Ethnographic Inquiry and Lived Experience: An Epistemological Critique 9781138478909, 9781351064026

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Ethnographic Inquiry and Lived Experience

Ho addresses two fundamental theoretical questions about how best to practice ethnographic inquiries to obtain qualitative, experience-­near, and shareable accounts of human living. The first question is regarding the epistemology of ethnography. Ho posits that writing is epistemologically prior to the researcher’s fieldwork experience in the production of ethnographic knowledge. This stance is developed using the theories of hermeneutics put forward by Paul Ricoeur and Hans-­Georg Gadamer who both consider that once a text is produced, its meaning is dissociated from the intention of the author. The second question is: what is the putative object that the ethnographer writes about? Ho argues that “lived experience” (Erlebnis) offers such an ethnographic object. Since the lived experience that an ethnographer experiences during fieldwork cannot be studied directly, further theorizations of lived experience are necessary. Ho underscores both the non-­discursivity and transcendence of lived experience in the lifeworld, and the way power is clandestinely imbued in everyday life in shaping subjectivity and practice. This theorization brings together Alfred Schutz’s lifeworld theory and Michel Foucault’s power/­ knowledge nexus. The result is a general theory of experience that is pertinent for ethnographic inquiries. By addressing these two fundamental questions and offering novel angles from which to answer them, this book offers refreshed epistemological guidelines for conducting ethnographic research for scientific reasoning. More importantly, this book also provides a crucial knowledge base for comprehending the current epistemological debates inherent in the production of ethnographic knowledge and furthering discussions in the field. Wing-­Chung Ho is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioural Studies at City University of Hong Kong.

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Ethnographic Inquiry and Lived Experience An Epistemological Critique

Wing-­Chung Ho

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Wing-­Chung Ho The right of Wing-­Chung Ho to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-47890-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-06402-6 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents



Preface Acknowledgments

1 Introduction

vii xii 1

Part I

Pinning down experience

21

2 Epistemological break

23

3 Ethnographic data and analysis

44

4 Engaging realism

67

Part II

Expounding experience

89

5 The non-­discursive and transcendence

91

Further illustration of Chapter 5: unveiling the taken-­forgrantedness of the spousal-­sexual world  105 6 The limit of the discursive

125

Further illustration of Chapter 6: a rejoinder to Gubrium, Holstein, and Weinberg  138 7 The experience–power interface

156

vi   Contents 8 Conclusion: anti anti-­ethnographic authority

169



177 198

Bibliography Index

Preface

My intellectual introduction to the idea of social theory began in 1996 when I embarked on my MPhil studies at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. However, it was not until I began my PhD at SOAS, University of London two years later that the idea to write a book about the epistemological foundation of ethnography emerged.1 During my initial years at SOAS, research students in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology could sense a strong postmodernist, post-structuralist atmosphere that placed heavy emphasis on the mutually constituting power/knowledge nexus. All research students, irrespective of their academic interest, were members of a media studies group, and obliged to participate in its activities. During research student seminars, comments such as: “It is not terribly clear to me how gender in your study is constructed” and “I am really interested to know more about how the idea of resistance has been constructed by your informants,” were commonly expressed by faculty members and students. The most memorable occasion, as I still vividly recall, was a department seminar on media studies conducted by Professor Mark Hobart. Throughout the seminar, Hobart repeatedly emphasized that “everything is mediated!” However, this was not the most interesting moment. This came near the end of the seminar when he announced that Ernesto Laclau would be coming to the department in two weeks’ time to give a seminar on the “empty signifier.” Hobart reiterated very seriously at least five times: “Don’t tell anyone that Ernesto Laclau is coming!” He explained that, a year previously, Laclau had delivered a seminar in the department and that prior to the seminar, students had spread the news around. Hobart complained that Laclau was so popular that people kept calling Hobart’s office – “over fifty calls a day” – to enquire about the details of the seminar. Therefore, he admonished us: “Remember! Don’t tell anyone that Ernesto Laclau is coming!” It sounds amusing in retrospect, after 20-odd years. However, the ecstasy of celebrating the agentic construction and mediation of discourse (including that of the “empty signifier”), and the near-­paranoid skepticism placed on the researcher’s authority (power) in interpreting the actor’s discourse (knowledge) had given me a big intellectual shock. I was intrigued partly because l was ignorant and naïve at that time, and partly because I was being self-­indulgent due to the fact that, in my MPhil thesis, I was pioneering a phenomenological

viii   Preface exploration into the non-­discursivity of the lifeworld. My MPhil study unashamedly claimed to have unraveled the structures of the spousal-­sexual world, which was presumably experienced by long-­time married couples as largely taken for granted, hence, essentially non-­discursive to them. Taking my difficulty sympathetically, my PhD supervisor took extra time and effort to persuade me that it was what the actor said and how the actor said it, that was important for me as an anthropologist, and that this was the main reason why ethnographic fieldwork was worthy of the effort. However, I was, and still am, too stubborn to be convinced. The intellectual shock I experienced at SOAS, as I see it now, originated in the time-­honored enigmatic relation of I-­and-thou, or oneself and the other, in the epistemology of human science research. The relation can be recast in terms of the following questions: what is the relation between the researcher and his/ her object (usually the actor) in the production of knowledge? Put more specifically in the context of anthropology: what is the relation between the researcher and the native in the production of ethnographic knowledge amenable to scientific reasoning? This question can be represented by a simple diagram, which I showed to students in the first lecture of my qualitative research method course (Figure P.1). The “eye” in the diagram represents the researcher; the “human figures,” the actors; and the “arrow,” the investigative gaze of the researcher. After drawing the diagram on the board, I asked my students: “Suppose that the researcher is to study the actors’ experience. Who do you think knows better the actors’ experience? The researcher? Or, the actors themselves?” The students unavoidably took one side or the other of the two epistemological poles. For those who said: “the actors,” they placed central importance in the actors’ knowledge in constructing reality. Stemming from this logic, the researcher becomes a power-­laden epistemological entity whose authority should be contained, shadowed, and at best, eliminated. For those

Figure P.1  The researcher studies his/her informants.

Preface   ix who said: “the researcher,” they effectively dodged the embarrassment faced by the researcher who could be accused of knowing nothing definite about the actors. However, such an epistemological stance is easily criticized for explaining away the actors’ experiences – which are supposedly contingent, diverse, and continuously constructed via discourse in a specific time and space – by pigeon-­ holing them into the researcher’s preset, theoretical straitjacket. After many years of posing the same question to students, I also notice other, and supposedly more nuanced, answers. For example, some who choose “the researcher knows better” place special emphasis on the word “better.” Their argument is that if one takes into consideration the ontology of the social world in such a way that the actors’ experience is accounted for by certain external forces even beyond the researcher’s perception, the researcher will at best be in a position to claim knowing “better” than the actors, but not necessarily be in a position to really “know” the actors. Other students attempt not to take sides and say: “both.” I then follow up by asking: “How ‘both?’ Is it forty-­nine percent the researcher, fifty-­one percent the actors, or vice versa?” For the few students who take up my challenge by saying: “Fifty-­fifty,” I then ask them how that delicate “fifty-­fifty” balance could possibly be struck in reality? Undoubtedly, in-­class discussions like these can go crazy without clear and distinct answers. In academia, a critical mass of scholars have raised concerns about the actor–researcher relationship. For example, Glowczewski et al. (2013) astutely re-­frames the problem in terms of “the tension between [the researcher] being a participant and an observer at the same time, on keeping an analytic distance while also being socially involved” (Glowczewski et al. 2013:114; see also Agar 1980). Earlier, Denzin (2001) had already suggested that ethnographers are bound to be confronted with two inevitable crises: the representational crisis and the legitimatization crisis. On the one hand, the representational crisis asserts that “ethnographers no longer directly capture the lived experience” of the actor, but only the representation of that experience. On the other hand, the legitimatization crisis questions ethnographers’ authority to ascertain the actor’s lived experience in terms of the researcher’s claims of “validity, reliability, and generalizability” (Denzin 2001:483). While the epistemological tension inherent in the actor–researcher relationship remains largely unsettled, most practicing anthropologists have been successful in diverting their readers’ attention from the epistemological aporia to the more interesting empirical details discovered during fieldwork (Herzfeld 2018; Reed & Alexander 2009). But if we randomly pick an anthropologist currently in our academic community, and press him/her to reveal the epistemological stance behind the ethnography s/he has produced, I am inclined to suspect that he/she would encounter a similar problem that my students faced with the conundrum of “who knows better.” He/she would probably realize that he/she is akin to a soldier being ordered to walk through a field full of landmines, and there is no safe path in sight which prevents him/her from being blown up. That being said, this book endeavors to embark on an epistemological excursion into ethnography, and arrive at a position – hopefully, a safe one –

x   Preface with a clearly delineated actor–researcher relationship. Juxtaposing this excursion is a proposal for a realism that can espouse the irreducibility of the Other inherent in both the intersubjectivity of the fieldwork experience and the subjectivity of the actor. As well as, at the same time, engage spirited scientific reasoning on the part of the researcher in terms of confirmation, validation, and innovation. In the academic community, there have been a number of insightful endeavors in recent years to restore epistemology in ethnography, with a goal to accommodate both the lived experience of the actor and the theorizing act of the researcher in the production of ethnographic knowledge. These endeavors, which have achieved success in different aspects of the subject matter, have resulted in a number of book-­length publications including Tavory and Timmermans’ Abductive Analysis, Martin’s The Explanation of Social Action, Reed’s Interpretation and Social Knowledge, and Olivier de Sardan’s Epistemology, Fieldwork, and Anthropology. While I share the general goals of these publications, this book possesses different conceptual and theoretical vantage points. In brief, I begin with two fundamental, yet largely unsettled, theoretical questions to those who practice ethnographic inquiries with an ultimate goal to obtain qualitative, experience-­near, and shareable accounts of human life. The first question is the epistemological priority between fieldwork and writing in the production of ethnographic knowledge. To this question, I pose a rather provocative answer as to argue that writing – the textualization of lived experience of the others in form of ethnography – is epistemologically prior to the fieldwork experience in the production of ethnographic knowledge. This epistemological stance is developed along the theories of hermeneutics put forward by Paul Ricoeur and Hans-­Georg Gadamer, who both consider that once a text – in the present case, ethnography – is produced, its meaning is dissociated from the intention of the author and that of the others that the author writes about. Based on the premise that writing possesses epistemological primacy over fieldwork in ethnographic inquiries, and that the resulting ethnography is a text, I then argue for a strain of realism – I call it engaging realism – which possesses the potential to resolve the immanent tension between relativism and science in contention over the epistemological status of ethnographic knowledge. The second fundamental question is: what is the putative object that the ethnographer writes about? This book suggests that “lived experience” (Erlebnis) offers such an ethnographic object. Since the lived experience that an ethnographer experiences during fieldwork cannot be studied directly, further theorizations of lived experience are necessary. But, unlike current theorizations, this endeavor underscores both the non-­discursivity and transcendence of lived experience in the lifeworld, and the way power is clandestinely imbued in everyday life in shaping subjectivity and practice. Such theorization essentially brings along an unconventional intellectual duo in conceptualizing experience, namely, Alfred Schutz’s lifeworld theory and Michel Foucault’s power/­ knowledge nexus. Therefore, the goal here is to propose a general theory of experience that is pertinent for ethnographic inquiries.

Preface   xi Ultimately, and hopefully, this book can lead the reader to appreciate a particular form of actor–researcher relationship that constitutes an epistemological prerequisite for the constitution of ethnographic data and analysis. and, at the same time, bolsters an epistemological foundation that sustains the major tenets of realism for scientific reasoning.

Note 1 Although my discussion in this book targets ethnography, the claims made at the epistemological foundation of ethnography can be extended to address that of qualitative research and naturalistic inquiry in general.

Acknowledgments

This book has taken more than two decades to write. Its intellectual origin harks back to 1996 when I met Mr. Ping-­Keung Lui, who became my MPhil. thesis supervisor, and then my intellectual master, mentor, and lifelong friend. On many occasions in the past few years we discussed the core ideas of this book; Mr. Lui’s critical comments on the book proposal and incisive insights on the theoretical puzzles I attempt to tackle have largely shaped the course of my writing. Equally important was his unwavering encouragement to me to finish this book. I have been struggling with an academia whose top priority is three goals, namely; ranking, ranking, and ranking, and whose most important performance indicators are grant numbers grant size, and research impact. Needless to say, to conduct pure theoretical research goes against all these goals and indicators. Therefore, to be honest, to write a single-­author theoretical manuscript in my small anthropology/­sociological circle, is a lonely, unrecognized, and perhaps career-­suicidal endeavor. Therefore, without the encouragement of Mr. Lui, I would have aborted this project long ago. My special thanks go to my friends Benjamin Li and Yufan Sun who were of great help in identifying and locating appropriate literature; my assistant Dongyi Xie and JW who were brilliant in constructing elegant figures from my messy hand drawings; and Dr. Jennifer Eagleton, who put a lot of effort in turning my prose into lively text. Although I am sure that they will not read this book, and will not understand it even if they are crazy enough to do so, I still would like to dedicate it to my wife Christine, my elder son Ronald, and my younger daughter Nicole. For their tolerance with an oft-­distracted husband/­dad, I would say a heartfelt “thank you” to my family. Last but not least, I am grateful to Routledge for its efficient review process, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. Certain parts of this book have relied on papers I previously published in Canadian Review of Sociology, Human Studies, Sociological Inquiry, Sociological Quarterly, and Acta Politica. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to the editors of these journals and the blind reviewers, whose inputs and comments on these papers have greatly improved the quality of this book.

Acknowledgments   xiii This book was supported by two project grants: (i) “Exploring the Cultural Framing of Place-­based Activism in Guangzhou after the 2010 ‘Support Cantonese Movement.’ ” Funded by UGC–General Research Fund (GRF ) (Project No.: 9042295) and (ii) “Unravelling Ambivalent Mobilities: The Social Memory, Bicultural Identity, and Livelihood Strategies of Young Dam Migrants in Guangdong.” Funded by UGC–General Research Fund (GRF ) (Project No.: 9042440). While I gratefully acknowledge all the help I have received throughout this project, I bear sole responsibility for any errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this book.

1 Introduction

Over the past three decades, anthropologists have been constantly suffering from what Clifford Geertz terms as “epistemological hypochondria” which concerns “how one can know that anything one says about other forms of life is as a matter of fact so” (Geertz 1988:71). This is mainly caused by the predicament faced by ethnographers who straddle between two highly different worlds: being “of the host people,” and being “of the scholarly discipline” (Wax & Wax 1980:1); or, one with “accessible ethnographies laden with stories,” and the other “refereed journal articles, dense with theoretical analyses” (Narayan 2001:317); or, the anthropologist’s “construals” of the world, and those of his/­ her research subjects (Khan 2014:237). Put in another way, there is one world in which ethnographers “must be faithful to the members of the society that is being studied,” and another world that “they must conform to the criteria of the scientific community of which the anthropologist is a member” (Karp & Kendall 2001:46). Other scholars describe such schizoid roles of ethnographers in terms of the distinction between an ethnographic and a personal self (Bruner 1993), the practical and discursive consciousness (Giddens 1979), or in Rosaldo’s terminology, the achievement of a “double vision” in the social analysis of narratives (1989:127–142). To understand this predicament from a broader theoretical perspective, Roy Bhaskar recasts it as the antinomy between positivism and hermeneutics, in which, “[f[or the positivist, science is outside society; for the hermeneuticist, society is outside science” (1998:123).1 Given this uneasy and delicate balance between the worlds of fieldwork and writing, most anthropologists endow epistemological primacy to the world of fieldwork. This is especially the case since Bronisław Malinowski pioneered the necessity to acquaint directly with the native’s culture “through a knowledge of the language and … prolonged residence among the people” (1969:504–510). Since then, fieldwork that allows ethnographers to immerse themselves in the culture of the researched group, share the time and space of the informants, understand them dialogically, and ultimately grasp “the native of point of view,” has been considered the epistemological foundation where, according to Salamone, “the epistemological validity and reliability of anthropology is built” (2001:285). Fieldwork becomes widely accepted as “the primordial reality and unequivocal basis of authentic understanding” of the other (Webster 1982:96);

2   Introduction “an intense, intersubjective engagement” with the informants (Clifford 1983:119); the “empirical scrutiny of social situation in vivo” (Holstein & Gubrium 2008:373; original emphasis); and “a foundation of thorough, profound and thick ethnography” (Islam 2014:331); even more, the “rite de passage” that transforms an ethnographer into “a true anthropologist” (Condominas 1973:2; original emphasis). One of the most famous quotes by Gupta and Fergusson (1997) points at the most distinctive difference between anthropology and many other disciplines, which “lies less in the topics studied (which, after all, overlap substantially) than in the distinctive method anthropologists employ, namely fieldwork based on participant observation” (1997:2). These characterizations of anthropological investigation converge to a single theoretical premise, as Salamone suggests: “The experience of the people themselves comes to have [epistemological] priority over the theoretical preoccupations of the observer” (2001:275). Anthropologists generally agree – explicitly or implicitly – with this viewpoint. When commenting on Goffman’s interactionist approach, Sharrock states that, the apparent implication … [in Goffman’s investigation is] that the actor’s standpoint will be incorrigible, will be epistemologically privileged, and that will preclude the possibility of a transcendent sociological standpoint … which is external to and transcendent of the actor’s standpoint. (Sharrock 1999:123; my emphasis) Johannes Fabian has been a model proponent for such a position as he cogently puts: “Writing as representation simply cannot be the fundamental issue. Presence is, because before there is representation there must be presence” (2001:23; original emphasis). Stemming from this logic, Fabian argues that writing ethnography not only constitutes “part of a system of intellectual and political oppression of the Other” (Fabian 1990:767), but also an epistemological risk subjecting ethnographic knowledge to be merely the “projection or delusion” of the researcher (2001:23). In extending this obscure formulation to Foucauldian post-­structuralism, Hammersley (2001:331–332) puts: “ethnographic accounts serve power … which is conceived as an impersonal, social force” (See also Silverman 1989). Stemming from this logic, the hermeneutic moment of writing in the production of ethnographic knowledge has been under severe epistemological critique since the mid-­1980s in such a way that, according to Goodall, “the realist ethnographer’s world was turned upside down” (2000:76). For example, Clifford posits that writing – the “translation of the research experience into a textual corpus” – effectively separates itself “from its discursive occasions of production” in order to establish the “ethnographic authority” that should be dispersed (1983:131). To Marcus and Cushman, writing – “the representation of fieldwork experience” being “written into text” – constitutes “the basic rhetoric of authority which legitimates whatever is said and claimed about ‘the other’ ” (1982:38–39). To Asad, writing – the “ethnographer’s translation/­representation

Introduction   3 of a particular culture” – is a “textual construct” that renders the ethnographer the “final,” “real authority” in “determining the subject’s meanings” (1986:162–163). To Geertz, writing turns ethnography into a rhetoric device for convincing readers that what is written is a result of the researcher’s ability to “actually penetrate[d] … another form of life, of having, one way or another, truly ‘been there’ ” (2001:299).2 Central to this question is the epistemological distanciation created by writing that severs the experiencing of the lived experience during fieldwork, and the textual representation of this experiencing.3 A key consequence is that writing becomes an epistemological barricade undermining the possibility of “a truly humanistic anthropology” in which “the distance between Self and Other” collapses (Geertz 2001:305). I argue that one’s preference to place epistemological priority to either fieldwork or writing depends on his/­her goal for producing ethnographic knowledge. If the knowledge produced is merely to fulfil the personal pursuit of understanding others, and possesses no interest in science, I do not object that the hermeneutic moment of fieldwork experience can be considered epistemologically more primordial than that of writing. This situation is akin to Gorski’s description of the endeavors that pursue “idiographic knowledge by hermeneutic means” such that “[t]hey do not attempt to explain what happens in the social world, only to render it comprehensible by reconstructing meaning and intention” (2013:661). An exemplar of such hermeneutic is realized by Geertz whose “endpoint of investigation,” according to Reed, “was not proving a theory, a hypothesis, or a conjecture true or false, but rather arriving at a comprehension of meaning in which the actions of others made some sort of sense” (Reed 2008:190).4 In Geertz’s own words, his anthropological investigation aimed mainly to establish emphatic engagement with the other in the field when he spoke of “a truly humanist anthropology” (Geertz 2001:305). But, if the ethnographer’s goal is to produce a corpus of shareable knowledge of lived experience that can be subject to communal discussion, and ultimately, contribute to the accumulation of the stock of scientific knowledge, I argue that writing is not only an epistemological prerequisite, but also epistemologically prior to fieldwork. One may raise a facile objection against my position since fieldwork is chronologically prior to writing. This easily construes a commonsensical impression that fieldwork experience is the epistemological sine qua non foundation of ethnographic knowledge, and that ethnography as an intellectual output is an impossibility without conducting fieldwork as input. This position seems impeccable before it is rigorously scrutinized by, at least, the following two dimensions. First, for human science to be possible, there must be an objective foundation, a communality, and it is writing that makes possible the meaningful discussions among members of the scientific community. The concept of communality here is taken from Dilthey’s pursuit for what he labels as “objective spirit.” According to Harrington, “Dilthey defines objective spirit as ‘the manifold forms in which the communality [i.e., inner thoughts and feelings capable of being shared by everyone] which exists between individuals has objectified itself

4   Introduction in the sensible world’ ” (Harrington 2001:69–70).5 In anthropology, or qualitative research in general, a process of objectification of the manifold discourses identified during fieldwork thus becomes an epistemological prerequisite. To Paul Ricoeur, this process is called “the fixation of discourse” (1982:91) – “a kind of objectification” (1973:150) – resulting in the production of a text. Phenomenologically informed scholar, Manen has rightly stated that “consciousness itself cannot be described directly,” and that a “person cannot reflect on lived experience while living through the experience” (1990:9–10). Hence, to Manen, “[h]uman science research requires a commitment to write … [which] is not just a supplementary activity” (1990:125–126).6 It means that the ethnographer must leave the fieldwork experience in vivo before she can reflect, and write on it. In fact, even one who does not subscribe to the phenomenological perspective as Manen does, has to agree that writing cannot be completed in the moment of experiencing, and can only be done retrospectively. According to Tavory (2016), an ethnographer “needs to spend a good amount of time in the field before she can figure out what is happening” (2016:54). He/­she simply has no time to write things down in appropriately theorized ways as “an interesting theoretical contribution can almost never be gleaned quickly” (2016:54). Therefore, no matter what epistemological status one would render ethnographic knowledge; ethnographic writing, as honestly put by Mosse, by nature, “breaks fieldwork relations, cuts the network, and erects boundaries,” such that ethnography is “necessarily anti-­social” (2006:935). Writing is thus an epistemological prerequisite in the production of ethnographic knowledge, as without a text, fieldwork experience can never be conducive to scientific reasoning. Second, the fieldwork experience itself does not require writing to exist, but the discussion of fieldwork experience does. One has to admit that fieldwork experience, despite its superficial epistemological primacy, is susceptible to myriad epistemological risks. For example, fieldwork does not take place in a power vacuum and it is susceptible to political influences (Karp & Kendall 2001:36; Asad 1973). Besides, the researcher may be given a distorted picture of the community under study by over-­emphasizing a small number of “key informants” (Stodulka 2015; Glowczewski et al. 2013). He/­she may be cheated by the informants who intentionally lie to him/­her, or hide something consciously or unconsciously from him/­her (Blum 2005); or be barred from what the informants genuinely think and feel due to the communication barrier, lack of rapport, and other predicaments faced in the field (Low 2006; Goldstein 2002; Molony & Hammett 2007). In front of these epistemological risks, readers are rather helpless, as it has long been recognized that the validity and reliability of ethnographic data is difficult to verify (Jarvie 1975; Salamone 2001; Talburt 2004; Olivier de Sardan 2015:12).7 Rather than directly verifying ethnographic data, what readers possibly can do is discuss, and at best, debate its validity and reliability. For example, Wax (2001) questions Malinowski’s participatory level during his fieldwork in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea; Van Beek (2015) raises the issue of

