[IMCnetwork] Briggs against methodological essentialism

[Colum Graham]

Hi there,

Briggs new short commentary in American Anthropologist on logics of instrumentalization and fragmentation in pandemic times may be of interest if not seen already:

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aman.13653


Casting graduate students as knowledge-producers-in-waiting who require updates of existing “tools”—even as research “subjects” are construed as amenable to remote forms of knowledge extraction—is not, in my view, what the demands of the day require. If I were to offer any advice, it would be that, to repurpose Walter Benjamin's (2003<https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aman.13653#aman13653-bib-0001>, 391) famous words, we might collectively engage a methodological rupture “as it flashes up in a moment of danger.” Rather than counseling “inexperienced researchers” in “properly learning the tools of our trade,” we might collectively join long-standing efforts to devise innovative knowledge-making practices for creating more healthy, just, equal, and environmentally sound worlds.

Colum


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