, 2010 at 11:54pm

It's happy to find many friends on this site. Thanks for meeting...! everyone.

Comment by John McCreery on December 24, 2009 at 9:44am

Here in Japan it is almost 5:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2009. Best wishes to all on whatever holidays you celebrate. A warm thanks for being here and participating in our conversations. May the new year be a peaceful, healthy and prosperous one.

Comment by John McCreery on December 18, 2009 at 3:30am

'teens negotiate permission spaces with authority and use them as currency for status and recognition among peers'

Interesting. Could we have a bit thicker description, please?

Comment by Arnab Sen on December 17, 2009 at 6:07pm

No perhaps not. It has to produce actionable insights but ones where the layers exist or suggest themselves. I mean nuanced insights like 'teens negotiate permission spaces with authority and use them as currency for status and recognition among peers' rather than 'teens today get leverage with parents / authority' or 'getting spaces for permission from authority is aspirational for teens today'. Or 'these spaces of permission are readily granted because the parents of millenials in India have seen too much change in too short a span to allow them to reinvent the cultural resources with which to interpret their childrens' world' rather than 'the generation gap has narrowed because parents allow their children greater freedom'. Something like that. Yes, obviously it's got be translatable into a positioning statement and a creative brief :-)

Comment by John McCreery on December 17, 2009 at 5:18pm

Of course, consumer work also starts with the rich, nuanced, etc. But as someone who has worked in advertising since 1983, I speak with some confidence when I say that if you fail to come up with actionable insights, the nuances go straight in the trash and the business to someone else. Are things different in India from the way they are in Japan?

Comment by Arnab Sen on December 17, 2009 at 5:12pm

Oops sorry correction - in line 2 for 'former' read 'latter'

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