Introduction   5 the “non-­existence” of what Griaule presented as “real” on the same field sites in Mali; and Crapanzano (1986) casts doubts over whether many of the events that Geertz mentioned in his writings on the Balinese cockfight actually happened. All these discussions become possible and meaningful only with the fieldwork experience being textualized as ethnographies (or diaries) in the first place. Without writing, which is severed from the time and space of fieldwork, the experience of fieldwork cannot be discussed, nor even known by people other than the ethnographer. It may be true that fieldwork is chronologically prior to writing ethnography, but, it is only when the dialogic, intersubjective fieldwork experience is fixed and pinned down as a text that the validity and reliability of fieldwork experience can possibly be discussed. Without a text, fieldwork is but an unverifiable belief that serves as the epistemological alibi for the authenticity of what the ethnographer claims to exist. If there is anything backing this alibi, it would probably be what Olivier de Sardan proposes a morally-­loaded “ethnographic pact” suggesting that the ethnographer was actually “having been there” in the field (2015:14–17). What is argued here is that the lived experience in situ during fieldwork is disappearing in every moment it emerges. It can only be grasped retrospectively, reflectively, and re-­presented. Emphasized here is that fieldwork experience is neither the sole data source, nor the epistemological sine qua non of ethnographic knowledge, and that whether to write or not to write with rhetorical narrative strategies is not an option. On this point, Denzin’s paraphrasing of Booth (Booth 1983:116) is the most apposite: “[A]uthors cannot choose whether to use rhetorical narrative strategies, including fictional accounts, the only choice is which ones will be used” (2001:354). Hence, if to re-­present the others constitutes an epistemological crisis as many have portrayed it in the past three decades or so (e.g., Asad 1973; Said 1978; Tambiah 1985; Fabian 1983, 1991; Marcus & Fischer 1986; Clifford & Marcus 1986; Spivak 1988; Wolf 1992),8 what we can do is to find ways to identify it, and to contain its (negative) influences. What is utterly wrong-­headed, however, is to portray a rosy picture to students and practitioners of anthropology that the crisis can be resolved through adopting certain methodic means. A quick and simple reason is that an epistemological question cannot be answered by methodic solutions. I hold this position no matter whether these methodic solutions are being called experimental ethnographic accounts (Marcus & Cushman 1982); or multi-­sited ethnography (Marcus 1998); or a polyphonic writing genre that grapples with and enacts “heteroglossia” (Clifford 1983:136); or the advocacy of multi-­vocal, open-­ended, or even surrealist texts (Mulkay 1985; Woolgar 1988; Lather 1991). The necessity of epistemological distanciation and a detailed discussion of various false solutions to overcome it will be further discussed in Chapter 2. To argue that writing is the epistemological prerequisite and possesses epistemological primacy over fieldwork, a moot question needs to be immediately addressed: does it mean that whatever the ethnographer writes, for example, by making up quotes, fabricating events, and quoting fictitious sources (Agar 1990:80; Denzin 2001:355; Olivier de Sardan 2015:11), should be considered

6   Introduction “real?” Or, in writing ethnography, as in Feyerabend’s famous quote, “anything goes?” These questions cannot be answered without attending to a more fundamental one: considering ethnography as a text.

Ethnography as a text I am always puzzled by the fact that decades of exchanges between anthropology and hermeneutics have not resulted in any rigorous epistemological examination of ethnography as a text.9 To Ricoeur, a text is the fixation of discourse in writing, and the text, as well as its meaning, by nature “distances itself from everyday reality” (1982:94). Almost along the same logic,10 Gadamer suggests that the text opens up a horizon that makes possible the understanding of a text. To Gadamer, “the horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point” (1988:269). To Ricoeur, the meaning of a text is a “range [of possible ‘readers’]” (1973:103) which constitutes a “limited field of interpretation [of possible constructions]” (1973:108) that excludes the possibility of certain interpretations (Hekman 1984:343). Both Ricoeur and Gadamer deem that the meaning of a text which supposes to capture the dialogue (i.e., discourses in exchange) of two or more persons no longer belongs to the intentionality of the writer, nor that of the conversants (e.g., Ricoeur 1982:131–162; Gadamer 1976:123). Pertinent to the present discussion is Ricoeur’s suggestion that the “temporal distance” inherent in a text, and its hermeneutic significance applies not only to historical texts, which supposedly recorded and interpreted the immediate reciprocity between speaking and hearing that happened dozens or even hundreds of years ago, but also to textual records of human communications that took place minutes, hours, or days ago with the actors still alive; in other words, to ethnography as well.11 To seriously consider ethnography as a text in this sense inevitably unravels the hidden schizoid mentality of many anthropologists who, on the one hand, cannot deny a simple, indisputable fact that ethnography is actually a text of a kind,12 and on the other hand, subscribe to the epistemological premise that ethnography should be a presentation (not re-­presentation) of fieldwork experience through which the researcher is coeval with others. A quintessential example can be seen in Alan Bryman’s introductory chapter of his four-­volume edited book series entitled Ethnography published by Sage (2001). After quoting several authoritative definitions of ethnography, Bryman distils five key common features of ethnography: (i) Ethnographers immerse themselves in a society; (ii)  to collect descriptive data via fieldwork; (iii) concerning the culture of its  members; (iv) from the perspective of the meanings members of that society attach to their social world; and (v) render the collected data intelligible and significant to fellow academics and other readers (2001:x). While these five features sound commonsensical to anthropologists nowadays, my foregoing discussions should suffice to guide one to spot the fundamental antinomy between Bryman’s feature (i) (i.e., intersubjective fieldwork) and his feature

Introduction   7 (v) (i.e., writing ethnography)13 in terms of the differential time and space of its existence, and differential references of meaning. Rather than seriously considering ethnography as a text, the intellectual exchanges between hermeneutics and anthropology seem to have prompted a critical mass of ethnographers to focus mainly on the rhetorical dimension of the text. These anthropologists rightly recognize that ethnography is essentially a linguistic project.14 However, emphasis is mistakenly placed merely on the textual strategies adopted by ethnographers without attending to the text’s ontological intransitive dimension (e.g., Marcus & Cushman 1982; Atkinson 1990; Clifford & Marcus 1986; Marcus & Fischer 1986; Clifford 1988; Maanen 1988).15 To consider “ethnographies as texts” and disregard “ethnography as a text” is committing an epistemic fallacy, or what Bhaskar calls it, a “linguistic fallacy.”16 Resulting from this fallacy is that ethnographic writing is depicted as but a mechanism to convince readers of the ethnographic authority, which unavoidably evolves into the crisis of representation (Hammersley 1997). To take ethnography as a text seriously means that neither the researcher, nor the reader, nor the collaboration between the two has a privileged role in construing the text’s meaning. Rather, meaning is determined and re-­ determined each time the text is interpreted. So, does it mean that readers can interpret a text as they please, which harks back to the moot question I posed earlier of does “anything go?” My answer is negative. This is because both the horizons of the text and that of the reader are finite in particular contexts, though in principle, open. In this book, I hold that both horizons, and by association the interpretations of ethnographic text, are constrained by the nature of ethnographic data and ethnographic analysis.

Ethnographic data and analysis It is unfortunate that anthropologists seldom define ethnographic data in a way as to clearly discern its epistemological character. To many, ethnographic data generally refers to what the native thinks so as to either avoid dealing with the involvement of the researcher in shaping “the native point of view” a la Malinowski, or defame the researcher’s epistemological involvement as an “ethnographic authority” a la Clifford. To Bourdieu and his followers (e.g., Wacquant), ethnographic data should be a result of conscious, theoretically-­ informed efforts of construction (Bourdieu et al. 1991), and the role of the researcher be objectivated (Bourdieu 2003). While Bourdieu’s endeavor to consider ethnography as science is deeply admirable, his version of scientific realism that forsakes the intersubjectivity of the fieldwork experience, is usually criticized as paying insufficient attention to the irreducibility of human agency (e.g., Sewell 1992; Bohman 1997). Others who are concerned with the epistemological status of ethnographic data usually portray it in terms of an intricate struggle between the researcher and the actor. For instance, Nicholas Thomas writes:

8   Introduction The anthropologist may embrace a “native point of view” at one moment but will generally turn a cold shoulder towards it at another. That is perhaps the wrong way to put it, because it could only be dishonest for scholars to pretend that they were without intellectual baggage, that where they – that is we – come from does not compel us, in most instances, to see questions in ways that cannot be reconciled with local constructions. Or, if we do so, we subsume our voices to a local, extra-­scholarly debate, and drift out of a professional anthropological discourse. (Thomas 1997:338) No matter how lively the epistemological struggles between the researcher and the actor have been outlined above, Thomas’ effort still fails to offer a positive definition of ethnographic data that can possibly guide ethnographers to deal with Malinowski’s version of naïve realism, Clifford’s version of critical constructionism, and Bourdieu’s version of scientific realism. This book, especially that of Part I, aims to fill this theoretical lacuna. Borrowing insights from Schutz’s social phenomenology and Peirce’s pragmatism, recently developed by Tavory and Timmermans (2014), I suggest that the ethnographic data be defined as an actor’s explanation in researcher’s explanation. Underscored in this formulation is not only that ethnographic data is epistemologically owned by neither the actor, nor the researcher alone, but also that it is constituted in a way that the actor’s explanation is an irreducible given in the researcher’s explanation. It is the very irreducibility of the actor’s explanation that always proxies, albeit not directly infers, the actor’s own experience. More specifically, this formulation of ethnographic data requires one to account for a three-­fold process: (i) the intersubjectivity that both the actor and the researcher mutually experience during fieldwork; (ii) the reflective gazes by both parties of this intersubjectivity within the fieldwork period; and (iii) the way the “experiences” in (i) and (ii) enter the researcher’s reflective gaze (in moments when flow of intersubjective experience stops) that results in the writing of ethnographic texts. Therefore, to consider writing as epistemologically primordial to fieldwork, and to seriously consider ethnography as a text by no means suggests that fieldwork is irrelevant.17 Fieldwork is always an indispensable data source for the production of modern ethnography. What needs to be addressed – as will be detailed in Chapter 3 – is how ethnographic data accommodates the intersubjective fieldwork experience (that involves both the researcher and the actor), the actor’s subjectivity (the actor’s explanation), and the researcher’s perspectivizing subjectivity18 through a series of iterative processes leading to the textualization of the ethnography (the researcher’s explanation). Apart from the nature of ethnographic data, another constraint on the interpretation of ethnographic text is constituted by the nature of ethnographic analysis; or, put in less technical terms, the use of theory on data. Reed deems that it is “the responsibility [and the need] of the social researcher” to “propose a deeper or broader comprehension of [what is underneath the facts,]” which literally means to “reach for our theories” (2011:17). Inspired by Peirce’s

Introduction   9 pragmatism, Tavory and Timmermans (2014) further suggest that by what Reed means as a “deeper,” and “broader comprehension of ” the facts via theories, must lead to “creativity” and “discovery” that are inherent in the very act of theorization, through the use of three pragmatic logical operations, namely: abduction, deduction, and abduction (2014:6). As mentioned before, the ethnographer has no option but to write. To write is by nature a perspectivization – the use of theory – of a particular phenomenon;19 hence, ethnographic analysis itself is not only a generalization20 and approximation21 of the very phenomenon which is independent of the researcher, but also a creativity and discovery in  achieving a theory–data fit. In connection with the forgoing definition of ethnographic data, ethnographic analysis is defined as the researcher’s explanation of an actor’s explanation. Hence, the researcher’s explicitly theorized analysis based on a specific set of ethnographic data can be formulated in the following way: the researcher’s explanation of the actor’s explanation (i.e., ethnographic analysis) based on the actor’s explanation in the researcher’s explanation (i.e., ethnographic data). In conceptualizing ethnographic analysis along this line, the interpretive potential of the resulting ethnographic text is effectively constrained at two levels. First, the requirement of a theory–data fit requires that theory adapts to the dictates of empirical evidence (ethnographic data) (cf. Layder 1993:33). On this point, an apposite reminder by Fish is worth mentioning: “The mistake is to think of interpretation [of empirical data] as an activity in need of constraints, when in fact interpretation is a structure of constraints” (1980:356; cited in Watson 1991:92n7). Second, when a theory–data fit is achieved and textualized in ethnography, it becomes a case, or a reference. Rather than “anything goes,” the resulting ethnography will be subject to scrutiny and debate in face of other existing theory–data pairs at the level of – what Tavory and Timmermans (2014) call (once again drawing upon Peirce’s pragmatism)the community of inquiry. To them, A community of inquiry, as Peirce called it, provides both the conditions for the emergence of theory, and the criteria through which we assess whether we should believe that the relation between theory and observations is warranted. (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:104) The potential engagement of an ethnographic analysis with other theory–data pairs in the form of debate, necessarily bolsters the scientificity of ethnography, such that ethnographic knowledge can expand through the endless validation process. The key ideas of this book introduced so far should suffice to demonstrate that the ethnographer – if he/­she is interested in producing human knowledge for scientific reasoning – has to engage in struggles in order to write an ethnography that restrains, rather than encourages, the divergence of interpretations.22 Owing to the constraints imposed by ethnographic data and analysis, as well as

10   Introduction by the researcher’s engagement in the struggle to delimit the range of interpretations of his/­her text, the ethnographer – who explicitly acknowledges the epistemological distanciation like I do – is by no means, as Hastrup (1990) suggests, “[l]ike a prophet [who] … offers another language, another space, another time to reality [and] … are free to invest the ethnographic present in many possible futures” (1990:56–57). In other words, even when one believes that “culture was what happened at the moment the writing was performed” (Goodall 2000:75; original emphasis), the writer cannot be as creative as to write that, for example, Captain Cook was not killed by the islanders, but by, for example, food poisoning.23 The nature of ethnographic data and the process through which ethnographic data comes to be perspectivized and textualized first and foremost as “fieldnotes,” and eventually as ethnography whose validity is debatable among the members of the scientific community will be examined in Chapter 3. In sum, the key arguments I have introduced are: (i) the return to fieldwork experience in order to rescue the coevality and co-­spatiality of lived experience is an impossibility; (ii) the emphasis on the textual strategies of ethnographic texts that ignores the intransitive ontological dimension of the linguistic in understanding the social world is a fallacy; and (iii) based on the irreducibility of the actor’s explanation in the researcher’s explanation (i.e., ethnographic data), and the limited horizon of the ethnographic text (whose interpretive potential is constrained by ethnographic analysis), the researcher has to engage in a conscious struggle against writing an ethnographic account which allows maximal range of interpretations.24

Engaging realism The epistemological status of ethnographic knowledge and analysis portrayed insofar points to a realism with specific objectifying attitudes of the researcher. Harrington has succinctly discerned two objectifying attitudes highly pertinent here: first, to objectify means to “ ‘give objective form to,’ in the sense of ‘materially embody’ or ‘externalise’ … such as texts” (2001:13);25 and, second, to objectify means to “regard [a phenomenon] as an object” that “must involve abstraction from how the item would normally be encountered in ordinary practical experience through suspension of normative value-­judgements and cultural preconceptions” (2001:13).26 In the context of anthropology, the first objectifying attitude refers to a general etic perspective, whereas the second, a more specific one that is concerned with the explicit theorization of a particular phenomenon. One should note that objectification in these two senses does not mean objectivism of Levi-­Strauss which asserts a priori superiority of the knowledge of ethnographers over that of ordinary actors.27 Rather, it opens up a communal space where ethnographers can (re-)contextualize their fieldwork experience in terms of an explicit theoretical frame.28 While fieldwork experience is by nature unverifiable, its contextualization – i.e., theorization based on existing human

Introduction   11 scientific traditions – constitutes the foundation in which the veracity of fieldwork experience can be discussed; either disputed, or confirmed, by other members of the scientific community. It is along this line that the others whom the ethnographer encounters during fieldwork are not fictitious dummies; otherwise, the writing cannot stand the scrutiny of other members of particular human scientific disciplines. Therefore, the nature of ethnographic data apart, it is the use of theory such that it allows the possibility of scientific examination (and re-­examination) that serves to secure the human-­ness of ethnographic writing, rather than the “having been there-­ness” of fieldwork. This strain of realism, as I shall argue in Chapter 4, brings forward a possible solution to tackle the chronic epistemological dilemma featuring the tension between relativism and science in ethnographic inquiries. Mertz demonstrates this dilemma vividly in pursuing what he calls “scientific anthropology,” he writes: While relativism is necessary to the attainment of scientific objectivity, it also forbids the law-­making that a scientific anthropology requires.… Without relativism, a scientific anthropology cannot exist; yet neither can it exist with relativism. (Mertz 1987:30) To outline my line of thinking here, I shall take Geertz’s famous distinction between “writers” and “authors” as my point of vantage.29 In examining the work of Foucault, Geertz astutely extracts two distinctive epistemic levels – the level of “writers” and that of “authors” – inherent in anthropological writing. While the “writers” are “producers of particular texts,” “authors” create “a theory, tradition, or discipline in which other books and authors will in turn find a place” (1988:17–18). Rather than only producers of texts or books, “authors” are also “founders of discursivity” (1988:17–18). In technical terms, Geertz states: “For a writer, ‘to write’ is a transitive verb – he writes something” (1988:18–19; original emphasis); as to an author, “ ‘to write’ is an intransitive verb – he is a man who radically absorbs the world’s why in a how to write” (1988:19; original emphasis). Hence, it is the “authors” who “set the terms of discourse in which others [i.e., the “writers”] thereafter move” (1988:19). For the purposes of this book, the epistemic level of “writers” can be considered as the level of theory–data fit, i.e., the production of a specific ethnographic text based on a specific theoretical framing; whereas the level of the “authors” points to the level of theoretical discursivity where different theory–data pairs can be engaged in debates of validation at the level of community of inquiry. Geertz has portrayed a rigid boundary between a “writer” and an “author,” as only a handful of big names in anthropology, such as Levi-­Strauss, Evans-­ Prichard, Malinowski, and Benedict are “authors.” Here, I counter-­propose a more fluid boundary between the two epistemic levels. My proposal is that at the level of theory–data fit, researchers are free to perspectivize, and to contextualize their fieldwork experiences with an explicit theoretical frame. It is how

12   Introduction relativism in anthropology can be realized, as ethnographers are able to formulate different views on the same phenomenon.30 The use of theory at the level of writing is therefore by no means “scientific” as defined by conjectures and refutations (Popper 1963). Rather, it operates on an inductive logic similar to what grounded theory practitioners do, as to connect rather than to oppose fieldwork and theory (Olivier de Sardan 2015:11). The operation of deductive logic, however, comes into play after an ethnographic text is completed (i.e., published) and becomes a reference. It is when an ethnographic text is turned into a reference that it can be scrutinized deductively at the level of community of inquiry.

Lived experience as an ethnographic object After the epistemological status of writing in the production process of ethnographic knowledge is rigorously evaluated, the next fundamental question that this book focuses on is writing about what; or to be exact, the object that the ethnographic data endeavors to proxy, and the ethnographer wants ultimately to explain. My proposal here is to consider “lived experience” (Erlebnis) as such a putative ethnographic object. In fact, a number of scholars have already pinpointed the fundamental nature of experience in understanding the meaning of human life. For example, Dilthey considers lived experience as the basic unit of consciousness such that it is “real” and there is nothing more ultimate behind it (Makkreel 1992:8). To Gadamer, lived experience “means something unforgettable and irreplaceable, something whose meaning cannot be exhausted by conceptual determinations” nor by “its being the ultimate datum and basis of all knowledge” (1988:67). Drawing upon Gadamer and also Ricoeur and Taylor, Desjarlais states that experience is the foundation of human agency, and that the import of experience is inexhaustible as it “carries a wealth of meanings that can never be conclusively interpreted” (1994:888). The above being said, lived experience as a form of inner life, however, cannot be studied directly. It is only when lived experience is reflected upon and exteriorized can it enter the epistemological gaze of anthropologists. Here, the conceptual distinction emphasized by Victor Turner, who follows Dilthey (1976:210), between “mere experience” and “an experience” becomes pivotal (Turner 1986). While experiencing is a constant temporal flow from the standpoint of an individual and therefore cannot be directly studied, an experience is “the intersubjective articulation of experience” and therefore can be studied (Bruner 1986:6).31 Supposedly, Turner’s distinction refers to two different concepts of experience in Germany: Erlebnis and Erfahrung. According to Harrington, Erlebnis is the “inner” experience of life ongoing over the flow of time, whereas Erfahrung is the “outer” experience of the world as “represented to consciousness under analytical concepts and categories in abstraction from immediate sensations” (2001:48). Given that the concept of lived experience is so fundamental in anthropology,32 scholars often lament that the concept is one of the “most problematic”

Introduction   13 (Desjarlais 1994:886) and “largely unexamined” (Throop 2003:220) concepts in the critical literature of anthropology. The importance of theories of experience has also been downplayed, and the insights of the concept produced in understanding human subjectivity “curiously has not been a major source of recent anthropological theory or research” (Kleinman & Fitz-­Henry 2007:52). To fill this gap, my vantage point is to understand lived experience in terms of Alfred Schutz’s theory of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt) which refers to “the unquestioned but always questionable background within which inquiry starts and within which it can be carried out” (Schutz 1982:57, 326–327).33 Thus, Part II of this book will focus on two important dimensions of experience that an ethnographer is obliged to articulate, exteriorize, and write about in ethnography. The first dimension involves two little-­discussed interrelated features about the nature of the lifeworld: that the experience of transcendence is an essential component of human actions, and that lived experience is founded on the non-­discursivity of the lifeworld, i.e., the pre-­predicative background expectancies from which the discursive arises. Particular attention will be drawn to the latter feature as there has been a trend in anthropology in particular, and social sciences in general, that the discursive comes to possess a fundamental role in constituting reality (e.g., Gubrium & Holstein 1990; Tyler 1986; Laclau & Mouffe 1985) and unraveling actors’ motives (e.g., Bruce & Wallis 1983; Orbuch 1997). A detailed explication of the non-­discursivity of the lived experience, and a critique of the overemphasis on the reality-­constitutive capacity of the discursive will be discussed in Chapter 5 and 6 respectively. The second dimension is how power is imbued in the lived experience. Here, I shall connect Schutz’s theory of the world of everyday life with Foucault’s theoretical nexus of power/­knowledge, and ultimately, Foucault’s concept of governmentality. In describing governmentality, Foucault explains: “What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us a force that says no; it also traverses and produces things, it induces pleasures, forms of knowledge, produces discourse” (2002:120). Owing to its non-­discursivity and taken-­for-grantedness, governmentality “applies itself to the immediate everyday life, categorizing individuals and communities, imposing ‘regimes of truth’ on them” (2002:331; my emphasis). The significance of governmentality in Foucault’s work thus essentially lies in its mediating function between power and subjectivity, through which the techniques of rules are imbued in the fabric of everyday life. Despite many Foucauldian scholars who have discussed the relation between power and the experience in everyday life (to name just a few: Gunn 2006; Cleaver 2007; Joyce 2003; Neal 2006; Kesby 2005; Kohrman 2005; Nadesan 2008; Shoshana 2011), I consider that the very relation remains largely under-­ theorized. My dissatisfaction is based on two issues. First, these studies do not offer any definition of the notion of everyday life, and only consider the term as self-­evident. Second, they do not distinguish conceptually the domain of everyday life that supposedly exhibits mundaneness and habitual routine from other distinctive domains, which involve practical-­evaluative and projective

14   Introduction agency that may improvise the status quo.34 Central to my discussion in Chapter 7 is to argue how power as a form of impersonal domination intervenes in the experience of everyday life, and shapes the actor’s meaning in particular ways. Such an endeavor is not only to address the criticism of Schutz’s portrayal of everyday life as an anathema to power and domination (e.g., Perinbanayagam 1975; Lengermann & Niebrugge 1995; Endress 2005), but also to supplement the existing discussions on the relation between power and everyday life. In short, to write about the experience of the other, an ethnographer must be committed to contextualizing not only what is explicitly said by the actors during fieldwork, but also what things the actors have taken for granted in what Manen terms an “epistemological silence,”35 and why they take them for granted in relation to the clandestine nature of power in shaping subjectivity and practice. Therefore, this book also carries the goal of outlining a general theory of experience pertinent to ethnographers, and suggests to them what to look at during fieldwork, and what to write about afterwards.

Structure of the book Part I of this book is called “Pinning down experience,” which consists of three chapters. Chapter 2: Epistemological break, is premised on the work of Alfred Schutz, which disconnects two realms: the “world of consociates” where social reality is directly experienced face-­to-face in the vivid present, and the “world of contemporaries” where the other is interpreted in terms of “types.” I argue that the break is a suggestive vehicle for conducting a meta-­exposition of major claims, which problematize the traditional authority of ethnography. In the light of the break, the postmodernist attempts to attain or retain the here-­and-now understanding of subjective meaning, or “voice,” in ethnographies are but epistemological impossibilities. This chapter concludes that the postmodernist privileging of a “naïve ethnography” which emphasizes “experiential,” “interpretive,” “dialogical,” and “polyphonic” processes is neither able to deliver on its promise at the methodic level, nor amendable to Schutz’s epistemological break at the theoretical level. Chapter 3: Ethnographic data and analysis, argues that ethnography should be considered seriously as a text. This book will argue that the interpretive potential of an ethnography is epistemologically constrained by the nature of ethnographic data and ethnographic analysis. At the end, I suggest that ethnographic knowledge that is premised on the epistemological primacy placed on writing, and the ethnography as a text implies a new strain of realism: engaging realism. Central to the discussion is to propose that ethnographic knowledge is operated at two epistemic levels: the level of theory–data fit and the community of inquiry. Chapter 4: Engaging realism, discerns its key features in comparison with other strains of realisms, including critical realism and scientific realism. This chapter re-­ affirms what is “real” in engaging realism that the ethnographer faces. Then, three key features of engaging realism are discussed, namely, (i) “ontological realism answerable to epistemological exploration”; (ii) “epistemic relativism guided by

Introduction   15 judgmental rationality”; and (iii) “the growth of ethnographic knowledge for scientific reasoning.” The chapter ends with a discussion of the debate between Sahlins and Obeyesekere over the death of Captain Cook. This acts as an exemplar of how engaging realism can possibly operate in such a way that two theory–data pairs are scrutinized and debated among members of the scientific community, and lead to validation, and more importantly, the growth of scientific knowledge. Part II is called “Expounding Experience” which consists of three chapters focusing on the theoretical exposition of experience in ethnographic inquiries. Chapter 5: The non-­discursive and transcendence, points to two little-­discussed interrelated features – among anthropologists – about the nature of the lifeworld: that the experience of transcendence is an essential component of human actions, and that lived experience is founded on the non-­discursivity of the lifeworld. I examine the intellectual route of Schutz who developed his mundane lifeworld theory from appropriating Edmund Husserl’s notions of appresentation and apperception. Harold Garfinkel later extended Schutz’s concept of lifeworld to the empirical investigations of constitutive social orders. Chapter 5 is further illustrated through an empirical study based on the premise that intersubjective experience is largely non-­discursive. In this sub-­ chapter: Unveiling the taken-­for-grantedness of the spousal-­sexual world, two novel research techniques – the surface interview and answer-­aire – are designed to delve into the taken-­for-grantedness of the lifeworld, using the spousal-­sexual world as a case in point. This study pioneers a way that the structures of the horizon, that lie within the unsaid region of the lifeworld, become sociologically and scientifically examinable. Chapter 6: The limit of the discursive, criticizes the postmodernist approach in anthropology, which considers the actor’s use of discourse rather than external sociocultural forces as primordial in constituting reality. Using the Gubrium– Holstein approach to understanding family experience as an exemplar, this chapter attempts to outline a critique of discursive constructionism which over-­ emphasizes the discourse of actors as artfully producing reality as featured in the notions of “doing things with words” and “talking reality into being.” The critique is mainly based on the works of Schutz and Garfinkel, of which Gubrium and Holstein claim their own model shares “abiding concern,” and is further supplemented by the work of Bourdieu. This chapter will be further illustrated by my reply to Gubrium and Holstein (2012) and Weinberg (2012) who wrote to discuss an early version of the chapter I published in Sociological Quarterly; Ho (2012). This reply will endeavor to acknowledge some of their claims and reaffirm my position on the problems of discursive constructionism. Chapter 7: The experience–power interface, contends that while Schutz’s phenomenological thesis of intersubjective experience is generally laudable, the lack of a dimension of power in his conceptualization has constituted a moot question that seriously lowers its theoretical utility in examining everyday life in ethnographic inquiries. This chapter argues that Schutz has already laid down in his own work a possible route to address this moot question. Central to the

16   Introduction discussion is to extend Schutz’s concept of relevance structures to Foucault’s theoretical nexus of power/­knowledge, and eventually to governmentality, in order to unravel the political side experience. The discussion suggests that the notion of impersonal domination be a pivotal link to empirically understand the exercise of power in the lived experience. The concluding chapter: Anti anti-­ethnographic authority, addresses the potential criticism of being “top-­down” in my formulation of the epistemological foundation of ethnographic inquiries. It will be argued that my discussion has unpacked some of the key arguments against the ethnographic authority, and indicates certain steps the ethnographer has to go through to produce ethnographic knowledge for scientific reasoning.

Notes   1 Bhaskar writes: Positivism, grounded in the epistemological datum of the experience of the social scientific subject, produces some concept of the generality of its object, but at the price of rendering social activity quite unlike science; while hermeneutics, grounded in the ontological notion of the conceptuality of the object of social scientific understanding, manages partially to reconstitute the experience of subjects in society, but at the price of rendering social activity insusceptible to science.” (Bhaskar 1998:123)   2 Other scholars further argue along this line that writing ethnography is by nature “an assertion of power, a claim to ‘authority’ that … becomes an ‘authorization’ ” (Fox 1991:6); or even further that it is an ideological vehicle propagating the “spoken and unspoken rules of Western intellectual traditions” (Hastrup 1990:55).   3 As will be shown in Chapter 2, my view here follows closely the distinction between “mere experience” and “an experience” made by Victor Turner.   4 Reed continues by stating that Geertz’s line of thinking “necessarily transform, as opposed to just falsify or verifying, the context of investigation” (2008:190). It is worth mentioning that Reed himself, despite having avowed differences with Geertz in the understanding/­explanation relation, is in line with Geertz on bypassing the importance of scientificity of anthropological knowledge. The bio-­sketch at the end of Reed’s article reads: “His work in epistemology, social theory and the philosophy of social science is directed towards showing how interpretive sociology can be rigorous and explanatory without being scientific” (Reed 2008:200).   5 Dilthey’s text is from Dilthey (1976:256).   6 Another explicit claim by Maanen that is worth quoting here is that “[e]thnography is the result of fieldwork, but it is the written report that must represent the culture, not the fieldwork itself ” (1988:4).   7 Olivier de Sardan writes further that: “it is a lot easier to check the historian’s sources, to refute the questions posed by a survey institute, or to debate its sampling procedures” (2015:12). Therefore, to him, readers of ethnography “are more or less obliged to resort to the unhealthy expedient of taking the anthropologist at his word” (2015:12). Given that the principle of confidentiality of the identity of the informants is usually upheld in the production of ethnography, researchers, unlike journalists who interview celebrity figures, are unlikely to reveal his/­her audio or video records that capture the fieldwork process to support what he/­she writes even if these records exist.   8 Along a similar vein, Denzin states in a symposium that “[c]onfronting ethnography’s crisis of representation is no longer an option” (Flaherty et al. 2002:482).

Introduction   17   9 The earliest in-­depth exchange between hermeneutics and anthropology can trace back to Rabinow and Sullivan (1979). See also a review essay by Agar (1980). 10 Gadamer writes: “It is true that what a thing has to say, its intrinsic content, first appears only after it is divorced from the fleeting circumstances of its actuality” (1976:123). 11 Ricoeur writes: As a text, history must not just be understood, but also interpreted. Between us and our predecessors, and even, for a large part, between our contemporaries and ourselves, understanding is mediated by something like a text. And this mediation gives temporal distance its true significance. The question is not the measurable gap that separates us from the past. This gap is rather the place of and the occasion for a mediation that may be characterized as textual or quasi-­textual in nature. The size of this gap is so inessential that the same sort of mediation may take place between us and our contemporaries. This is attested to by the role played in human communication by the reading of written messages – letters, magazines, media of every sort- whose authors are still alive. (Ricoeur 1976:692–693; my emphases) 12 It is the case even if we expand the form of ethnography from its conventional written forms to more contemporary visual forms of photography, video, and film (e.g., Stoller 1994). 13 Bryman particularly points out that feature v) refers to writing; he writes: “This last point means that the results must be written and indeed it is significant in this context that the term ‘ethnography’ is frequently employed to refer to the written account that is the product of ethnographic research” (2001:x; original emphasis). 14 For example, Maanen writes: “The object of human science research is essentially a linguistic project: to make some aspect of our lived world, of our lived experience, reflectively understandable and intelligible” (1988:125–126). 15 For a signature phrase in hermeneutics that characterizes the ontological intransitive dimension of the linguistic nature of a text, one can refer to Martin Heidegger’s cryptic phrase: “Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells” (Heidegger 1978:217). 16 Bhaskar writes: “The rationalization of the denial of ontology, and the collapse of an intransitive dimension, in what I have called the epistemic fallacy, thus takes on a linguistic form, in what could be called the linguistic fallacy” (1998:133; original emphasis). 17 Despite agreeing strongly with Bourdieu’s concerns on the scientificity of social science research to which ethnography belongs, I disagree with his dismissive tone on the concept of “participant observation” characterized by his infamous description as a “necessarily fictitious immersion in a foreign milieu” (Bourdieu 2003:282). 18 For the term “perspectivizing,” I borrow it from Jacques Maquet who lays bare the “partiality,” hence, the “perspectivist” character of anthropology in Africa. He writes: A perspectivist knowledge is not as such non-­objective: it is partial. It reflects an external reality but only an aspect of it, the one visible from the particular spot, social and individual, where the anthropologist was placed. Non-­objectivity creeps in when the partial aspect is considered as the global one. (Maquet 1964:54; cited in Narayan 2001:315) 19 This line of inquiry is inspired by the phenomenological perspective that, according to Maanen, “all description is ultimately interpretation.” To support his argument, Maanen quotes Heidegger (1962:37) who states: “The meaning of phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation … The phenomenology … is a hermeneutic in the primordial signification of this word, where it designates this business of interpreting” (Maanen 1988:25).

18   Introduction 20 For example, Skultans states: “Once experience is verbalized it moves beyond the particular and comes to be conveyed through more general categories. When this happens experience moves from a largely private to a more public domain” (2003:157). 21 Olivier de Sardan suggests that ethnography is a “rigorous approximation” of another culture (2015:1). 22 There are in essence two types of struggles, which lead to two types of strategies to tackle them. The first is the struggle against “commonsense” that calls for the strategy of performing a “break” with the pre-­notions, which is essentially to identify the theory of knowledge of the social to the phenomena. In The Craft of Sociology, Bourdieu et al. (1991), describes this epistemological “break” as the “sociologist’s struggle.” To them, the sociologist’s “familiarity with his social universe is the epistemological obstacle par excellence” (1991:13; original emphasis). The authors emphasize that the most powerful technique for performing “breaks” is to identify clearly and distinctly “a theory of the knowledge of the social” on which human action in the analysis is based (1991:15). The second is the struggle for reflexivity, which calls for the strategy of “participant objectivation.” To Bourdieu, “participant objectivation” refers to “the objectivation of the subject of objectivation, of the analyzing subject – in short, of the researcher herself ” (2003:282; original emphasis). To Bourdieu, [p]articipant objectivation undertakes to explore … the social conditions of possibility – and therefore the effects and limits – of … [the experience of the knowing subject], and, more precisely, of the act of objectivation itself.… What needs to be objectivated … [includes] the social world that has made both the anthropologist and the conscious or unconscious anthropology that she (or he) engages in her anthropological practice – not only her social origins, her position and trajectory in social space, her social and religious memberships and beliefs, gender, age, nationality, etc., but also, and most importantly, her particular position within the microcosm of anthropologists. (2003:283) 23 Sahlins’ study on the death of Captain Cook, and his debate with Obeyesekere, will be considered in Chapter 4 as an exemplar of how scientific validation of two theory– data pairs in the community of inquiry is made possible. 24 Imagine that readers are to interpret two texts: one is Mao Zedong’s speech produced on October 1, 1949 at Tiananmen Square, declaring “All Chinese have stood up!” The other is Einstein’s academic thesis which concludes the formula of “E=mc2.” It seems to be very likely that the former text will allow more diverging interpretations than the latter. I do not propose a view that ethnographers should produce knowledge akin to the mechanism of causality in natural science. However, ethnographers are obliged to delimit the range of interpretations, by making explicit their use of a theoretical frame on the data. 25 In further elaborating on this first attitude, Harrington writes: “Living individuals are said outwardly to objectify their inner feelings, thoughts and psychic states in objective ‘expressions,’ such as texts and works of art, and in social and cultural systems, such as customs, laws and social conventions” (2001:13). 26 Harrington also discerns a third objectifying attitude of reifying human subjects that is not relevant here; he writes: “[O]bjectify” can mean to deprive of inner soul, spirit or vital agency, to reduce solely to a thing or object of gratification or manipulation, to “violate,” “de-­ humanise” or treat purely as a means to some ulterior end.… It is said in this sense, for example, that pornography “objectifies” women. (2001:14)

Introduction   19 27 According to Harrington, Levi-­Strauss’ structural anthropology refers to a naïve objectivism as it “claims to describe the ‘universal unconscious activity of the human mind’ that expresses itself in fundamentally the same binary oppositions in every aspect of a culture’s life – from its language to its kinship structure and marriage rules” (Harrington 2001:12). 28 Herda is clear on this point; he writes: “The written text transcends its own conditions and opens itself to unlimited readings. Each reading is situated in a different context” (1999:87). The term “contextualization” is borrowed from Ricoeur who states that “the work decontextualizes itself, from the sociological as well as the psychological point of view, and is able to recontextualize itself differently in the act of reading … [and potentially by] anyone who can read” (Ricoeur 1982:91; original emphasis). 29 It is interesting to note that while I plan to adopt Geertz’s concepts to gauge the tension between relativism and science within a single epistemological framework, Geertz himself chose to side with relativism in his famous “anti-­anti-relativistic” stance. To him, relativism means that “speaking of things that must needs be so, is no longer possible” (1984:276). 30 This situation is akin to two scholars having different views on the same phenomenon in the same fieldwork site. For example, Geertz mentions the different views from Robert Redfield and Oscar Lewis who conducted ethnographic research on Tepoztlan at different times. Geertz describes that the discrepant views of the two reputable scholars are stemmed from “different sorts of minds taking hold of different parts of the elephant – [and] a third opinion would but add to the embarrassment” (Geertz 2001:300). 31 Here, to Turner, an experience constitutes a “structure of experience” whose expression, according to Throop’s interpretation of Turner’s work, possesses “the possibility of being crystallized in an intersubjectively accessible form – what Dilthey called ‘objectified mind’ ” and “the assorted collection of expressions of experience in the form of ‘objectified mind’ is nothing other than ‘culture’ ” (Throop 2003:224). 32 In an epilogue to Victor Turner and Edward Bruner edited The Anthropology of Experience, Geertz asserts that while the concept of “experience” is unsatisfactory for many, “it is equally true that without it, cultural analyses seem to float several feet above the ground” (1986:374). 33 According to D’Souza (2003), Dilthey’s focusing on Erlebnis or “lived experience” exerted influence on the later thought of Husser who subsequently developed his phenomenology. According to Souza, [u]nlike the mediation of purely rational categories that had dominated philosophical discourse in epistemology thus far, it is this notion of Erlebnis in relation to the Lebenswelt that would constitute the condition for the possibility of knowledge and reflection for many continental thinks of the twentieth century. (2003:18) 34 One should note that my terms “habitual routine,” “practical-­evaluative,” and “projective” agency adopted here take reference from Emirbayer and Mische’s 62-page article “What is agency?” published in 1998 in The American Journal of Sociology. Emirbayer and Mische set out to analytically disambiguate agency in a wider arena of discussion into its components, and suggest their own conceptualization of agency. They identified three analytical, but empirically interrelated, components of human agency: iterational (habitual), practical-­evaluative, and projective. These three components are defined as follows: [The iterational component of agency] refers to the selective reactivation by actors of past patterns of thought and action, as routinely incorporated in practical activity, thereby giving stability and order to social universes and helping to sustain identities, interactions, and institutions over time.… [The practical-­ evaluative component] entails the capacity of actors to make practical and normative

20   Introduction judgments among alternative possible trajectories of action, in response to the emerging demands, dilemmas, and ambiguities of presently evolving situations.… Projectivity encompasses the imaginative generation by actors of possible future trajectories of action, in which received structures of thought and action may be creatively reconfigured in relation to actors’ hopes, fears, and desires for the future (Emirbayer & Mische 1998:971; original emphases). 35 Maanen writes: [T]here is something we might call epistemological silence. This is the kind of silence we are confronted with when we face the unspeakable. Various philosophers have referred to this kind of silence. For example, Polanyi has explained how there is a tacit form of knowing as in the common case where we sense “that we know more than we can tell.” Beyond the range of our ordinary speaking and writing there is the rich domain of the unspeakable that constantly beckons us. (Maanen 1988:113; original emphasis; Polanyi’s text is quoted in Polanyi 1969:159–207)

Part I

Pinning down experience

2 Epistemological break

In contrast to the burgeoning literature on the rhetoric of ethnographic writing, both from the epistemological and ideological perspective, is that researchers who undertake the task to grasp the actor’s subjective point of view must now revise their polemics in a way to defend themselves against the charge of misrepresenting “others.” In question is a reflexive call to examine the cultural, historical, and epistemological contingencies in which the ethnographer textualizes the experiences of the actor. In the mid-­1980s, such a tension pertinent to the interpretation of subjective experience – which was generally labeled as a “linguistic turn” or, more accurately, a “literary turn”1 mounted to a crisis of representation. Goodall vividly called it an “upside down” moment to the realist ethnographer’s world. This was in April 1984 when a group of ten innovative ethnographers, anthropologists, and cultural and literary historians met to discuss “the making of ethnographic texts” at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico (2000:76). This meeting resulted in two widely publicized and discussed books: Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment on the Human Sciences, by George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer (1986), and Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, edited by James E. Clifford and George E. Marcus (1986). Despite differences among these scholars,2 their line of critique generally evolved around the failure of the ethnographer to authentically document the actor’s experience, which is represented (or created) in/­as texts (Marcus & Cushman 1982:32–34).

The crisis The crisis of representation is described by Denzin as this: “If we only know a thing through its representations, then ethnographers no longer directly capture lived experience. Experience is created in the social text. The legitimization crisis questions how we bring authority to our texts” (2002:483). Crisis-­provoking scholars generally criticize that the blind spot of our precedents lies in failing to attend to the complex knowledge and power relations known as ethnographic authority, which are inherent in the production of textual representations. As remarked by Clifford, the subjects being studied “are constituted … in specific historical relations of dominance and dialogue” (1983:119). The failure to

24   Pinning down experience recognize these relations results in a unified, controlling mode of authority inclined to entrap the other into misrepresentation. Such an “uncertainty about adequate means of describing social reality” (Marcus & Fischer 1986:8) has called upon the “experimental ethnographies” – based on a reflexive epistemology – in such a way that, … they integrate, within their interpretations, an explicit epistemological concern for how they have constructed such interpretations and how they are representing them textually as objective discourse about subjects among whom research was conducted. (Marcus & Cushman 1982:25) The crisis possesses a historical root in the critique of colonialism in the postwar period and has led ethnographers to problematize the notion of “text.” Acknowledging cultural diversity, a “text” can be interpreted in many equally valid ways. The lack of a single correct interpretation of what a text represents is a serious reflection of the act of writing and representing the other. It also makes many ethnographers question their “ability to represent other societies” (Clifford 1986:10). Obviously, the crisis of representation is also fueled by postmodernist scholarship3 which privileges the “experiential,” “interpretive,” “dialogical,” and “polyphonic” processes that resist the closure of meaning as a fait accompli under the aegis of the totalizing dominant discourse (Clifford 1983:142). Tyler further suggests that postmodern ethnography that privileges “discourse” over text sees the written text as collaborative in nature and rejects the ideological dichotomy of an observed and an observer (1986:126). Postmodernist ethnography hence spurns the pure realist stance which treats the other as given, the observed; that which wrings every bit of here-­and-now out of the subject, and creates artificially a temporal and spatial distancing between the researcher and the subjects he/­she represents (Fabian 1983; Wolf 1992:11–12). Rather than being represented as mediated, others are only made to represent themselves through the gaze of the researcher, whose authority remains unchecked. A key consequence is that postmodernist anthropologists see ethnography as a comparative, and ultimately a reflexive, endeavor to discern the society/­culture of Ours and that of the Other; or, what Marcus and Fischer would call, “a cultural critique of ourselves” (1986:20). Such a rampant reflexive call to deconstruct ethnographic texts has aroused no small controversy even within postmodernist circles. For example, Rabinow, a contributor to Writing Culture, demurs that “the insight that anthropologists write employing literary conventions, although interesting, is not inherently crisis-­provoking” (1986:243; see also Flaherty 2002). The contention is more severe from critics who, though without denying the totalizing problem inherent in the traditional ethnographic authority, defend the realist stance of textual representation (e.g., Strathern 1987; Sangren 1988; Bourdieu 1990; Spiro 1996; Bowlin & Stromberg 1997). Within the crisis-­opposing camp, Bourdieu’s

Epistemological break   25 rebuttal in his The Logic of Practice has been the most typical. He argues that the representational crisis has been underlain by a “self-­deceptive” attempt to abolish the “methodical break,” or the “objectifying distance” between “the observer and the observed” (1990:14). To Bourdieu, any attempt, including the  experimental ethnographies, to bring the researcher “fictitiously closer to the imaginary native” can by no means deny the “insurmountable, irremovable” distance between the ethnographer and the represented subjects she creates in text (1990:14). And, in one of his last open lectures,4 Bourdieu remarks that the over-­emphasis placed on narratives of the author’s experiences of “observing oneself observing,” “observing the observing in his[/­her] work of observing or of transcribing his[/­her] observations” has only led to the “rather disheartening conclusion that all is in the final analysis nothing but discourse, text, or, worse yet, pretext for text” (2003:282). So far, there has been no meeting of minds between the two opposing camps, and their arguments could sometimes go beyond academic discussion and turn personal (e.g., Marcus 1998:191). Bowlin and Stromberg (1997:123) label the contemporary debate “remarkably unproductive” as “[f]or the most part, scientific realists and their postmodern critics have talked past one another.” Yet, no serious attempt has been made to conduct a meta-­exposition of the theoretical root of the contention that explicates both sides of the argument, or re-­assesses the philosophical assumptions that have brought them to theoretical deadlock.5 This chapter endeavors to work along this line. The discussion will begin with the epistemological break6 between the commonsense and scientific assertions; a thesis coined by Alfred Schutz in his famous debate with Talcott Parsons during 1940–1941, which remains unresolved (Grathoff 1978). The break warrants that, in order to contemplate others from their subjective point of view, the observer must give up her here-­and-now understanding of the actors in the fleeting present. That being said, the observer – like any social scientist – can only grasp the other from afar, in a spatio-­ temporal world that is different from the everyday lifeworld in terms of relevant structure and language. In this light, the scientific interpretation of human experience, including the ethnographic representation, must be based on past encounters; and any attempt to document experience with a goal to attain or retain a here-­and-now understanding of subjective meaning, or “voice,” is but an epistemological impossibility. Scholars from the crisis-­provoking camp would consider that the break inevitably augments, or even legitimates, the ethnographic authority as the only single “voice.” The rest of this chapter attempts to argue that the postmodernist privileging of a “naïve ethnography” that emphasizes “experiential,” “interpretive,” “dialogical,” and “polyphonic” processes is neither able to deliver on its promise at the methodic level, nor amendable to Schutz’s epistemological break at the theoretical level.  This is the goal, but to get there requires an examination of the representative claims, or “solutions,” that aim to eliminate the dominant, monolithic authority in ethnography. But, before that, the background of Schutz’s epistemo­logical break has to be introduced.

26   Pinning down experience

The break Three years after the publication of The Structure of Social Action (Parsons 1968[1937]), Schutz began an exchange of correspondence with Parsons, which ended up in an unresolved debate between the two over the understanding of subjective categories in the analysis of social action.7 Schutz sees that Parsons shares his interest in Weber’s approach to problems of human understanding and rationality. However, Schutz complains that Parsons’ analyses are not “radical” enough as Parsons “is not concerned with finding out the truly subjective categories, but seeks only objective points of view” (Grathoff 1978:36). Taking Schutz’s manuscript-­long letter exclusively as a criticism of his corpus magnum, Parsons almost opened the debate with the remark: “what of it?”; he wrote, “If I accept your statement in place of my own formulations which you criticize, what difference would it make in the interpretation of any one of the empirical problems that run through the book” (1978:67; original emphasis). The dialogue between the two stopped long before Schutz died in 1959,8 but the discussion of the debate continued (Coser 1979; Giddens 1979; Wagner 1979; Embree 1980; Tibbetts 1980; Jules-­Rosette 1980; Rehorick 1980; Nasu 2005; Wilson 2005; López 2012; Etzrodt 2013). The focus of contention in the Schutz-­Parsons debate is that Schutz acknowledges an epistemological break between the commonsense and the scientific world, i.e., the “world of consociates” and the “world of contemporaries.”9 However, Parsons only considers it “a matter of refinement” (Grathoff 1978:69). To Schutz, within the world of consociates, I share with the Other a community of space and time. Each actor (including I) participates in the on-­ rolling life of the Other in the present moment of lived experience. It is a world where the Other is “within reach of my direct experience” and my consociate “shares with me a community of space and a community of time” (1980:163). The subjective experience of the actor who confronts the Other face-­to-face refers to the recognition that another Self – “as a human being, alive and conscious” – is before me in the vivid, fleeting present “while the specific content of that consciousness remains undefined” (1980:163). But still, I can, “up to a certain point,” obtain knowledge about the lived experiences of my fellow-­men as “real”;10 and the same holds true reciprocally for my fellow-­men with respect to me (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:4). Schutz calls it perspective reciprocity which involves “phases of my own consciousness” and presupposes the “corresponding” phases of your consciousness, and within the shared time and space, “my fellow-­man and I grow older together” (Schutz 1980:163; 1982:220; 1964:23). In short, in the world of consociates, I, can grasp in a vivid present the other’s thoughts as they are built up step by step. They may … share one another’s anticipations of the future as plans, or hopes or anxieties. In brief, consociates are mutually involved in one another’s biography; they are growing older together. (Schutz 1982:16)

Epistemological break   27 It is perhaps the most erudite but yet also intriguing feature in Schutz theory that the subjective experience within the world of consociates as such – i.e., I share the time and space with the Other; my stream of consciousness attends to yours, and yours to mine; and we-­grow-old-­together – is not “meaningful” in the sense outlined in Weber’s theory of social action. Weber speaks of “social action” insofar as “the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior – be it overt or covert, omission or acquiescence” (1978:4; see also Smith 1987:117–123). But Schutz states firmly that it is “incorrect to say that my lived experiences are meaningful merely in virtue of their being experienced or lived through” (1980:70). Schutz speaks of the meaningful experience only when it is constituted as an object of attention (i.e., as gegenstand). In other words, rather than being melted into one another in the stream of durée, experiences are discrete and meaningful only when the social actions involved are already finished, and when the ego no longer immerses itself in the flow of duration. From this moment on, the ego stops to reflect upon the experiences in the retrospective glance, in what Schutz calls the act of attention, or the act of reflection (1980:45–53); he explains: Only from the point of view of the retrospective glance do there exist discrete experiences. Only the already experienced is meaningful, not that which is being experienced. For meaning is merely an operation of intentionality, which however, only becomes visible to the reflective glance. (Schutz 1980:52) The ego now enters the world of contemporaries within which I abandon my simple and direct awareness of the Other, and suspend my immediate grasp of the Other in all her subjective particularity. I can then ask, according to Schutz, For instance … “Have I understood you correctly?” “Don’t you mean something else?” “What do you mean by such and such action?”… The light in which I am looking at him is now a different one: my attention is shifted to those deeper layers that up to now had been unobserved and taken for granted. I no longer experience my fellow man in the sense of sharing his life with him; instead I “think about him.” But now I am acting like a social scientist. (Schutz 1980:140–141; my emphasis) Therefore, in order that meaningful experience “becomes visible,” apprehensible, and distinguishable to a social scientist who was formerly a participant with the Other in the flow of duration, he/­she must step outside the present moment of lived experience, and attain an intentional gaze such that (past) experiences “now become objects of attention as constituted experiences” (Schutz 1980:51). Once within the world of contemporaries, the social scientist does not share “a vivid present with Others in a pure We-­relation”; rather, he/­she “stays outside the different time perspectives of sociality originating in the vivid present of the We-­relation” (Schutz 1982:252), i.e., my fellow-­man

28   Pinning down experience and I no longer grow old together. Hence, Schutz concludes that social science (including anthropology) is completely an explicit knowledge of contemporaries; and is not a re-­enactment of the happenings emerging in face-­to-face situations (including fieldwork experience) (1980:223).11 To recast this perspective more specifically to the discipline of anthropology, Manen suggests that the “consciousness [of the informants] itself cannot be described directly” (1990:9); the reality of lived experience is there for the researcher only because the researcher has a reflexive awareness of it, and it is only in retrospective thought that the lived experience becomes objective (1990:223).12 Victor Turner evidently subscribes to the epistemological distanciation when he recognizes, according to Throop (2003:223), Dilthey’s distinction between the immediate “living through of experience” as a sequence of events and the retrospective attribution of meaning tied to the structuring of “experience” as a particular coherent unit or form (Erlebnis). In contrast to the transient sequentiality that is characteristic of meaningful experience in its immediate immersion in the present, Turner writes: “[m]eaning is apprehended by looking back over a temporal process” (1982:76; original emphasis). Apparently, Schutz expounds a fundamental distinction between the two realms: the experiential and the scientific. Within the latter, the social scientist can never grasp the meaning of subjective experience as actio – “acting in progress,” but only as actum – “action performed” (1996:30; original emphases; see also Costelloe 1996:257).13 The consequence of this chasm has been far-­ reaching to social scientists, especially anthropologists, as it means that the intellectual activities to interpret human experience must be conducted in the “world of contemporaries,” and to capture the actor’s subjective experience with a here­and-now understanding is an outright impossibility.

Surviving the crisis? This epistemological position inevitably arouses contention among postmodern anthropologists who strive to preserve in ethnography the coevalness with the actors they study. Fabian (1983) has been critical of the ethnographic rhetoric that systematically distances the subjects from the intersubjective sharing of the same historic time and space during fieldwork. Such denial of the contemporaneity of subjects in anthropological writing has, on the one hand, blocked the reflexive awareness of anthropologists concerning their own politicized contexts and intellectual history; and, on the other hand, relegated “others” to the status of passive objects held in the researcher’s omniscient gaze (Marcus 1984). To argue that the here-­and-now reality of fieldwork experience in anthropological writings is in lack, is to presume that Schutz’s epistemological break exists such that the observer consciously denies the world of consociates and deliberately exerts his/­her authority to textualize the experience of the other at a distance, both temporally and spatially – within the world of contemporaries. I deem that it is with this vantage point that a critical mass of scholars began to bring to the fore different claims, or even “solutions” to survive the crisis.14

Epistemological break   29 Ethnography as dialogic and multi-­vocal Some explicitly claim to rescue people’s “voice” from single authorship in ethnographic writings. For example, Marcus and Fischer (1986) call for a “decentered ethnography” that limits the power of any single voice, and which encourages or allows for, a plurality of voices in ethnographic writings. The approach lays stress on the narrative presence of “others” in ethnographies (Marcus & Cushman 1982:43). Clifford draws upon Bakhtin’s analysis of the “polyphonic” novel, which construes an ambiguous, multi-­vocal world called “heteroglossia.”15 Clifford then argues that every culture contains multiple voices, which have been suppressed and artificially synthesized into ostensible univocal texts. He coins the multi-­vocal ethnography as “an alternate textual strategy, a utopia of plural authority” to uphold the plural authorship in anthropological writings (Clifford 1983:140).16 This approach carries in itself the ultimate goal to grasp the here-­and-now understanding of others during fieldwork, and to textualize them in representations relatively autonomous from the authority of the researcher. However, even the scholars who are advocates or sympathetic of postmodernist ethnographies think that this approach remains Utopic. For example, Marcus and Cushman (1982:43) remark that the ethnographic turn toward a plurality of voices would further complicate the issue of ethnographic authority rather than resolving it. Tyler, as summarized by Moore, criticizes that the dialogic ethnography advocated by Clifford is just like the realistic genres it means to replace, or it is simply “monologue masquerading as dialogue” (Moore 1994:349; see also Herzfeld 2001:44). Roth criticizes that Bakhtinian heteroglossia does not guarantee authenticity or insight in ethnographic representation, instead, “it is largely beside the epistemological point” (1989:559). Roth further pinpoints that there is no necessary correlation between political representativeness and methodological fruitfulness or desirability. It is because, ethnographic “[t]exts failing to be representative in the former sense cannot, for this reason alone, be convicted of being misrepresentative in the latter” (1989:559). Rabinow also expresses that, while “Clifford talks a great deal about the ineluctability of dialogue (thereby establishing his authority as an ‘open’ one) … his texts are not themselves dialogic” (1986:244). Indeed, even Clifford (1983) sees the difficulties as a two-­fold predicament in his method: First, the authoritative stance of “giving voice” to the other is not fully transcended. Second, the very idea of plural authorship challenges a deep Western identification of any text’s order with the intention of a single author. (Clifford 1983:140)17

30   Pinning down experience Ethnography as the actor–observer epistemic continuum Another set of claims is not aimed at retaining the here-­and-now experience of others but to conceive an “epistemic continuum” from actor to observer (Galibert 2004). The proponents of this approach (mostly anthropologists) believe that the epistemic disjunction between the actor and observer can be unified into a single attitude because of the constitutive intersubjective (fieldwork) process between the two. Since the actor and observer are not epistemological torn apart, strictly speaking, the ethnographic authority does not necessarily lead to a “crisis.” Instead, it subscribes to the vantage point that the ethnographic divide is grounded on, hence, which can be closed down due to the mutually-­ shared field experience. What the authorial authority usually provokes, however, is the anxiety which calls for more sophisticated ways of carrying out observation and description during fieldwork. Clifford Geertz, I deem, is a representative of this approach. Interestingly, early Geertz writings explicitly acknowledges Ricoeur (1971) on the importance of the moment of writing; he writes: The ethnographer “inscribes” social discourse; he writes it down. In so doing, he turns it from a passing event, which exists only in its own moment of occurrence, into an account, which exists in its inscriptions and can be re-­consulted. (Geertz 1973:19; original emphasis) In his later years, however, Geertz began to share the postmodern anxiety in grasping “the native’s point of view” for he feels, … a worry about the legitimacy of speaking for others, a worry about the distorting effects of Western assumptions on the perception of others, and a worry about the ambiguous involvements of language and authority in the depiction of others. (Geertz 1995:128–129) To him, it is mainly through participant observation that the observer can obtain the “experience-­near” concepts, which subjects might “naturally and effortlessly use” to deal with their reality (1983:57). In contrast to the “experience-­near” concepts, the “experience-­distant” concepts are employed by various specialists “to forward their scientific, philosophical, or practical aims” (1983:57). Clearly acknowledging a break between the “vocational ethic,” the “disinterestedness” of the researcher, and people’s subjective point of view (2000:38–39), he quickly combines the two orientations into a single perspective. He suggests that “from a personal subjection,” anthropologists are able “to combine two fundamental orientations toward reality – the engaged and the analytic – into a single attitude” (2000:40). This “single attitude” makes possible the kind of relativism he has in mind – “a relativism that allows

Epistemological break   31 the possibility of generalizations” – so long as the “experience-­distant” concepts are placed in “illuminating connection” with concepts that for another people are “experience-­near” (1983:58). Such an attainment of the “experience-­near” concept is similar to that of “chunked knowledge” put forward by Maurice Bloch. He cogently claims that through the continuous and intimate fieldwork process, the researcher can learn the “chunked knowledge” – “the implicit peculiar knowledge of the actor” – which “people have themselves learned” to cope with daily tasks (1998:16–17).18 Needless to say, the possibility of the fusion of ethnographic distancing is highly debatable. For example, Nicolas Thomas, as summed up by Herzfeld, recognizes “an unavoidable division in the ethnographer’s voice” because the current production of ethnographies is increasingly drawn in two directions: … on the one hand toward a global (in fact typically a Euro-­American) professional discussion, that privileges the discipline’s questions, and the elevated register of “theory,” and on the other toward audiences within the nation if not the locality studied. (Herzfeld 2001:30) Mosse (2006) also illustrates with his own fieldwork experience that the incorporation of the informants’ voice can by no means help ascertain the “ ‘objective’ truth” and “facts” in his/­her representation. He further contends that to collate and compare “diverse opinions, events, and experience in an independent interpretative analysis simply did not qualify as proper social science” (2006:944).19 One should note that Geertz seems to be struggling in deciding whether the epistemological break should be bridged. At one point, he suggests that “the distance between the anthropologist and the Other” be reduced; “the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ ” be bridged in order to achieve his “goal of a truly humanistic anthropology” (Geertz 2001:305). Several pages later, Geertz writes about “[t]he advantage of shifting at least part of our attention from the fascinations of field works … to those of writing”; as by doing so, “we shall learn to read with a more percipient eye” (Geertz 2001:310). He seems to have forgotten that pages before, he implies that “author-­evacuated” texts are epistemological superior to “author-­saturated texts” because the former leads ones to see things “as they really are” whereas the latter only leads ones to see things as “one would have them” (Geertz 2001:302). I believe that Geertz’s rhetoric of “a single attitude” or/­and “illuminating connection” is more a convenient methodic presumption than an articulated theoretical device able to convince Schutz that his epistemological break is, after all, bridgeable. I also hold a view that the actor–observer epistemic continuum is a pragmatic premise being uncritically absorbed in traditional anthropological studies. Gellner has astutely pinpointed that in an early article of Malinowski published in 1923 (Malinowski 1972), the founder of participatory fieldwork methods distinguished two distinctive language types. The first is the most

32   Pinning down experience commonly identified, action-­linked, and context-­embedded called the “primitive” style; which is [a] statement, spoken in real life, is never detached from the situation in which it has been uttered (Malinowski 1972:307).… [it is commonly] used by people engaged in practical work, in which utterances are embedded in action. (Malinowski 1972:312; cited in Gellner 1998:148) The second one, however, is rarely used by the informants. It means to be “context-­free, to be addressed to-­whom-it-­may-concern, rather than to a listener already tied to the speaker by a specific context which enters in to the significance of the utterance” (Gellner 1998:148). Malinowski calls it the “civilized” style; he writes, It is only in certain very special uses among a civilized community and only in its highest uses that language is employed to frame and express thoughts … In works of science and philosophy, highly developed types of speech are used to control ideas and to make them the common property of civilized mankind. (Malinowski 1972:316; cited in Gellner 1998:148) The two distinctive language styles are parallel to Schutz’s epistemological break, which severs the everyday and scientific worlds. However, Gellner notes that Malinowski quickly moves away from this view in his later work and even calls it “a serious error.” Malinowski revises it to an extent that verges on conflating the two realms; he remarks that “there is no science whose conceptual, hence verbal, outfit [i.e., the ‘civilized’ style] is not ultimately derived from the practical handling of matter [i.e., the ‘primitive’ style]” (1935:58; cited in Gellner 1998:152). Malinowski confesses, I am laying considerable stress on this because, in one of my previous writings, I opposed civilised and scientific to primitive speech, and argued as if the theoretical uses of words in modern philosophic and scientific writing were completely detached from their pragmatic sources. This was an error, and a serious error at that. Between the savage use of words and the most abstract and theoretical one there is only a difference of degree. (1935:58; cited in Gellner 1998:152; my emphasis) Interestingly, in the above quote, the key phrase Malinowski uses to hook up the everyday and scientific worlds is “only a difference of degree,” which is strikingly similar to Parsons’ “a matter of refinement.” On this point, Gellner does not hesitate to register his regret on Malinowski’s theoretical swing. Gellner writes: “I prefer the earlier Malinowski, who firmly upheld the distinction between the two types of thought which he subsequent disavowed” (1998:154).

Epistemological break   33 Gellner succinctly acknowledges that Malinowski’s early distinction as “basically correct” as, … there is a profound, fundamental, immensely important difference between the functional, culturally embedded use of language, and the, as it were, disembodied, abstract investigation of the world, which stands in contrast to it. (Gellner 1998:151) Ethnography as the work of translation or strategic positivism Another set of claims rests upon the assumption that the other is not directly accessible, hence the fusion of the actor–observer distancing is impossible. But, they tend to justify their interpretations of subjectivity – “strategically” – as to render Schutz’s epistemological break seemingly resolvable. For instance, Fardon is fully aware of the representational crisis, though he shifts the attention from text to context as to reflect how disciplinary, institutional and regional contexts govern both the fieldwork process and the writing of ethnography (1990). With such a shift, he is not coy about the contention of whether others are “directly accessible” in ethnography. In his account of the sociality of the Chamba, Fardon openly admits that the social actions that are based on intentions are “in principle not directly accessible” to him” (1985:143). However, he does not buy the idea of Schutz’s epistemological break, and turns to the metaphor of “the task of the translator” as formulated by Walter Benjamin (1969:69–82). Fardon claims that the inaccessibility of the subject to ethnographer is parallel to that of “the intention of a writer … to his translator” (1985:143). It means that he chooses an epistemology which is based on the nature of language – as suggested by Benjamin – which is “a priori and apart from all historical relationships” (1969:72). With this common footing, the task of the translator is to find the “intended effects upon the language” and to produce “the echo of the original,” not the originality of the original (1969:76). Fardon then seems to be very confident to have claimed that his “translation” of sociality can “inflect agency among the Chamba,” and “reproduce the intentionality apparent in Chamba actions” though he also stresses that the “task of translation is by its nature incapable of completion” (1985:143). What sounds awkward to me, however, is that kicking off from here, Fardon concludes that his account of the Chamba does not “negate” their agency and is even “unaffected” by his writing of them. His word of defense is that his account only “attempts a generalized translation of the intentions implied in Chamba agency by positing the existence of an implicit knowledge” (1985:143). To Fardon’s “solution,” my queries are: are the fact that language is “a priori and apart from all historical relationships” and is the metaphorical link between translation and transfer adequate to resolve the actor–observer epistemological break? Could his approach help exorcize the specter of the authority dominating

34   Pinning down experience ethnography? My answer to both questions is negative, as his approach is more a way of circumventing, than tackling, the epistemological aporia we are facing. In particular to the second question, Asad, coming from a more uncompromising postmodern perspective, would criticize the failure of Fardon to see that meanings are not “translated,” but created and imposed. Asad contends elsewhere that the ethnographer’s translation of a particular culture is inevitably “a textual construct” and therefore the ethnographer still has the “final authority in determining the subject’s meanings” and is “the real author of the latter” (1986:162–163; cited in Bowlin & Stromberg 1997:125). Another pseudo-­solution of this kind refers to the Spivak’s famous paradigm of “the subaltern cannot speak” (1988, 1988a). Her paradigm presumes that others have their own “voice” which is silenced as they cannot speak without altering the relations of power/­knowledge that constitute “the subaltern” as a subject of discourse, in the first place (Spivak 1988; original emphasis; see also Beverley 1999). She maintains that the “voice” of the subaltern can be recovered only in the academic discourse counter-­hegemonic to the colonialist discourse. But how can such academic practices of “voice recovery” evade the trap of misrepresenting the other? Beverley has queried precisely how the “counter-­hegemonic” acts are immune from “being complicit in the reproduction of the very relations of domination and subordination such representations are meant to oppose” (Beverley 1999:2; see also Kokotovic 2000:287). Spivak acknowledges this problem, but later asserts that scholars who follow her approach “may be excused [for being ‘positivistic’] on political grounds” (cited in Kokotovic 2000:292). The reason is that these academic discourses serve “a counter-­hegemonic function … provided that it remains strategic and is not essentialized and naturalized” (cited in Kokotovic 2000:292; see also Ho 2005:161–162; O’Hanlon 1988:196). Indeed, like Fardon’s metaphor of “translation” and the “strategic essentialism” put forward by Spivak marks another non-­solution to the actor–observer problematic in the representation of the other. Ethnography as a multi-­sited endeavor “Multi-­sited ethnography” as proposed by Marcus is perhaps the most sophisticated “solution” to cope with the crisis. For example, to study families in a modern capitalist society, this approach suggests that one must look beyond the households and the community to which they belong to “the diffuse contexts of  social and cultural activities that produce them” (Marcus 1998:52). The most  preferred ethnography of families thus should not only encompass the perspectives of family members – i.e., “local conditions,” but also represent the  perspectives of the capitalists, the state officials, family mediators, etc. – i.e., “[macro] system, or pieces of [macro]system” (1998:51). Implicated in the subsequent ethnography is a multi-­sitedness (i.e., an ethnography of families involving other sites, like the government, business corporations, and non-­ governmental organizations) that exposes the researcher to diverse field

Epistemological break   35 experiences with shifting personal positions in relation to his/­her subjects, and fluid knowledge (discourse) and power relations pertinent to one site that overlaps with other sites. To Marcus, the crux of the matter is the experiences of moving among sites and levels of society as the researcher can encounter, … all sorts of cross-­cutting and contradictory personal commitments. These conflicts are resolved, perhaps ambivalently, … in being a sort of ethnographer-­activist, renegotiating identities in different sites as one learns more about a slice [of] the world system. (Marcus 1998:98) Even more, this approach provides … a kind of psychological substitute for the reassuring sense of “being there,” of participant observation in traditional single-­site fieldwork. (Marcus 1998:99) Through multi-­sited strategies, Marcus outlines his “solution” to the crisis in a two-­fold manner. First, the juxtapositions among sites embedded in multi-­sited strategies essentially involve “comparisons” related to an emergent object of study “whose contours, sites, and relationships are not known beforehand, but are themselves a contribution of making an account that has different, complexly connected real-­world sites of investigation” (1998:86). Second, in carrying out such comparisons, the authority of the ethnographer – which Marcus criticizes for entailing “clearly distinct theoretical framings, interests, and critiques of ordinary language” – can be dispersed since the researcher has to find something out he/­she does not already know (1998:18).20 Undoubtedly, the multi-­sited imagery carries in itself some attraction. On the surface, it allows the researcher to traverse back-­and-forth between the everyday world of the actor and the world of the observer. While the former world features complex and multi-­level relationships related to the subjects, the latter leads the ethnographer to textualize these relationships and, at the same time, take into account the complex knowledge-­power relations “in diffuse time-­space” (Marcus 1995:96). However, in my opinion, this picture is too ideal to be true. In practice, it is like having one’s cake and eating it. Let me illustrate it in another way. If understanding others is similar to a man who grapples something-­other-than-­himself in the dark, the multi-­sited approach is suggesting that one touches the other in multiple ways, i.e., from different angles, in different positions, or even touching it not with hands, but with feet, face, or even through other tools. This approach evidently emulates the single-­sited approach for obtaining a richer set of data, as it would contain controversies or disagreements among sites in relation to a particular subject. No doubt, it is a merit of this strategy. But, what remains unresolved is that once the person gives up touching and shifts to the moment of writing, he/­she

36   Pinning down experience can no longer study directly experiencing-­of-other itself. He/­she is forced to leave the constant temporal flow from the standpoint of the subject. And, if he/­she so happens to be an academic working in a university, he/­she is probably facing a series of concerns unrelated to the here-­and-now experiencing (or touching in this case) of the other. For example, he/­she has to ponder where to publish the ethnography, the style of the targeted journal(s), the word-­count limit, the comments from reviewers, and even personal fame and promotion. Under these circumstances, one needs to be highly self-­deceptive in order to claim to have removed the actor–observer epistemological distancing, and to have written the subjective experience without the penetration of dominant discourses, either political or purely academic, or both. The researcher is therefore destined to face Schutz’s epistemological break no matter whether one’s strategy is multi-­sited and has more complex information to maneuver, or single-­sited that entails less.

More about the break Before proceeding further, two important caveats must be registered about the nature of the epistemological break. First, it should not be confused with what Sharrock and Anderson term “the inaccessibility problem” between the native and the ethnographer due to “different cultural maps” (1982:124). The break in question is not by nature an empirical one such that the native and the ethnographer “see the world differently,” and that “the ethnographer cannot share the native’s culture,” and consequently, that “our understanding of other cultures must always be partial and our descriptions inadequate” (1982:124). Instead, it is by nature epistemological, and is originated not by differential empirical experiences of different actors, but by the universal constraints of temporality, i.e., one must in one moment acting upon commonsense; and the other moment, science; then back to that of commonsense again, and so forth. And, the break with such a nature – unlike what Sharrock and Anderson (1982) imply in their construct – will not disappear even if the task of the ethnographer is to understand him/­herself as a native. I can imagine myself conducting an ethnographic investigation of my work life as a faculty member in the department. I would ask myself: “why do you (i.e., me) always refuse to take powerful administrative positions in the department?” I would answer: “Yes, I always tell myself to stay away from power.” So, I would ask: “Reason?” My answer would be: “There are mainly two. First, I hate power; second, I am scared of power.” Then, I, as a researcher, would follow up with: “Is it that you hate power and so you are scared of it? Or, is power so scary to you, that  you hate it?” I would answer frankly: “Well, I really don’t know. If you know, you tell me.” I hope that the above hypothetical example sounds real enough to demonstrate that the “inaccessibility problem” still exists even if the “cultural map” difference between the native and the ethnographer disappears. The break in question is thus by nature epistemological and temporal, rather than empirical.

Epistemological break   37 Second, the break in question neither entails the fundamental anxiety in misrepresenting the other, nor the compelling pleasure in knowing more about the other. For example, Mosse (2006) expresses that the further his ethnographic investigation is textually represented“from the consultant report, the conference paper, the journal article, to the book,”“the more strands [with the native] were broken and the greater the anger and anxiety” (2006:946). Manen, on the contrary, suggests a positive view about the break as it leads to fruitful meaning-­ discovery process; he writes: “Writing distances us from lived experience but by doing so it allows us to discover the existential structures of experience,” and “to reclaim this knowledge and make it our own in a new and more intimate manner” (1990:127–128). The break is itself an epistemological constraint for social scientists to deal with through reflexivity, and an epistemological prerequisite for accumulating scientific knowledge. It has nothing to do with emotional judgment regarding whether the break necessarily leads to a distant or intimate understanding of the other, which will be further discussed in Chapter 8.

The formation of two opposing camps Evidently, the assertion of epistemological break and its concomitant Bourdieuean “reflexive sociology” do not satisfy those in the crisis-­provoking camp. For example, Marcus points out that “the reflexive exposition of the epistemological and ethical grounds of anthropological knowledge to full critical discussion and opened the way for hermeneutics” only fruitlessly “reinforces the perspective and voice of the lone, introspective fieldworker without challenging the paradigm of ethnographic research at all” (1998:193). However, Bourdieu’s insistence on the “methodical break” or the “objectifying distance” is not without their allies. For example, drawing “without conscience” on the work of Schutz, in the early 1950s Garfinkel sharply discerned “the natural and scientific attitudes,” or more specifically, the “attitude of daily life and the attitude of scientific theorizing” (Psathas 2004:17; see also; Sharrock 1999:122). Subscribing explicitly to a form of reflexivity akin to Bourdieu’s, Willis emphasizes “the importance of maintaining a sense of the investigator’s history, subjectivity, and theoretical positioning as vital resources for the understanding of and respect for those under study” (2000:113). Others who echo such a reflexivity in the production of ethnographic knowledge generally concur that the epistemological break between fieldwork practices and writing is “a hard distinction” (Thomas 1991:307; see also Olivier de Sardan 2015:195–200). They are dissatisfied with the crisis camp for its outright elimination of the “natural-­ scientific epistemologies” in the production process of ethnographic knowledge (Spiro 1996:768); cast doubts over different “solutions” to eschew the objectifying voice of ethnographic writing (e.g., Borneman & Hammoudi 2009:4; Faier and Rofel 2014:364; Watson 1987:36; Clarke 2001:6), and criticize the crisis-­provoking scholars as preaching a theoretical anarchy and illocutionary opaqueness which are fruitless to social science (Beidelman 1989; Birth 1990; Carrithers 1990).

38   Pinning down experience Furthermore, Sangren cogently criticizes the postmodernist approach of mistakenly conflating “scientism and science as value” (1988:423). He remarks that the insight of “polyphonic” authority has only obscured the “locus of authority” but is “in effect a call for faith in the tuition of the analyst” (1988:423). Strathern also makes a case that anthropologists would have no way to avoid Fabian’s criticism of treating people they study as “objects.” She contends that the manipulations of languages and concepts on the part of the researcher to conceptualize the other inevitably “established distances between writer, reader, and the subject of study” (1987:261). On the whole, the lines of defense against the postmodernist assault are built along the affirmation of Schutz’s epistemological break. With the break, social scientists cannot study directly “experiencing” as a continuous temporal flow from the subjective point of view of the actor, but only “an experience” – “the intersubjective articulation of experience, which has a beginning and ending and thus becomes transformed into an expression” (Bruner 1986:6; see also Yamane 2000:174). Bourdieu writes, “In opposition to intuitionism,” he “kept on the side of the objectivism … at the cost of a methodical break with primary experience” (1990:14). It means that he is on the side of Schutz, Garfinkel, Gellner, Willis, Thomas, Sangren, Spiro, Olivier de Sardan, Bowlin and Stromberg, Yamane, and Strathern. And, those who claim that the break between the commonsense and the scientific worlds is bridgeable – in one way or another – are on side with Parsons, who views the break as merely “a matter of refinement rather than of basic methodological principle” (Grathoff 1978:69). Those belonging to Parsons’ camp include Marcus, Clifford, Geertz, Tyler, Fardon, and Spivak.21 At first glance, one might feel uneasy with the above categorization. For instance, Bourdieu may be surprised to know that he is aligned with Schutz and Garfinkel.22 Throughout the work of Bourdieu, Schutz’s and Garfinkel’s research are quoted only a couple of times and only so he could criticize them (e.g., Bourdieu 1977:21; Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992:73). In addition, postmodernist anthropologists like Marcus and Clifford would be shocked at being lined up with Parsons, the well-­known founder of what they view as a totalizing, or even tautological Grand Theory. This categorization, strange as it seems, sharply reflects that what is at issue is not the traditional philosophical debate between realism and idealism, with one saying that the assertion of the existence of a reality is independent of thoughts about it, and the other saying that the social world, like all other objects of external perception, consists of subjective ideas. Rather, it points to a narrower, much more focused intellectual domain, concerning the nature of the social scientific gaze. It refers to the argument about the epistemological skepticism not of what is usually put: “how we know what we know,” but concerning how we write what we know while sidestepping the more conventional questioning of how we come to know what we think we know. Therefore, central to the discussion is the possibility of producing scientific ethnographic knowledge, while bias or distortion due to ideological/­social cleavages – such as ethnicity, race, class, or nationality – are second-­order questions.23

Epistemological break   39 With such a narrow and focused domain, a closer look at the literature suggests that the two alliances possess more similarities than differences. For instance, I can see no one in the Schutz-­Bourdieu alliance who would disagree with the objective of postmodernist ethnographies as to, integrate, within their interpretations, an explicit epistemological concern for how they have constructed such interpretations and how they are representing them textually as objective discourse about subjects among whom research was conducted. (Marcus & Cushman 1982:25) And, indeed, both alliances are vigilant against reflexive questions like: Is modern science an applicable tool with which to measure Others against ourselves? Are we not simply imposing Our standards of measure an Other? Should the context of this relationship of the anthropologist and the Other be further examined? As clearly put by Sangren, “few ‘realist’ ethnographers today would be so naïve” as to claim to truly represent native views (1988:288). I suggest that the crux of the matter can be boiled down to one simple question: whether one acknowledges the epistemological distanciation or not. For one to acknowledge that an epistemological break is between the on-­rolling life with the other in the intersubjective present, and the theorizing moment of writing ethnography; both “participant objectivation” and the “multi-­sited ethnography” has to be on the same epistemological footing.

Concluding remarks What lessons have we learnt from the above discussion? The first and foremost is that a real crisis is illusionary, as it is essentially a matter of whether the researcher acknowledges the epistemological, temporal nature of the actor– observer distancing. In other words, it is a matter of whether one writes ethnographies from a Schutzian or a Parsonsian perspective. Unfortunately, the examination of the representative claims aligned with Parsons indicates that their postmodern posture has not delivered on its promises. Either their claims cannot stand the criticisms from within postmodernist circles, or they only work upon inarticulate theoretical tenets. Their attempts to represent the other without being intervened by a single authority are not successful. This consequence lies in the fact that, to borrow Herzfeld’s words, we could not write ethnographies without our informants; but more importantly, “we could not write those texts without ourselves” (2001:49). With Schutz’s epistemological break, we need to give up experiencing the other before we can write of an experience. The moment we begin writing, we enter the world of contemporaries. From that moment on, we look at the other in a different light. We are no longer “consociates.” Rather, we are observers or theorizing selves (Schutz 1982:253). In writing ethnographies, we must work our way through the various debates, sorting out our positions, and clarifying conditions of both the

40   Pinning down experience actors and ourselves. There is no way that the “ethnographic authority” that permeates these discussions can be eliminated, unless one gives up writing altogether. The remark made just now leads me to reject what some anthropologists mistakenly call “naïve ethnography” (Barnard 1989; Quigley 2003). For instance, Galibert re-­casts the crisis of representation eloquently as follows: “An ideally theoretical ethnography is blocked by the actor’s irreducible quiddity and an ideally naïve ethnography by the exoticism of theory” (2004:456).24 Viewed under the light of Schutz’s epistemological break, this dilemma, however, no longer exists. The attitude of the person who can possibly live naïvely in his everyday lifeworld must be distinguished from the attitude of the theorizing self, or the disinterested observer for the writing of ethnography. Therefore, “naïve ethnography” is a composite category equally impossible as “here-­and-now contemporaries” in the theorizing of Schutz, or as “circular triangle,” “invertebrate vertebrate,” or “inorganic benzene” in other human domains. To end this chapter, I would like to add a final point on the paradoxical nature of most of the postmodernist arguments on “ethnographic authority,” which will be further discussed in Chapter 8. What the crisis-­provoking camp suggests basically is that the rhetorical devices of the ethnographer have made the authors active and left others who are to be spoken for as passive subjects. The resulting distancing between the observer and the observed has become, like what Fabian writes, “both a prerequisite and a possibly auto-­destructive device in anthropological writing” (1990:755). Different narrative genres, or so-­called, “non-­realist writing” (Watson 1987:36) are experimented with to express a proximity between the researcher and the native (e.g., Behar 1993; Dumont 1992; Stewart 1996; Tsing 1993; Visweswaran 1994; Ashmore 1984:39–40). These emerging literary forms range from fictionalizing fieldwork experience (Latour & Woolgar 1979), to articulating biographical/­ archival and poetic fragments (Biehl 2005); to associating fieldnotes and photographs (Bourgois 2009). So, on the one hand, the distancing seems so threatening as to imply a crisis regarding the representing of others; on the other hand, the myriad textualized, literary forms are experimented with in such a way to convey a message that the disjunction is indeed highly bridgeable. But, if the actor–observer divide is highly bridgeable, I wonder then why many postmodernists conceived a crisis in the first place, and bothered to take pains to formulate methodic “solutions” to resolve it. It is just like one going all out to fight a malicious monster and suddenly realizing that it is just a wind-­ mill. Their arguments therefore are problematic in a sense that they tend to unintentionally dissolve (rather than seriously tackle) the theoretical aporia – i.e., Schutz’s epistemological break – which underlies their formulations in the first place.

Epistemological break   41

Notes   1 Here, I draw insights from Kobayashi and Marion (2011) which lucidly suggest that the key concern of the “turn” was to shift the focus of ethnographic knowledge from explaining social phenomena to considering the ethnography as text. Kobayashi and Marion writes: This use of the expression “linguistic turn” is not ours [quoting Rorty’s (1967) edited book The Linguistic Turn] … but we employ it to refer to the switch within English-­language philosophy of history from concerns about the concept of “explanation” peculiar to history to concerns about history as text. In this context the expression is ambiguous as it covers, on the one hand, the work of Louis Mink, Arthur Danto, or even Frank Ankersmit’s “narrative logic,” and, on the other, a decidedly more “literary turn” initiated by Hayden White, which imported into philosophy of history ideas and concerns from literary theory, themselves already largely the product of the influence of French postwar philosophy. In the resulting conceptual jonglerie one is likely to lose sight of the more difficult philosophical issues. (2011:83n7)   2 Sangren (1988:405n2) has pointed out that there is indeed no monolithic body of opinion on the contentious issues of ethnographic authority and rhetoric.   3 For instance, Marcus notes explicitly that his multi-­sited ethnography is inspired by the theoretical capital associated with a group of postmodernist scholars; he writes schematically: “One might think, for example of Foucault’s power/­knowledge and heterotopia, Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome, Derrida’s dissemination, and Lyotard’s juxtaposition by ‘blocking together’ ” (1998:86).   4 The quote that follows is from his speech for the Huxley Memorial Lecture, delivered at the Royal Anthropological Institute on December 6, 2000. Bourdieu died in Paris on January 23, 2002.   5 Bowlin and Stromberg (1997) is an admirable exception. Their paper is based on the work of philosopher Donald Davidson, which suggests that doubts about representation do not necessarily entail doubts about epistemic access to the world. This leads to the conclusion that postmodernist arguments about representational crisis are seemingly unnecessary.   6 I called it “ontological break” when I published an earlier version of this chapter in Canadian Review of Sociology in 2008. I realized later that it was erroneous to label the break “ontological.” In Schutz’s terms, “ontological entities” refer to something “objectively existing outside the human mind who thinks them” (1996:191). I also subscribe to Bhaskar’s definition of “ontological distinction.” According to him, “an ontological distinction” exists “between … regularities [of human actions, or the intransitive object] and the laws they [i.e., these human actions, or science] ground” (1989:17; original emphasis; see also Danermark et al. 1997:22). Therefore in my case, the distinction between two human actions – one of the researcher, and one of the actor – should be epistemological, not ontological. Here, I have to acknowledge that Weinberg has been right to point out that my use of “ontological break is probably too strong a term to describe it” (2012:366).   7 The debate involved an interchange of some dozen letters from October 1940 to April 1941 (Grathoff 1978).   8 Grathoff notes that after Schutz wrote a short courteous letter to Parsons dated April 21, 1941, “no further notes or letters were exchanged between” (1978:112) them. Parsons died in 1979.   9 Schutz further delineates two more worlds: the world of predecessors (Vorwelt), or history; and the world of successors. These further distinctions are out of scope of this book.

42   Pinning down experience 10 One should be reminded that Schutz adopts the notion of “real” from W. I. Thomas whose iconic statement states that, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (1982:348). 11 It should be noted that “the world of predecessors” is also the milieu where social science investigation can take place. Schutz remarks, “Social science is through and through an explicit knowledge of either mere contemporaries or predecessors; it nowhere refers back to the face-­to-face experience” (1980:223). However, the present book is only concerned with the “world of contemporaries.” 12 Manen further suggests that: This … demonstrates that true introspection is impossible. A person cannot reflect on lived experience while living through the experience. For example, if one tries to reflect changed or dissipated. Thus, phenomenological reflection is not introspective but retrospective. Reflection on lived experience is always recollective; it is reflection on experience that is already passed or lived through. (Manen 1990:10; original emphases) 13 In his early major work, Schutz criticizes Weber for confusing and conflating exactly these two meanings of action; he writes, This word [action] can, first of all, mean the already constituted act (Handlung) considered as a completed unit, a finished product, an Objectivity. But second, it can mean the action in the very course of being constituted, and, as such, a flow, an ongoing sequence of events, process of bringing something forth, an accomplishing. Every action, whether it be my own or that another person, can appear to me under both these aspects. (Schutz 1980:39) 14 It is interesting to note that while I am utilizing certain tenets of Schutz’s phenomenology to construct a critique of what is generally labeled as dialogic ethnography, the opponents of this critique are supposed to be proponents of a “phenomenological critique” launched against the lack of sufficient concern of dialogism in ethnography (Tedlock 1979; Mannheim & Tedlock 1995:3; Fabian 1971; see also Nevins 2013:80). 15 In Clifford’s own wording: A useful – if extreme – standpoint is provided by Bakhtin’s analysis of the “polyphonic” novel. A fundamental condition of the genre, he argues, is that it represents speaking subjects in a field of multiple discourses. The novel grapples with, and enacts, heteroglossia. (1983:136) 16 Evidently, the multi-­vocal approach carries an explicit ethical component to protect the right to speak of subjects. Harvey elaborates that, “[t]he idea that all groups have a right to speak for themselves, in their own voice, and have that voice accepted as authentic and legitimate is essential to the pluralistic stance of postmodernism” (1989:48). 17 The impasse of retaining “voice” in ethnography has been further articulated by Ulin that, … the foregrounding of the informants’ voices does not settle the issue of authority as these voices are not autonomous but rather stand mediated by the social conditions of their production and the potential audiences to which they are addressed. (Ulin 1991:81) 18 A blind reviewer of Canadian Review of Sociology where I published an earlier version of this chapter reminded me that the distinction of “experience-­near” and

Epistemological break   43 “experience-­distant” is also in parallel with Herbert Blumer’s classical distinction between “sensitizing concepts” and “definitive” or “operational concepts” (1954:7). 19 I find it enlightening to quote Mosse’s illustration on this point at length here: As I mentioned, my colleagues insisted that “objective” truth has to be collectively defined; to become “facts,” interpretations had to be subject to group appraisal and agreement. An ethnographic approach which interviewed people individually or in groups and then collated and compared diverse opinions, events, and experience in an independent interpretative analysis simply did not qualify as proper social science. I was even reprimanded (in a meeting) by one junior manager for using unreliable private conversations instead of statements made in public about events, on the grounds that informally people will invent stories, confuse, and conceal, but publicly they will speak the truth. Team discussion would compensate for the failures of individual self-­censoring, and this, of course, is why it was not a good means to research such complex and contested social processes. (Mosse 2006:944) 20 Marcus further argues: “This mobile ethnography takes unexpected trajectories in tracing a cultural formation across and within multiple sites of activity” (1995:96).  21 The suggestion made by a blind reviewer from Canadian Review of Sociology about this categorization is worth mentioning here. He/­she wrote that this [classification] schema could be developed into a defense of an ethnographic pluralism that would be distinct from the relativism … [which is] associated (sometimes unfairly) with postmodernist ethnography. The outcome would be a nuanced account of the varieties of ethnographic “authority” and their respective strengths and limitations. 22 Bourdieu has been highly skeptical about phenomenology for – in his opinion – being exclusively entrapped in the ecological realm. To him phenomenology introduces a kind of subjectivism (represented by Sartre) to sociology in opposition to objectivism (represented by Levi Strauss) (1990:42–51). And, this opposition, according to Bourdieu, is “the most fundamental, and the most ruinous” that artificially divides social science (1990:25). And, Schutz’s phenomenological sociology is implicitly categorized – rather unfairly, I deem – to the side of subjectivism. 23 One should be reminded that this prioritization of question is agreed by Fabian (2001:16). 24 It also seems to me a mistake when one claims that both moments of writing and fieldwork are intersubjective akin to what is stated by Nevins (2013). More specifically, Nevins writes that “fieldwork … [is] a negotiated intersubjective relation between researchers and their interlocutors.… [And,] writing … [is] different field of intersubjective negotiation … [among] her disciplinary colleagues” (2013:81). To me, only the moment of fieldwork is intersubjective.

3 Ethnographic data and analysis

In Chapter 2, I argued that we need to (re-)assert an epistemological break that separates the researcher and the actor in the production of ethnographic knowledge conducive to scientific reasoning. This actor–researcher relationship presumes an epistemological significance to writing. Earlier in Chapter 1, I also suggested that one needs to consider ethnography as a text seriously in the Gadamerian and Ricoeurean manner such that the meaning of a text is dissociated from its writer and the conversant it refers to. All these theses point to another epistemological issue: since the researcher and the actor is separated by an epistemological break and the former cannot capture directly the experience of the latter, on what epistemological grounds can one claim that the researcher’s perspectivization (or, explicit theorization) in an ethnographic text captures the actor’s experience-­as-such that it is irreducible to the researcher’s explanation? In other words, on what epistemological grounds can one claim to capture the un-­capturable? To deal with this seemingly paradoxical issue in relation to ethnographic inquiries, one suggestion is to conceptually divide the ethnographic process into two parts: first, from fieldwork to fieldnotes; and second, from fieldnotes to ethnography. This conceptual partition is important as the two sub-­processes, as few anthropologists seem to notice, entails two different epistemological concerns. The first sub-­process is concerned with the epistemological status of the ethnographic data; the second, that of the ethnographic analysis. The primary task of this chapter is to conduct an epistemological excursion into these two sub-­processes with a purpose to identify a coherent epistemological foundation that bolsters the foregoing claims of actor–researcher distanciation and the postulate of minimizing the interpretive potential of an ethnographic text. By the end of the chapter, I shall put forward the notion of engaging realism, which can hopefully settle several intricate and interrelated epistemological dichotomies inherent in the process of ethnographic inquiry, including actor versus researcher, observation versus theorization, and relativism versus science.

Ethnographic data and analysis   45

Ethnographic data In the literature, anthropologists often acknowledge the co-­production nature of an ethnographic account between the actor and researcher in highlighting the different relevance structures the two parties possess. Karp and Kendall, for example, have noted that “field workers often articulate their accounts in terms that are not recognized in the same way or the same form as the accounts formulated by the native actors themselves” (2001:44–45). The delicate epistemological balance between the actor and the researcher has not only aroused the previous discussed “writing culture” critique of the ethnographic authority (Clifford & Marcus 1986) and the call for co-­presence and coeval-­ness in ethnographic accounts (Fabian 2006), but also resonated with other epistemological constructs of the actor–researcher relationship in fieldwork such as Jackson’s (1998) suggestion of “intersubjective ambiguity,” or Maclean’s (2012) suggestion of “empathy.” Despite the insights inherent in these explorations, I consider that these endeavors have not pushed hard enough as to offer a distinctive definition of ethnographic data that can succinctly reflect its specific epistemological underpinning. At the onset of modern anthropology, ethnographic data is generally considered as consisting of three types of information: (i) concrete and statistical documentation; (ii) minute, detailed observations of the native life in the form of ethnographic dairy; and (iii) ethnographic statements, characteristic narratives, typical utterances, aspects of folklore, and magical formulae (Malinowski 1961:25). It is through participation in the native’s life during fieldwork that an ethnographer “could learn more” (Malinowski 1967:281) or gain “much information” (Boas 1911:60) about these three types of information.1 Underscoring the non-­discursivity of fieldwork data, Bloch (1998) considers ethnographic data as “chunked knowledge,” an implicit “peculiar knowledge” of the actor through which the researcher can think what the informant thinks (1998:16; original emphasis). Geertz emphasizes that ethnographers need to see “what they [the actors] saw, felt what they [the actors] felt, [and] concluded what they [the actors] concluded” in convincing readers that the researcher herself has “truly ‘been there’ ” (Geertz 2001:306). Despite the varying emphases placed on the different aspects of data ethnographers collect during fieldwork, all imply that ethnographic data entails what the actor sees, feels, and concludes without articulating the role of the researcher involved in shaping the very ethnographic data collected. Undeniably, since the mid-­1980s this form of ethnographic data has been described in more dialogical terms, including stories, jokes, piss-­taking, and wind-­ups, in such a way that the role of the researcher as an interlocutor with the actor is acknowledged. However, the researcher’s involvement is often condemned as the ethnographic authority, or considered as an epistemological obstacle which hinders genuine understanding of the other. On this point, hermeneutic philosophers have been more sensitive than anthropologists in discerning the role of social scientists in shaping their data.

46   Pinning down experience Referring to the work of Gadamer and Habermas, Harrington suggests that traditional interpretative methodology has “generally fail[ed] to acknowledge and make appropriate use of what they [i.e., the two hermeneutic philosophers] call the ‘reflexive’ character of interpretation” (2001:25). Speaking of the “inescapable partial involvement” of the researcher in understanding the other,2 Harrington writes: [What traditional interpretive methodology misses is the] inescapable partial involvement of social researchers in the domain of what they study insofar as they are themselves social beings possessed of particular cultural values and beliefs with complex ties to the time and place of their upbringing and the impossibility of any knowledge of other cultures and historical periods that is not at least partially or initially meaningful in terms of our own cultural assumptions.… In this way, it fails to acknowledge the positive constructive value of such attachments as a fundamental condition of the very possibility of understanding others. (Harrington 2001:25; first emphasis is mine; second, original) Trying to bridge the social scientist’s research methods and the reflexive concerns of hermeneutic philosophers, Schutz pioneers the definition of social science data that involves the researcher’s construct of the actor’s construct. This definition is constituted by a two-­step manner. He first argues that the social scientist must utilize the constructs inherent in everyday courses of action as a basis for “social scientific constructs” (Wagner 1983:298). These constructs “refer to and are founded upon the thought objects constructed by the commonsense thought of man living his everyday life among his fellow-­men” (Schutz 1982:6; my emphases). Then, Schutz further argues that these constructs are abstractions “designed to supersede the constructs of commonsense thought” (Schutz 1982:5, 35; my emphasis). Schutz’s formulation of social science data is undesirable in at least two ways. First, it conflates the concepts of social science data and analysis, which possess different epistemological concerns, as I have already pointed out. Second, Schutz’s claim that the scientific constructs are founded upon and supersede the everyday constructs at the same time is dangerously close to self-­contradiction. It is because after the supersession of the researcher’s construct, it becomes difficult to ascertain that the researcher’s construct is still founded upon the everyday courses of social action. Schutz’s formulation of social science data thus allegedly supports the “writing culture” critique of silencing the others in the researcher’s construct, and reinforcing the “authority of the anthropologist as a professional” (Clifford 1986:118). Proposed here are two fundamental premises of ethnographic data. First, there exists a set of particular questions in the researcher’s mind that constitute the raison de etre of ethnographic data. If not for the researcher’s particular questions, or hypotheses, in mind, he/­she would not have entered the field and encountered others; and there would be no (need of ) ethnographic data, and by association, analysis. Here, I share Goodall’s insight when he writes:

Ethnographic data and analysis   47 Culture was not something “out there” in the field to be discovered, uncovered, and then written about. Instead, questions were asked that set into literary motion a series of rhetorical events on the page that involved (and enlarged or complicated) the linguistic relativity of a person whose goal was to write into coherence “a meaningful order of persons and things.” (Goodall 2000:75; my emphasis) The second premise is that ethnographic data involves the actor’s experience that is irreducible to the researcher’s gaze. It is on the premise of “the irreducibility of human experience” that, according to Willis and Trondman, ethnography becomes “the disciplined and deliberate witness-­cum-recording of human events” (2000:5). Based on these two propositions, the researcher arrives at the fieldwork site with a specific gaze informed by questions/­hypotheses. And, in order to answer these questions, or to test the hypotheses, the researcher needs to solicit data from the others. Thanks to the prolonged residence, the researcher can eventually engage themselves in the intersubjectivity with the others during fieldwork, or in Schutz’s terms, in the “we-­relation” (Figure 3.1). As stated in previous chapters, the intersubjective moments of fieldwork – moments when the lived experience is directly and mutually grasped by both the researcher and the actor – do not allow the researcher to reflect on the lived experience with the other as such. The researcher must constantly step out from the world of consociates (intersubjective relation), and enter the world of contemporaries (subject-­object relation) in order to conduct conversations which requires explicit reflection, and think over how the empirical information (discursive and non-­discursive) solicited from the others have addressed these questions, or, fitted the hypotheses (Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.1  Actor and researcher engaged in the intersubjective relationship.

48   Pinning down experience

Figure 3.2 Actor and researcher switching between the worlds of consociates and contemporaries.

However, unlike hypothesis testing in statistics, the reflection on the part of the researcher does not aim seriously to confirm or reject a null hypothesis. Rather, it is a meaning-­making process through which the researcher inspects vigilantly whether the original questions/­hypotheses are improvised based on the emerging information collected during fieldwork. I find it suggestive to conceptualize this ongoing reflective meaning-­making process in terms of Peirce’s pragmatic philosophy consisting of three interlinked parts: a sign, an object, and an interpretant. On Peirce’s meaning-­making process, Tavory and Timmermans’ exegesis is clear and distinct and is worth a lengthy quotation: The first of these elements is the sign, which we can think of as the signifier in the same way that smoke signifies a fire or that a word signifies a concept or object. The sign does not exist on its own but is always in relationship to an object. It is the utterance, the pointing finger, the picture, or whatever vehicle represents an object in a certain way. The second related element is then the object, any entity about which a sign signifies. The object is taken very broadly; it can be an actual thing “out there,” an individual, a word, or an idea in our head. Peirce’s key insight, however, was that meaning-­ making is not an abstract but a practical achievement, occurring in action. To capture this aspect Peirce argued that every act of meaning-­making needs an interpretant – the effect of the sign-­object through which

Ethnographic data and analysis   49 meaning-­making receives its definition. The interpretant is a transformation that the interpreter undergoes while making sense of a sign. Simply put, a sign is not a part of an act of signification unless it has some kind of effect –an understanding, emotion, or action. The interpretant does not have to be a cognitive interpretation of the sign-­object, although it can be, and often is, an understanding. Instead, it is the way the sign-­object effects a change in the world, whether as the most complex act of textual interpretation or as the simplest and most unreflexive gesture. (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:23) Premised on the proposition that meaning-­making is fundamentally a triadic semiotic process, Tavory and Timmermans highlight further a crucial move made by Peirce in his semiotics such that: the interpretant can always become the sign for another iteration of meaning-­making. To understand this, think about a conversation: it is usually structured by people elaborating upon others’, as well as their own, past utterances. Each utterance is taken as the grounds for the next, closing some possible interpretations and opening others. Any sustained thought, indeed every daydream, proceeds in that way, moving from image to image, or from one syllogism to the next.  (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:24) Thus, it is through an unknown number of iterations that object, sign, and interpretant interact to produce meanings in the reflective gaze of the researcher. One should note that the researcher is not an actor in general, and the meaning­making process progresses in a more restricted manner. To be more specific, the “object” researchers deal with refers to the information solicited from the actors they encounter in the field; the “sign,” to the hypothesis they have derived from the existing literature; and the “interpretant,” the budding generalization they attain every time when asserting what they think of as a tentative and always fallible explanation. Hence, the idea of ethnographic reflection is akin to “diagnostic ethnography” coined by Duneier (2002). It refers to the situation in which ethnographer encounters informants in a particular field – i.e., the object – with the sociological equivalent of the doctor’s medicine bag of diagnostic tools derived from already-­existing sociological theory – i.e., sign – and utilizes these tools to generate a specific explanation of the “symptoms” in the field – i.e., interpretant (Duneier 2002:1566; see also Wilson & Chaddha 2009:560). Rather than a statistical testing of a null hypothesis aiming to identify “a single correct designation of meaning,” the reflection of the ethnographer is “an open and ongoing process” (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:24), aiming to assert explanations. The meaning derived from the pragmatic chain constitutes the understanding that leads to an “explanation.” One may note that Ricoeur’s insight on the explanation-­understanding relation comes into this process. Being referred to is Ricoeur’s proposition that “explanation and understanding would

50   Pinning down experience be considered as relative moments in a complex process that could be termed interpretation” (1991:26); and his dictum that “understanding without explanation is blind … explanation without understanding is empty” (1982:307). Similar meaning-­making contours are registered at the side of the actor who encounters the researcher in the field. Disregarding whether the actor is aware of the researcher’s true identity as an investigator and/­or his/­her true purpose of the investigation, the actor also needs to step outside the intersubjectivity with the researcher occasionally to stop-­and-think in order to reflect what the researcher means, or/­and how to answer the researcher’s queries raised. In the world of contemporaries, the actor also follows the above mentioned pragmatic logics of meaning-­making governed by object, sign, and interpretant. However, the actor possesses relatively less restriction than the researcher in reflection. To the actor, the “sign” is unlikely to be drawn from the academic literature, and more likely to involve the commonsensical constructs of the society the actor belongs to; or what Schutz terms the “stock of knowledge,” accumulated through the everyday life process called “typification,”3 or what Peirce terms, “a wickerwork of hypotheses” without which our meaningful life cannot be possible.4 Also, unlike the researcher, the “interpretant” derived from the sign-­ object relation is not necessarily the budding generalization. It can be any effect that “completes meaning-­making,” anything “visible or invisible, evoked by the sign-­object” (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:24); or simply put, anything that the actor considers as explanation (Figure 3.3). Moreover, while the actor can freely present what he/­she considers as his/­her own explanation to the researcher in the field, the researcher very often refrains from presenting his/­her own explanation to the actor.5 Such non-­judgmental attitude is largely in line with the methodic tenets of the naturalist inquiry which minimize the researcher’s deliberate interventions into the actor’s explanation. Therefore, it is the actor–researcher intersubjectivity and the individual subjectivities of the two parties that enter the reflective meaning-­making process of the researcher, which eventually result in the textualizing of the information as fieldnotes (Figure 3.4). Fieldnotes thus represent the researcher’s textualization of their mental back-­and-forth recursive process between a set of observations (i.e., object) and a hypothesis (i.e., sign). This whole process of producing fieldnotes is, interestingly enough, akin to what Clifford calls the “moment of inscription” – which is also the epistemological break I have been proposing so far – during which the researcher turns his/­her gaze away from the informants; he writes: [The researcher, in the “moment of inscription”] glances at her [field] notes, records a break (perhaps only for an instant) in the flow of social discourse, a moment of abstraction (or distraction) when a participant-­ observers jots down a mnemonic word or phrase to fix an observation or to recall what someone has just said [i.e., object].… [It] also represents a moment when the ethnographer refers to some prior list of questions, traits or hypotheses [i.e., sign] – a personal “Notes and Queries.” (Clifford 1990:51)

Ethnographic data and analysis   51

Figure 3.3  Logical inferences behind the actor–researcher interaction during fieldwork.

As for the contents and meaning of fieldnotes, they are not fixed once and for all. The researcher is free to revisit them anytime beyond the fieldwork situation. They can be revisited in a quiet night when the researcher is lying on the bed recollecting what has happened in the field after a whole day of fieldwork. The re-­visitation can be the reminiscence of a particular conversation with an informant months after fieldwork. Or, it can be a retrospection prompted by a reminder from the researcher’s PhD thesis supervisor; or by a new concept the researcher comes across in reading an academic paper. In other words, it can be any reflection of a fieldwork situation on the part of the researcher anywhere and anytime after the fieldwork was completed. With these reflections, the researcher may realize that he/­she has not written down something very important, and later adds it to his/­her fieldnotes. Hence, it is through the unknown number of reiterations of inferences on the contents and meaning of  the fieldnotes that the ethnographic data begins to evolve. Ethnographic data  is thus transient in nature as it is always subjected and re-­subjected to a(nother) reiteration of meaning-­making in the reflective gaze of the researcher.

52   Pinning down experience

Figure 3.4 Logical inferences behind the actor–researcher interaction that leads to fieldnotes and ethnographic data.

Ethnographic data is always evolving, or I would call it, discovering. And, the back and forth process illustrated insofar suggests how the lived experience of the actor enters the researcher’s reflective gaze and becomes textualized as the researcher’s fieldnotes, and later – upon reflections – as ethnographic data. One should note that to conceptualize the formation of ethnographic data in this way attends seriously to the irreducibility of the actor’s experience in the researcher’s explanation. Both the actor’s intersubjective moments with the researcher, and the actor’s subjective (reflective) moments constitute the indispensable components of the ethnographic data. Therefore, I always find Clifford’s claim on the researcher’s attempt to represent the “native point of view” in ethnography problematic as Clifford seems to suggest that the researcher’s representation of others is nothing but, “the assertion and certification of the  anthropologist, who actually suppresses the collaboration of his ‘native’ informants in the ethnographic fiction” (1986:118). I also find it imprecise to  overstate the prowess of the ethnographer, as Asad does, who has the “final authority in determining the subject’s meanings,” and become “the real

Ethnographic data and analysis   53 authority of the latter” (1986:162–163). To reiterate here is that ethnographic data is by nature not “everything goes” as deemed by the researcher; rather, it is constrained by what Tavory and Timmermans (2014:27) calls “the affordances of objects” which limit, rather than encourage, interpretative potential of the resulting ethnographic text; in more precise terms, they write: [T]o say that there are multiple ways to signify an observation is not to say that either our intended interpretations or those of actors in the field will prevail. Like the actors we follow in the field or through the archives, we are constrained by the affordances of objects. Not everything goes. The object in qualitative research limits the interpretations we can project. (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:27; first emphasis is original; second, mine) Put differently, the information provided by the actor (i.e., object) can never be explained away by the researcher’s hypothesis (i.e., sign). Rather, the researcher only focuses on a specific aspect of the data solicited in the field, and aims to issue an explanation by enacting along the meaning-­making chains. Tavory and Timmermans recast such an irreducibility of the actor’s lived experience in terms of “constraints” or “resistance” that the object exerts against the representation of the sign; they write: [W]hen we signify an object, we point toward a specific aspect of it. And yet, the object must be understood as an active part of the puzzle of meaning-­making. Even as we signify it, the properties of the object put some constraints on the signs. Even the most whimsical, unexpected, aberrant sign is somewhat limited by the properties of the object. Objects, moreover, act back and defy our expectations and signification. Meaning-­ making occurs partly in the tension between how the object is represented by the sign and the resistance it offers action. (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:25; my emphases) Ethnographic data thus marks the commitment of the researcher to enter the intersubjectivity with the actor during fieldwork; and by doing so, the researcher is engaged in a meaning-­making process that intervenes in the shaping the resulting data regarding the actor. There always exists uncertainty about whether the researcher really knows the actor, as was mentioned upfront in the preface of this book. The situation is akin to how a physical scientist ascertains the properties of an electron – an entity which cannot be directly seen, described, or captured, similar to the experience of the other to an ethnographer. What the physical scientist does is to bombard another electron on to the target electron, and through the “traces” left by the target electron, the physical scientist knows the position of it. Uncertainty about the properties of the target electron swiftly emerge, however, as once the position of an electron is known, its velocity is not. It is because the velocity has been influenced by the bombardment of the shooting electron. The same uncertainty is observed in the ethnographic

54   Pinning down experience situation where the researcher endeavors to know the actor. The engagement of the researcher in the intersubjectivity with the actor is similar to the bombardment of a shooting electron on a target electron. Through the unknown number of iterations in the meaning-­making process, an explanation on the part of the researcher is eventually issued through textualization. Based on three key features discussed insofar about ethnographic inquiries: (i) the inevitability of the epistemological distance between the actor and researcher; (ii) the necessity of the researcher to make sense of the actor during fieldwork and writing ethnography; and (iii) the irreducibility of the experience of the other, I come to define ethnographic data as the actor’s explanation in researcher’s explanation. These three features in general echo Lévinas’ philosophical discovery of alterity – or human otherness – that underscores the infinite distance between oneself and the other. Such radical alterity ensures that any attempt on the part of the self to fully encapsulate or totalize the other is doomed to failure.6 Furthermore, my definition of ethnographic data is conceptually consistent with that of historical knowledge (data) issued by Collingwood, who is sharply aware of the Gadamerian temporal distance intercepting in-­ between the researcher and the historical text (Kobayashi & Marion 2011). To Collingwood, the past “is not dead past but lives on in the present”; rather than considering the past as “knowledge of the past” or “knowledge of the present,” he suggests precisely that the past “is knowledge of the past in the present” (1946:174–175; my emphasis).7 And, since the actor’s explanation is in and irreducible to the researcher’s explanation; the ethnographer’s voice, as rightly portrayed by Stoller, “cannot, strictly speaking, be … [his/­her] own … [; and,] the voices in ethnographic prose or films cannot be strictly those of whom … [the researcher] represent[s]” (1994:359). Before proceeding to the second sub-­process of an ethnographic inquiry, two more points regarding fieldnotes and ethnographic data are worth mentioning. First, I hope that the argument is clear enough around how fieldnotes constitute a key which bridge fieldwork and ethnographic data. Fieldnotes are neither merely a mnemonic device (Emerson et al. 1995), nor something beyond systematic understanding. Here, I raise further my disagreement with Clifford who states that “it is difficult to say something systematic about fieldnotes, since they [ethnographers] cannot even define them with much precision” (Clifford 1990:53). Second, it must be acknowledged that from fieldwork to fieldnotes, and as we will see very quickly, from fieldnotes to ethnographic data, the processes are destined to entail “imputed loss from fieldwork to writing” (Hastrup 1990:51; see also Sperber 1985:6); or as Bruner (1986) argues, there are always inevitable “gaps” between “reality, experience, and [the] expressions [of that experience]” (1986:7). The loss entails, at least, two inter-­related ways. One is data reduction. The ethnographer is always confronted with the impossible task of textualizing everything he/­she experiences during fieldwork in fieldnotes, and textualizing all fieldnotes in the resulting ethnography. Stubbs, a sociolinguist, has already pointed out the audio data solicited from an interview are “too rich to be useful”; and all one needs to do is focus on certain “features of

Ethnographic data and analysis   55 communication which are relevant” (1983:239). Evans-­Pritchard once describes his mental struggles against data reduction; he writes: I have always held, and still hold, that one should record in one’s notebooks as much as possible, everything one observes. I know that this is an impossible task.… And how much that goes into the notebooks should go into print? Ideally, I suppose, everything.… I feel it … to be a duty to publish all one knows, though this is a burden hard to be borne – and publishers think so too. (Evans-­Pritchard 1976:254) The other way of “data loss” involves data regression. Since one is epistemologically retrained from textualizing everything, the researcher is required, as suggested by Evans-­Pritchard, to conduct “[a] certain degree of abstraction” on data, “otherwise we would get nowhere” (1976:254). Quoting William James, Throop calls this process “subtraction” in contradistinction against “addition” through which experience is constructed out of an interpretive process of re-­ enactment or evocation of “simply adding up particular elements into more complex wholes” (Throop 2009:554). Instead, Throop suggests that ethnographic data must undergo a process of “abstraction” through which “particular qualities, characteristics, or attributes of the always complex and dynamic field of experience” are selected and conducive to analytical “objects” in opposition to our subjective life. I call it a regression because, as I shall argue in the next section, ethnographic data must eventually regress on certain theoretical concepts through an analytical process in order that one can possibly explain the data.

Ethnographic analysis With ethnographic data at hand, the researcher is ready to conduct analysis. Although in principle, researchers can conduct analysis once they obtain ethnographic data in the field, they usually prefer to conduct analysis after calling fieldwork “completed”; packed their fieldnotes, notebook computer, and camera in their luggage, and carried their tablet and cell phone that contain audio and visual data files; and return home, or return to the office in their hometown. One reason is that by then they can save the hassle of traversing back and forth between the world of consociates and that of contemporaries. Strictly speaking, the data the researcher deals with when conducting analysis back home is epistemologically different from that they obtain during fieldwork. The former data set is a re-­contextualization and re-­textualization of the latter in a retrospective gaze. In other words, when conducting analysis which is physically severed from the fieldwork site, researchers place themselves in the milieu of reminiscence and reflection (solely in the world of contemporaries) within which they focus on analyzing the ethnographic data, with an explicit objective to achieve an interpretation; in other words, they are tasked to explain the data.

56   Pinning down experience At this moment, what kind of scientific explanation can be derived from the analysis given the nature of ethnographic data illustrated insofar becomes an imminent epistemological question. It has been commonly recognized that ethnographers fare better than other researchers, who focus mainly on survey or interview data, in observing the actors’ interactional dynamics in natural settings, and in documenting the actor’s motives, actions and contexts with high degree of descriptive and discursive details. However, ethnographers usually encounter greater difficulty in identifying causality, or explaining “why” particular patterns of motives and actions manifest themselves as they do in particular contexts (Lamont & Swidler 2014:166). So, which explanan should count as a proxy of the causality to explain the data (explanandum) in ethnographic inquiries? Recent scholarship generally suggests that ethnographic explanation go beyond the actors’ accounts of their own motives. Reed, for instance, coins the notion of “maximal interpretation” which refers to a type of interpretive maneuver that “claims to know more about human research subjects than they know about themselves” (2008:188). Martin dismisses the validity of explanations offered by the very people being studied as their explanations may be “partial,” if not “wrong” (2011:6). Unambiguously put, Tavory and Timmermans write that “ethnographers are not beholden to [the] … indigenous explanations as final arbiters of causality” (2014:94). Lamont and Swidler further remind us that “even an understanding of people’s motives, and of immediate constraints and opportunities as they present themselves to individuals, does not necessarily provide an explanation of the situation in which these others find themselves” (2014:166). These scholars unanimously call in one way or another to look for a deeper and broader comprehension of the logics and origins of the data with the use of theory; in other words, the use of conceptual abstraction that enables the “analysis of facts, and, ultimately, the construction of knowledge [new theory]” (Reed 2011:21; see also Tavory & Timmermans 2014:35). Reed has been incisive in his proposition of “deep interpretation” through which the researcher uses theory to “constructs [a] … coherence to her case [data]”; that is: “the investigator combines bits of theory with bits of evidence, and then these theory-­fact pairs are brought together into a meaningful whole” (2011:10; my emphasis). Here, I intend to push Reed’s argument of “deep interpretation” slightly deeper. I propose that to explain a set of ethnographic data is to identify the best correspondence between the pertinent theoretical concepts and the empirical regularities manifested in the very data; or simply, to achieve a theory–data fit. Following Peirce’s pragmatism, I suggest that the act of analyzing data involves recursively moving back and forth between specific ethnographic data and theoretical generalization through many logical chain iterations. The “object” in question refers to the ethnographic data at hand; the “sign,” a theoretical framing; and the “interpretant,” a generalization through which the empirical regularities manifest in the data fit the theoretical frame; hence, an explanation. Usually, this explanation is a tentative one as the process to ascertain an explanation is seldom done in the once-­and-for-­all manner.

Ethnographic data and analysis   57 An ethnographic explanation is finally achieved only upon many rounds of inference reiterations, because all of the three key components in the pragmatic logical chain – ethnographic data, theoretical frame and explanation – do not exist in constant terms, but as variables. The evolving nature of ethnographic data has been illustrated in the previous section. As to the theoretical frame, the first few rounds of iteration usually begin with established theories. However, given the nature of ethnographic data – its affordances, resistances, dictates – and the assumption that “[t]here are always multiple ways to understand an observation, a snippet of action, and an interaction” (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:27), the theoretical frames which subsequently feed into the iterative process are very likely to be revised versions of the existing theories, or even new theoretical frames. And, given the variability of the ethnographic data and theoretical frame, the explanation is subject to change. The interpretants begin as proto-­explanations, and, after many rounds of pragmatic logical operations, the researcher would come up with his/­her most plausible explanation – a best fit – such that he/­she obtains “a better sense of what kinds of plausible theoretical narratives fit the phenomena [in question]” (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:27). This operation echoes Reed’s suggestion of the “conceptual method by which an interpretive investigator could posit a mechanism or a motive [through the use of theories] when analyzing her evidence” (2011:159; original emphasis). One should note that the process of analyzing ethnographic data that leads to a best theory–data fit necessarily involves three inference operations: deduction, induction, and abduction.8 Given the impossibility of replicating a fieldwork setting and dataset, ethnographers often realize that deductive logic can be quickly out of commission (for no established theory seems to explain all key features of a specific set of ethnographic data), and that inductive logic results in endless coding task (for the discovering nature of ethnographic data). Scholars generally deem that abductive logic plays a special role in achieving a reciprocal grasping between data and a theoretical frame in an ethnographic inquiry. Let’s consider the formal structures of all three inferences as follows: Deduction: Rule: All beans from this sack are white; Case: These beans are from this sack; Result: These beans are white. Induction: Case: These beans are from this sack; Result: These beans are white; Rule: All beans from this sack are white. Abduction: Rule: All beans from this sack are white; Result: These beans are white; Case: These beans are from this sack. (Danermark et al. 1997:90; originally from Peirce 1932) In case, the researcher finds that the beans are not white; they will have a clear conclusion that the rule of “All beans from this sack are white” is refuted by following either the deductive, or inductive inference. However, an abductive analysis is not concerned with refuting a rule with surprising results. For knowing that the beans are not white, the abductive logic prompts one to see what happens with the rule, and seek new rules in order to explain this unforeseen

58   Pinning down experience result. Abduction thus comes into play once we encounter data that do not neatly fit an established theory and we start thinking anew about how the observed evidence can be explained otherwise. With the new rules in place, one can recast them to the same set of data and scrutinize it in a new context. Abduction thus can also be expressed as a practice of scientific discovery in terms of re-­description or re-­contextualization, through which already known occurrences can be explained in a novel way (Jensen 1995:148). It is along this line that Danermark et al. claim that abductive inference commonly brings about “new insight as an outcome of our interpreting or explaining something” or “a new meaning to already known phenomena” (1997:91). Timmermans and Tavory further suggest: “Abduction is the most conjectural of the three logics because it seeks a situational fit between observed facts and rules” (2012:171). Simply put, to achieve a theory–data fit it is the researcher’s willed endeavor to conceptually narrativize the actor’s account through which the actor makes sense of his/­her situation. Hence, Tavory and Timmermans call for the necessity to “leave behind both strict inductivism and strict deductivism” in conducting theorization in qualitative research (2014:21) as abductive analysis is usually able to generate novel theoretical insights by extending “an existing theory to a new substantive area when we encounter a surprising observation” (2014:38). Since the ethnographic data is by nature discovering and, thanks to the inferential process of abductive analysis, to achieve a theory–data fit is always a creative process. To speak of “a,” rather than “the” theory–data fit means that any outcome of an ethnographic analysis is always a form of fallible hypothesis, one possible way of explanation. It therefore should be able to dodge the epistemological accusation of single interpretation, or in Watson’s sarcastic terms, “empiricism,” through which “all possible readings [are reduced] to one – the one that in unassailable by virtue of its correspondence to a supposed free-­standing reality” (1991:78–79). But, the notion of “one” possible explanation in ethnography plays an important role in limiting the horizon of an ethnographic text when one endeavors to conduct interpretation of it. It is based on the premise of one possible, fallible explanation stemmed from an ethnographic analysis that constitutes Gadamer’s seemingly contradicting claims on the text’s horizon as both the limitations and potentials of human understanding (1988:269). When speaking of ethnography as a text, it effectively contributes to the limits of the interpretive potential of an ethnographic text. Echoing Chapter 1, one’s interpretation of an ethnography is not “anything goes,” but a constrained action based on the “open” and “also finite” horizon of a text (cf. Herda 1999:5). Here, I find it suggestive to hark back to Fish’s most famous quote: “The mistake is to think of interpretation as an activity in need of constraints, when in fact interpretation is a structure of constraints” (1980:356; original emphasis). To detail schematically the logical process through which fieldwork experience eventually constitutes a theory–data fit represents, according to Watson, “an indispensable part of the craft of anthropology”; however, he observes that “nowhere does it [anthropological manual] provide instruction about how to

Ethnographic data and analysis   59 construct facts [i.e., fieldwork data]” (1991:79). Watson explains this by suggesting that: … to do so would be letting a particularly embarrassing cat out of the bag. Showing how the thing is done does indeed suggest that it is not done at all.… To show that a fact is constituted is to show that it is not a fact in the sense intended [by the actor]: it is not a thing encountered [during fieldwork], having an existence prior to and independent of the writer’s [i.e., researcher’s] discourse. (Watson 1991:79) Readers should now understand that my foregoing illustration is not Watson’s “embarrassing cat” because neither ethnographic data is by nature “a thing encountered [during fieldwork],” nor ethnographic analysis is a non-­constituted fact “prior to and independent of ” the researcher’s theorization. However, from experience to ethnographic data, then to analysis; the process is not without epistemological burdens if I am to claim the resulting ethnographic analysis as scientific. The epistemological risks faced are originated from, at least, three fronts. First, to attain a theory–data fit, one is inevitable to smooth out variabilities, or ignore inconsistencies in the dataset that do not feature a fit with a theoretical frame; or what Obeyesekere cogently puts: to fit “the diverse, often contradictory information into the straitjacket of a single interpretation” (Borofsky 1997:268). This epistemological hazard is akin to Wieder’s criticism of ethnomethodological studies in employing ad hoc locally generating rules in reconstructing events; he asserts: [In] reconstructing some feature of an event so that it can be seen that it fits the prescription of the rule, [it is likely to] ignor[e] some aspect of an event that does not fit the rule … [And, while] proceeding to classify an event[,] … some “critical” aspects are left undetermined [which] are essential, unavoidable practices. Whenever persons are confronted with having to make a choice and cannot rely on leaving this case in the status of undecided, they will employ these practices. (Wieder 1971:129) Epistemological risk of this type – I call it, the foreclosure of meaning – is commonly accused of regarding certain strains of realist writings that allegedly “iron[s] out inconsistencies, establish[es] coherence and insinuate[s] a shared point of view between reader and writer that convinces the former that both see the world in much the same way” (Stronach & MacLure 1997:53; see also Talburt 2004). Second, the researcher’s biography, professional positionality, and implicit theoretical predilection may exert unascertainable effects on shaping the interpretant. It is widely known that Bourdieu’s concept of “participant

60   Pinning down experience objectivation” is to deal with this epistemological risk, but it remains a moot question as how “participant objectivation” can be incorporated in the analytical process that leads to a theory–data fit. On this point, I am less than certain than Tavory and Timmermans (2014) who imply that both the sign-­object inferences and the checking of influences on the inference process due to the researcher’s biography, bias, and habits of thought can be simultaneously conducted in the abductive analytical process.9 It is because to coordinate a best fit between theory and data, and to reflect on one’s own pre-­understandings of the theory and data in question demand very different knowledge bases: one is derived mainly from the literature; the other, introspection. Besides, the task of checking against the researcher’s bias and pre-­understanding cannot be considered done without engaging the wider intellectual community. The third, and perhaps, the most imminent and complicated epistemological challenge facing the scientific claim of an ethnographic analysis is epistemic relativism. Baghramian and Carter (2015) write that since claims to knowledge and justification are “relative to an epistemic system,” the “very possibility of objectivity” is doubted. It means that one cannot “demonstrate in a non-­circular way that [one] … epistemic system is superior to [others]” as there are “many genuinely alternative, even incompatible, epistemic systems” (2015:n.p.). Baghramian and Carter make a further distinction between “weak” and “strong” forms of relativism; they write: [Strong relativism] is the claim that one and the same belief or judgment may be true in one context (e.g., culture or framework or assessment) and false in another [i.e., anything goes]. Weak relativism is the claim that there may be beliefs or judgments that are true in one framework but not true in a second simply because they are not available or expressible in the second. (Baghramian & Carter 2015:n.p.; original emphasis)10 To my knowledge, anthropologists have not discerned how different elements involved in ethnographic analysis – ethnographic data, theory (theoretical frame), theory–data fitting (abduction), and theory–data pair (the outcome of abduction) – feature different forms of relativism with precise vocabularies and substantial justifications (Table 3.1). In the previous section, I have argued that ethnographic data is non-­relativistic, as its raison d’etre is based on the irreducibility of the actor’s experience; but what about the other three elements? Theory, as it stands alone, features strong epistemic relativism as different theoretical frames, for example, witchcraft belief, Marxist materialism, and the highly quantifiable quality of life theory, all represent alternative rationalities, and how a “good” or “bad” theory is lies entirely in the talents and resources of their respective advocates. As to the theory–data fitting, I argued just a short while ago that it does not feature strong relativism (i.e., not “anything goes”) because data is not relativistic and it always expresses itself to the researcher as having inter­ pretive limits of affordances, resistances, and dictates. However, since the fitting  itself is a conjectural and creative process, there is limited –  albeit not

Ethnographic data and analysis   61 Table 3.1 Key elements of ethnographic analysis and different forms of epistemic relativism featured Key element of ethnographic analysis

Featuring epistemic relativism? Yes, strong relativism

Yes, weak relativism

Data Theory Theory–data fitting Theory–data pair

Ground of objectivity, if not relativism

No, not relativism ✓

Irreducibility of lived experience

✓

Community of inquiry (or, scientific community)

✓ ✓

without – objective ground for one to judge whether an empirical case features a correspondence with Theory A, but fails the assignment with Theory B. The ­theory–data fitting process thus features a weak relativism in a sense that a researcher can easily judge a labor strike of factory workers in contemporary China as failing to fit the causes into the witchcraft magic paradigm, but he/­she may find it equally acceptable to explain the case in light of either Marxist materialism, or the quality of life theory. On this point, Reed and Alexander’s (2009) version of attaining a theory–data fit is particularly evocative. They contend that to conduct ethnographic explanation is to achieve an “elective affinity [i.e., a fit] between the meanings of theory and the meanings of a given case” that incurs both “ ‘explanation’ (grasping that which fundamentally accounts for the actions of others) and ‘interpretation’ (dependent upon our theories and our intuitions for this very grasping)”; and, they emphasize that this “does not result in free floating and irrational relativism” (2009:35; my emphasis). Therefore, to Reed and Alexander, the analytical process leading to a theory–data fit does feature a relativism though it is not of an all-­out strain that leads to free floating and irrationality. It is in this light that they argue the “mutual grasping” between “the meanings of theory and the meanings of a given case” as “a necessary but not sufficient condition for being recognized as truthful by the scientific community” (2009:35). Having the most innovative potential at a cost of scientificity is probably the key reason that scholars consistently suggest that abduction is the weakest, or the least rigorous mode of inference compared with deduction and induction. This stance has the consent of Tavory and Timmermans (2014) who remark that abductive analysis means to seek “a situational fit between observed facts and general rules without recourse to the explanatory proposition to begin with” (2014:38). Danermark et al. (1997:91) state that abduction is less certain than deduction in asserting a set of data and a knowledge system are related in a certain way; rather, the abductive logic only shows the two might be related (see also Habermas 1972:113; Collins 1985).

62   Pinning down experience But, once a theory–data pair is established, it is no longer relativistic. It is then unavoidably subjected to plausibility tests with other existing theory–data pairs. The resulting debates and re-­evaluations will allow all members of the intellectual community (including the researcher herself ) to have their own judgment on whether the newly suggested theory–data pair offers a “better” or “poorer” job of explanation; or whether it can amalgamate with other pairs that adopt a similar explicative rationality, and constitute an explanatory “paradigm.” In other words, when a theory–data fit is textualized and published, the abductive logic recedes into the background, and the more rigorous deductive and inductive logic come into play. The objective ground for the very deductivism and inductivism hinges upon the engagement of a newly formed theory–data fit in the realist, open-­to-all arena called the community of inquiry coined by Peirce. As I shall argue in the next section and the rest of this book, an ethnographer cannot effectively guard against the epistemological risks of foreclosure of meaning, researcher’s biographical bias, and finally, epistemic relativism in claiming his/­her theory–data fit as scientific without recourse to the community of inquiry (or, the scientific community), which leads to a strain of realism, I shall call it engaging realism.

Towards engaging realism The concept of “community of inquiry” was coined by Peirce. According to Tavory and Timmermans (2013), it refers to the “broader intellectual community” in which a “proposed causal explanation” is engaged, and functions as a milieu where one can “convince a ‘community of inquiry’ that a particular [theorized] account fits observations and that the proposed causal explanation11 is better than [other] plausible alternatives” (2013:684; original emphases) It means that once a theory–data fit is formulated and becomes “a point of reference” in the intellectual community (Aron 1999:194), its plausibility is only relative to other existing “points of reference,” i.e., other established explanatory references that constitute the meaning network that governs the thought of members of that intellectual community. The community of inquiry can pose challenges regarding whether an alternative account makes an equally compelling, or even better fit between theory and empirical observation than a proposed explanation. Debates can be specifically waged against whether a newly formed theory–data fit has unjustifiably ironed out contradictions and concealed inconsistencies in evidence in order to make the fit “fit.” Or one can critically interrogate the researcher’s biographical bias on the proposed explanatory frame from which his/­her knowledge claim has been culled. The main goal of engaging in the community of inquiry thus is to conduct validation in terms of plausibility check regarding a particular explanation. One should note that competing ethnographic explanations do not solely involve theories as in the natural sciences, due to the specificity of ethnographic data. One can assert with confidence that electrons, or gravities, are pretty much the same observed in a laboratory in Beijing and in London. However, no two sets of ethnographic

Ethnographic data and analysis   63 data are the same, and any ethnographic explanation offers a conceptually narrativized account of a particular set data.12 Incurring more judgmentality than creativity, the participation on the part of the community inquirers fosters the utilization of the more rigorous logic of deduction as to evaluate whether a proposed explanation successfully or unsuccessfully emulates alternative ones; and the more decisive logic of induction as to decide whether it infers a theory–data relation that is homological with other established explanatory references, and steers toward a single explanatory frame.13 It is under this light that the community of inquiry – echoing Peirce, and Tavory and Timmermans – does not lead to “a relativist world” (2014:105). A paramount insight of the community of inquiry is that it goes beyond the intersubjectivity taken for granted by the researcher and his/­her informants (the world of consociates) and the reflective monologue between the researcher and his/­her tradition (the world of contemporaries). Instead, it is an open-­to-all arena which sustains ongoing conversations among the researcher, his/­her peers, his/­her intellectual predecessors, and even his/­her informants under study, as long as his/­her informants are willing to engage themselves in the debates with a particular conceptual narrativized account of the data. If the informant of an ethnographic study is willing to engage in the activities of the community of inquiry, he/­she acts like a scientist. Tavory and Timmermans (2014) illustrate this point succinctly by stating that “a community of inquiry should be open to everyone and accessible to all who apply the methods of scientific work” (2014:104). The community of inquiry is not a democratic effort necessarily to reach a consensus, but serves a ground of objectivity constituted by people who lively engage with each other in debates and exchanges. It also serves as knowledge base repository from which ethnographers draw intellectual resources to formulate their research questions in mind, which, as mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, constitute the raison de etre of ethnographic data. In such way, a full circle that captures the ethnographic process from research questions to ethnographic data, to analysis, and back to research questions is established. As will be apparent, I shall push the concept of the community of inquiry further, as not only a discussion platform, but as an ontological entity, which is by nature constituted (by its participants) but also constituting (the thought and action of ) its participants – a relation akin to society in opposition to its people; or, the social structure to its agents. In other words, it constitutes an essential part of the realist foundation on which scientific knowledge is culled; or in Bhaskar’s definition of realism, a foundation which “exist[s] and act[s] independently of human [the participants’] activity, and hence of both [the participants’] sense-­experience and thought” (Bhaskar 1989:13). I also suggest that the foregoing discussions on the nature of ethnographic data and analysis point to a realism that bolsters ethnographic inquiry as science, and that I would give it the label of engaging realism. Before proceeding further, one should now understand why the ground of objectivity of ethnographic data due to the irreducibility of the experience of the other (as indicated in Table 3.1), cannot serve directly as a realist basis for

64   Pinning down experience ethnographic analysis. It is because, unlike the community of inquiry, the actor’s experience is not open-­to-all. Instead, the very irreducibility is exposed only to the researcher in question. It becomes accessible to other people only when it enters the researcher’s gaze as ethnographic data, passes through the analytical process of theory–data fit, and eventually engages in the community of inquiry.

Concluding remarks To consider ethnographic data as “actor’s explanation in researcher’s explanation” takes into account the irreducibility of the actor’s experience in the researcher’s gaze. To state that the goal of ethnographic analysis is to achieve a theory–data fit suggests how an ethnographic text is produced with a limited, yet open horizon. This is also to suggest that an ethnographic analysis is not complete without formulating a theory–data correspondence that is ready to be identified as a reference point in the knowledge base repository called the community of inquiry. To engage an ethnographic explanation in the community of inquiry is essential, as it is the key step to consider ethnographic inquiry as science. It echoes Chapter 1 in which the process of writing ethnography is divided into two epistemic levels: the level of theory–data fit and that of theoretical discursivity, which, in this chapter, concretized as the community of inquiry. Implicated in delineating the two epistemic levels as clear and distinct is that there is a division of labor between creativity at the level of theory–data fit and the rigorous checking of the plausibility of the very fit at the level of theoretical discursivity. While the former level mainly involves abductivism; the latter, deductivism and inductivism.14 This two-­level epistemology reminds me of the time-­honored tenets of Max Weber who suggests that social scientists should constantly make:  clear to the readers … exactly at which point the scientific investigator becomes silent and the evaluating and acting person begins to speak. In other words, it should be explicit just where the arguments are addressed to the analytical understanding [i.e., in my case, the involvement of deductive and inductive logics in conducting plausibility check] and where to the sentiments [i.e., in my case, the involvement of abductive logic in conducting theory–data fit]. (Weber 1949:60)

Notes   1 For example, Malinowski writes: “I began to kasaysuya [a round dance and game] myself. I needed exercise, moreover, I could learn more by taking part personally” (1967:280–281). Boas encourages ethnographers to learn native language so as to gain “much [more] information … by listening to conversations and taking part in their daily life” than replying interpreters (1911:60).   2 This position is in contradistinction against “objectivism,” which, according to Herzfeld, “appears to promise a tidy separation of the observer from the observed – a

Ethnographic data and analysis   65 lack of direct involvement [on the part of the researcher] as the guarantee of objective assessment” (2018:9).   3 To Schutz, “[a]ll projects of my forthcoming acts are based upon my [stock of] knowledge at hand at the time of projecting” (1982:20–23). By the stock knowledge at hand, Schutz means that the stock contains, among other things, “a set of more or less loosely connected rules and maxims of behavior in typical situations, recipes for handling things of certain types so as to attain typical results” (1975:120). The stock of knowledge thus consists of a set of systems of relevant typifications, of typical solutions for typical practical and theoretical problems, of typical precepts for typical behavior, including the pertinent system of appresentational references. All this knowledge is taken for granted beyond question by the respective social group. (1975:348)   4 Quoting Peirce’s own words, Joas and Knöbl writes: “our entire perception of everyday life and our actions rest upon nothing but a wickerwork of hypotheses (or abduction as he calls them), without which we would be quite unable to live a meaningful life” (2009:4).   5 Although I concur in general with Tavory and Timmermans (2014) in considering Peirce’s pragmatic logic as the meaning-­making process, I disagree with them in conflating the making chains of the researcher and that of the actor. In my opinion, the authors have not done radically enough to identify the differences between the two sets of meaning-­making chains, which eventually constitute the defining feature of ethnographic data. I believe that their failure in seeing the distinction is due to the different theoretical premise the two authors and I possess. While I underscore the significance of the epistemological break, the two authors do not. Instead, when speaking of the contours of meaning-­making process, they state that “there is no sharp break between what we do as social scientists and what we do when we take off our professional cap” (2014:25).   6 To Lévinas, the Other is simply there (there is, il y a) and presents to the self as a face (le visage). Since it is something other than the self; the face of the Other is always present in its refusal to be contained by the self. The Other always faces human beings as an enigma which cannot be fully grasped in experience if the “otherness” of the Other is to be preserved. As Lévinas puts it: The face is present in its refusal to be contained. In this sense it cannot be comprehended, that is, encompassed. It is neither seen nor touched – for in visual or tactile sensation the identity of the I envelops the alterity of the object, which becomes precisely a content. (1969:194)   7 Such formulation of ethnographic data touches upon the question of epistemological uncertainty, or that of truthfulness, inherent in the resulting explanation. The nature of ethnographic data and the truth value of ethnographic explanation will be discussed in Chapter 4.   8 Another acknowledgment goes to Cicourel (1964) who underlined decades ago that qualitative analysis necessarily utilizes the logics of induction, deduction, and abduction.   9 Specifically, I refer to Tavory and Timmermans’ text: “Abduction … depends on the interplay of observations (the sign-­object) and the way that the researcher’s socially cultivated position – habits of thought and action – helps shape the interpretant” (2014:41; my emphasis). 10 Baghramian and Carter (2015) suggest that Bernard Williams’ “relativism of distance” (Williams 1985) and Ian Hacking’s (1982) defense of variability in styles of reasoning are instances of weak relativism.

66   Pinning down experience 11 Tavory and Timmermans (2013, 2014) consider an explanation due to a theory–data fit as “casual.” I do not agree with this qualification. The issue of causality in ethnographic analysis will be discussed in Chapter 4. 12 The specificity of ethnographic data actually possesses more refined epistemological implications in ethnographic inquiries that space constraints here do not allow me to explore deeper. For example, the ostensible “sameness” of data in the natural sciences easily leads one to forget that theorizations in the natural sciences are also the researcher’s reconstructions; hence, also concept-­dependent. Besides, since ethnographic data is by nature never-­repeat-itself, the call to check whether an ethnographic explanation is good or bad by returning to what Martin suggests as “the first-­person experiences of actors” is an impossibility; and the “criteria for good explanation,” including prediction, intervention, and transposability, are highly difficult to apply (2011:340). Herzfeld has rightly pointed out that owing to the different nature of ethnographic data as opposed to that of the natural sciences, any attempt “to extract predictive laws from such persistent unpredictability is a wild goose chase” (2018:5). 13 While I use the term “plausibility” as characteristic of the goal of the community of inquiry, Tavory and Timmermans (2014) use the two terms: “plausibility” and “relevance”; they assert that the communities of inquiry raise the question of plausibility: Are there alternative explanations or theories that do a better job of accounting for the analysis? [i.e., the deductive logic] And …, they bring up the question of relevance: If the researcher’s theorization fits the data and is considered plausible, what are the implications of the theorization for other research projects? [i.e., the inductive logic]. (2014:105; original emphases) For the sake of simplicity, I stick to the single term of “plausibility” throughout this book to characterize the goals of both deductivism and inductivism pertinent to the engagement with the community of inquiry. 14 To argue for two distinctive epistemic realms, and a clear division of labor between discovery and justification in ethnographic analysis marks a sharp difference between the epistemology proposed by Tavory and Timmermans (2014) (and by association, Peirce) and me. Tavory and Timmermans cogently put: One of Peirce’s important contributions to the philosophy of science is his refusal of the distinction between discovery and justification. Instead, Peirce argued that creativity is inherent in the research process. If his semiotics and notion of abduction are to be taken seriously, any division of labor between creativity and the rigorous checking of theories against observations is empirically wrong: researchers theorize on the go. The discovery justification division is also analytically wrong. When scientific work is artificially divided into these two realms, theorization becomes mystical: a flash of genius that defies explanation. (2014:6; my emphases)

4 Engaging realism

Scientific knowledge requires a realism to stand, and so does the ethnographic knowledge of which its nature and production process have been outlined in the previous chapters. This chapter endeavors to examine the key features of this proposed realism, which aims to bolster a coherent epistemological foundation for the accumulation of ethnographic knowledge for scientific reasoning. It is argued that engaging realism is premised on three main theses: (i) a researcher’s context-­dependent endeavor to explain the alterity of the other; (ii) an ontological realism answerable to epistemology; and (iii) an epistemic relativism validated by judgmental rationality. I shall also endeavor to demonstrate how the engagement with the scientific community constitutes an epistemological path conducive to the growth of consensual (though always fallible) knowledge, and of “paradigms” in a particular Kuhnian sense. But before proceeding, I need to admit that realism inevitably touches on questions of metaphysics and ontology that many practicing social scientists explicitly or implicitly feel that they can survive and even prosper in their academic career without. Nowadays, researchers conduct fieldwork and write ethnographies according to their usual routines. Ethnographic knowledge seems to grow with every new journal article or book without the researcher feeling the urgency to explain how or why.1 Kemp goes even further as to suggest that social scientists should abandon … [Bhaskar’s (1998:14) search for the “more or less universally recognized features of substantive social life” which constitute the ontological features of the social world] in favour of empirical explanation and problem-­solving and focus on producing compelling substantive theories about the social world. (Kemp 2005:173) Pragmatism-­oriented scholars generally possess a dismissive attitude toward issues of ontology, and its relation to epistemology. Kivinen and Piiroinen, for instance, label ontology “a language game” enjoyed by a certain breed of self-­ proclaimed realist philosophers, and it is “a game that pragmatists find rather useless for even philosophers to participate in, not to mention sociologists” (2004:238–239). Rorty and Searle even remark that “pragmatists have neither

68   Pinning down experience an epistemology nor an ontology” (1999:50), and see no need to discern their interrelation or connection with them. Therefore, before someone is to propose a strain of realism, he/­she has to elucidate why realism, and why realism of this particular kind matters.

Realism, why and of what kind? Realism is committed to the metaphysical and ontological assumption that the world exists independently of the mind, including linguistic practice, conceptual schema, and so on. It is this mind-­independent reality that constitutes the epistemological warranty of any theoretical activities – including scientific investigations – which produce knowledge claims about this world as “real” (Miller 2016; Chakravartty 2017). Realism thus presumes the existence of a break – an ontological one – between the empirical and metaphysical worlds, and that the latter world constitutes the epistemological guarantee of any intellectual exploration of the former. It is most likely since the publication of Writing Culture that these two assumptions have been either neglected implicitly, or rejected explicitly, among practitioners of ethnographic investigations. Sharing Writing Culture’s anti-­realistic creed is Alexander’s famous proposition and widely cited quote that, science can be viewed as an intellectual process that occurs within the context of two distinctive environments, the empirical observational world and the non-­empirical metaphysical one.… The differences between what are perceived as sharply contrasting kinds of scientific arguments should be understood rather as representing different positions on the same epistemological continuum.… [And], one can […] arrange all the different components of scientific thought in terms of such degrees of generality and specificity. (Alexander 1982:2; my emphasis) Nearly three decades after Alexander’s proposed “scientific continuum,” he remains one of the sturdiest opponents against considering ontology as an essential component of social science research. In connection with Reed, Alexander writes: We argue against the all too frequent turn to ontology, whereby critical realists have sought an epistemological guarantor of sociological validity.… We conclude that the rationality of social science can be achieved only by forgoing ontology. (Reed & Alexander 2009:21) In proposing a realism, I follow Bhaskar who sees an ontological distinction instead of a continuum between the empirical regularities and the metaphysical environment.2 In Chapter 2, I explained the inexorability of the epistemological

Engaging realism   69 distinction between the researcher’s observation and the fieldwork environment. These two breaks illustrate a sharp contradistinction against Alexander’s scientific continuum and its components (Figure 4.1), and by association, against his anti-­realist stance with Reed. But, why does this very ontological distinction matters? To realist social scientists, the ontology of the social world matters in empirical investigations because it is unimaginable that the actor is free to create everyday life meanings as they please, or that the researcher can create theoretical conceptualizations of empirical events ex nihilo. Humans, in Bourdieu’s words, are “actualizers who translate into action socially instituted potentialities” (1991:10). As to these “potentialities,” which act as the epistemic resources for agents who live in the empirical world, Bourdieu does not consider them as seeds for producing mechanical causations on agents. Rather, he incorporates them with his signature concept of “habitus” which is in incessant interaction with the development of scientific knowledge alongside the constitution of the very “potentialities”; he writes: [T]hese potentialities in fact exist as such only for agents endowed with socially constituted dispositions [i.e., habitus] that predispose them to perceive those potentialities as such and to realize them. But this also means that these potentialities, which may appear as the product of the development of the immanent tendencies of science, do not contain within themselves the principle of their own actualization. Rather, they become historical reality only through the intervention of agents capable of going beyond the science already constituted (by other agents) in order to perceive it (thanks to it and beyond it) possible to be realized and to “do what is necessary” (which is entirely different from mechanical submission to a physical necessity). (Bourdieu 1991:10; my emphases) Along this line, Bourdieu offers his theoretical route for agents to pry into the independent existence of “potentialities-­turned-historical reality” through the continual “intervention of agents” in order to “perceive it.” For social scientists,

Figure 4.1 Alexander’s Scientific Continuum and its Components (1982:2) and my assertions of breaks.

70   Pinning down experience such “intervention” is supposed to deal with the already constituted scientific community (i.e., the community of inquiry) in order that they can act within, and go beyond it, in order to achieve understanding of social reality in the form of “work.” Paying tribute to Foucault, Bourdieu does not deny that the production of knowledge “work” is partly shaped by power relations in the scientific field; he writes that: no work exists by itself, that is, outside of the relations linking it to other works, proposes to give the name of “field of strategic possibilities” to the “regulated system of differences and dispersions” within which each particular work is defined. [Foucault 1968] (Bourdieu 1991:10; my emphasis) Hence, in order to make any knowledge claims about the reality, each work must engage – actually or potentially – with other works already existing. This engagement, which commonly realizes itself in terms of intellectual debates, “produce their own transcendence [i.e., transcending the knowledge of individual works, and the knowledge resulted from debates], because they are subjected to the criss-­crossing censorship that represents the constitutive reason of the field” (Bourdieu 1990:20). One should be reminded that the notion of the community of inquiry by Tavory and Timmermans have been in line with Bourdieu’s rebuttal on the illusion that a scientific community is operated by certain intrinsic forces derived from purely logical activities; they write: [A community of inquiry is] … often combative, manipulative, and competitive.… [And,] By engaging in … heated debates and exchanges, researchers receive guidance [from the community as an independent existence] on how to go about inquiring, on methodological and theoretical tools, on the relevance of observations, and on ways of communicating and disseminating research results. (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:105) Sharing Bourdieu’s concern that social science knowledge is not produced ex nihilo, Bhaskar portrays an even deeper ontological depth between the empirical and metaphysical, such that knowledge production in the former realm “has ‘intransitive’ objects which exist and act independently of it” (1989:68). These “ ‘intransitive’ objects” – Bhaskar refers to them as “the mechanisms of the production of phenomena in nature” (1989:68) – comprise the ontological bedrock that governs human causalities. These causalities in turn produce a certain degree of patterned regularities that people can live with, without questioning them, and that become social phenomena researchers attempt to account for. As to the researcher’s empirical endeavor to build “a model” to explain an identified phenomenon, “it must depend on the utilization of antecedently existing cognitive materials,” which Bhaskar calls “the ‘transitive’ objects of knowledge” (1989:68). Therefore, what is subjected to empirical scrutiny is not “intransitive

Engaging realism   71 objects,” i.e., mechanisms, but only the “reality of the posited explanation” that operates “under the control of something like a logic of analogy and metaphor of a mechanism, which if it were to exist and act in the postulated way would account for the phenomenon in question the reality” (1989:68; original emphasis). Evidently, Bhaskar’s proposal of the ontological ground (“the ‘intransitive’ objects”) to empirical scientific inquiries is more radical than Bourdieu’s. Bourdieu’s proposal (the “socially instituted potentialities”) mainly governs the knowledge production activities of the scientific community. Bhaskar’s proposal, however, refers to “the mechanisms of the production of phenomena in nature,” which covers virtually all worldly phenomena, of which the production of knowledge in the scientific community is only one of the kinds. In ethnographic inquiries, if the community of inquiry represents a mechanism behind the production of ethnographic knowledge for scientific reasoning, Bhaskar’s “intransitive objects” represent the mechanisms behind that mechanism. If one, including myself, considers Bourdieu’s above mentioned ontological proposal essential to take into account in ethnographic investigations, then by the same logic, one has to consider Bhaskar’s proposal in the same way. The situation is the same as when a researcher has to account for a phenomenon X by asserting that: X is governed by Y; logically, the researcher also needs to consider “what governs Y?” as an important question. It is because this more fundamental raison d’etre, say, Z, which governs Y, will inevitably shape – in one way or another – how Y governs X, and by association, the researcher’s scientific grounds for his/­her explanation. Withholding my evaluation of different proposals of realism, the discussion up to this point should suffice to highlight the importance of the influence, due to the existence of the transcendental realm that undergirds, if not gives rise to, our empirical investigations of social phenomena. If I am to accept that realism and its attendant ontological ground matters in ethnographic inquiries, my immediate task will be to elucidate a kind of realism that is compatible with the nature of ethnographic data and analysis I have been illustrating this in the foregoing discussion, and the nature of “ethnographic truth” derived from the resulting ethnographic texts. In other words, the question is: if realism matters, it is – simply to follow Bhaskar’s assertion (1989:2) – realism of what kind? In more precise terms, my proposed realism should be able to address three crucial questions. First, if the mind-­independent reality exists that delimits and acts as the epistemological guarantee of our understanding of the empirical world, how does it accommodate the fact that ethnographic data is by nature mind-­ dependent? Second, for any knowledge produced from the ethnographic analysis and after engaging in the debates within the community of inquiry, in which way the consequential knowledge – as a social product – reveals, or is related to, the reality which transcends individual minds and the sociality constituted by these minds? Third any realism implies a theory of knowledge, and any theory of knowledge implies a theory of truth; so how does the proposed realism address the antinomy between the epistemic relativism in pursuit of  knowledge spanning diverse ethnographic contexts and the judgmental

72   Pinning down experience rationality whose goal is to pursue the universal truth? These three questions will be addressed in the next three sections roughly in a consecutive order.

The alterity of the other By the moment a person enacts the action of thinking (cogito), he/­she transcends immediately his/­her own ego and encounter the other (cogitatum). If that person is an ethnographer, a scientist; that person has to perform his/­her cogito in the world of contemporaries in which he/­she deal with the other not as cogitatum in general, but as a specific problem of getting the other explained. The ethnographer’s explanation is thus based on the recognition of alterity of the other created by the epistemological-­cum-temporal distance of the ethnographer’s gaze (Chapter 2). The alterity of the other apparently poses a paramount epistemological difficulty to the researcher whose task is to explain the other from a theorized (third-­person) perspective while keeping the alterity of other integral. On this point, I find it enlightening to hark back to Schutz’s exegesis of understanding the other; he remarks: Yet recognizing that the Other lives in a setting not defined by me does not transform him into my utensil. He remains within his situation (as defined by him) a center of activity: I can understand him as being not me, his activities as being not mine, his instruments as being beyond my reach, his project as being outside my accepted possibilities. (Schutz 1982:201) One should be reminded that the other in the researcher’s gaze is not narrowly understood as another person, or another ego other than the researcher him/­ herself. In Chapter 2, I have suggested that the researcher’s ego can become his/­her own alterity in a reflexive analysis which implies the warranty of the “observer observed” in his/­her empirical investigation. Several decades ago, Perinbanayagam (1975) had already suggested that common realist entities encountered by sociologists, such as “social structure” or “society” can be incorporated in the alterity in such a way that an actor “is always conscious and aware of the ‘others’ ” (1975:501). Perinbanayagam astutely denotes that such a concept of the “other” is “the vehicle out of the traps of solipsism or the quagmires of psychologism” in different theoretical accounts for the emergence of sociality out of the given-­ness of individuals (1975:501). This view shares with Bakhtin’s insight what he calls “precision” in the “human sciences” such that the researcher needs to “surmount the otherness of the other without transforming him into purely one’s own” (Bakhtin 1986:169) in the studies of anthropology, folklore, and linguistics (cited in Bhaskar 1989:51). Similar to other strains of realism, engaging realism acknowledges that the researcher’s account of the other must be a construct of the second-­order, or a reconstructed logic because the researcher can neither directly experience the other (due to the epistemological break), nor directly ascertain with certainty

Engaging realism   73 the effects of the ontological ground that shapes his/­her account (due to the ontological break). However, engaging realism does not accept that the researcher’s efforts to perspectivize the experience of the other would end up, as it is worried by Manen, “forgetting that it is living human beings [i.e., the others] who bring [the researcher’s] schemata and frameworks into being and not the reverse” (1990:45). In elucidating the nature of ethnographic data in the previous chapter, I have already outlined how the experience of the other enters, but is irreducible to, the researcher’s explanation through many iterations of logic inferences in the semiotic chain. The researcher thus should be sharply aware of such pragmatic process, and make it explicit to his/­her reader if the researcher is prompted to do so. Having said that, a realist still faces the challenge of how a theorized account of such ethnographic data has indeed incorporated the otherness of the other; or, in other words, on what basis is it that the alterity captured by the ethnographic data can be validated. Any challenge along this line is legitimate because the experience of the actor is unfolded only before a specific researcher in specific space, during a specific period of fleeting moments; and the realist ground that undergirds the alterity of the resulting ethnographic data is only open to the researcher. Then, how to claim a set of empirical data as valid inferences of the other becomes an epistemological impasse to social scientists. In the literature, this epistemological impasse is tackled in generally by three different approaches. The first approach is called actor’s-account-­counts. It means that what the actor says about his/­her motives and intentions is used by the researcher to explain his/­her actions (Bruce & Wallis 1983, Orbuch 1997). The second approach is called re-­achieving-the-­experiential. Referring here is that anthropologists follow the guidance of certain phenomenological and hermeneutical thoughts such that, as suggested by Manen (1990), “human science research” which involves “reflective writing” is to conduct a “descriptive study” of “lived experience (phenomena) in the attempt to enrich lived experience by mining its meaning” (1990:30). The goal of this textual practice is, “re-­ achieving a direct and primitive contact with the world” – the world as immediately experienced, said Merleau-­Ponty (1962:vii; cited in Manen 1990:38). The third approach is called back-­to-the-­intersubjectivity. It means that in order to guard the acceptability of a proposed explanation against the researcher’s authority that leads only to “a situation of epistemic stability” – “a pathological … [attempt that] favor[s] the security of a formalizable illusion to a messier [but  real] reality”; the researcher must check his/­her explanation based on its “intersubjective validity” (Martin 2011:335). Note that all three mentioned approaches generally call for a return to the first-­person experience either at the  discursive, or subjective, or intersubjective levels; or an undecided mix of the three. They seem to believe that since ethnographic investigation is similar to phenomenological research as to consider that “lived experience is the starting point,” it must also consider lived experience to be the “end point” (Manen 1990:36). By the same token, any ethnographic explanation, as implied by Martin, “must make use of terms that have a counterpart in first-­person

74   Pinning down experience experience,” and “analysts cannot (like Freud) take the refusal of actors to admit that we are correct as evidence of our success” (2011:339). Stemming from this logic, a critical criterion to validate an explanation is to return to what Steinmetz suggests “the level of experience” which is “epistemically decisive” particularly in “eliminating possible alternatives” (1998:181). Engaging realism refuses to return to the first-­person experience; first, because it is a theoretical impossibility (once again, due to the epistemological break), and second, because any attempt to conduct a plausibility check in this way is doomed to the arbitration dilemma between the account of the actor and the researcher that I outlined in the preface of this book: who knows better than the informants? The researcher, or the informants themselves? Even a theorist as sophisticated as Martin seems unable to avoid running into this dilemma. On the one hand, he emphasizes the researcher should “refrain from ontological violence against actors’ first-­person experiences” (2011:342). On the other hand, acknowledging that the researcher “only have an indirect relation to [the actor’s] experience” (2011:339), he suggests that “we need not give actors’ accounts of their own actions … any more plausibility than we give those of social scientists.” The trouble that Martin stirs up for himself is that if the “intersubjectivity validity” is essential in checking the plausibility of an explanation, how to guarantee that one gives equal plausibility to both the accounts of the actor and of the researcher?3 Another difficulty of returning to the first-­person experience rests with its defiance against the logical thinking that the truthfulness of ethnographic knowledge is based on its alignment with the actors’ stories. In my past fieldwork, I have encountered many occasions where what my informants believed as showing resistance against the authoritarian state was according to my theoretical framework expressing compliance with the state (Ho 2017), and what my informants believed to be an apolitical protest for preserving their mother tongue was, to my theoretical account, posing a political challenge against the ruling party (Ho & Lu forthcoming). I do not see that such so-­called “refusal of actors” constitutes an “ontological violence against actors’ first-­person experiences” as long as the researcher pays due efforts to posit genuine recognition of his/­her informants through their own stories, and to express this recognition explicitly to readers.4 Sharply aware of the alterity of the other in ethnographic data, an engaging realist advocates that the knowledge of the other can only be validated indirectly by engaging in the open-­to-all debates with other members in the scientific community. And, through competing with existing theory–data pairs, the plausibility of an ethnographic explanation can be ascertained. One should be reminded that this approach echoes what Tavory and Timmermans suggest as the “second-­person explanation,” they write: Focusing on neither first-­person perspectives nor third-­perspective explanations that work behind people’s backs, such an approach provides what may be termed a second-­person explanation – one that is in serious dialogue

Engaging realism   75 with our interlocutors’ explanations without necessarily agreeing that their interpretations are the strongest ones available. (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:101–102)

Ontological realism is answerable to epistemology Engaging realism shares the key thrust of critical realism in presuming that the existence of the mind-­dependent reality (critical realists call it “mechanism,” or the “real”) is distinguished from the observable regularities in the empirical world (the “actual); and that such ontological realm – which possesses “ ‘casual powers’ of individuals and institutions” in the empirical world (Pawson 2000:294) – cannot be the result of “cognitive operation of man” (Bhaskar 1989:27). The conceptual opposition between the “real” and the “actual” is tricky because the causal relation between the two realms is always contingent and conjunctural; in Decoteau’s words: “Structural forces tend to engender certain courses of action, given their internal powers, but their effects are always contingent, making prediction impossible” (2016:64). Owing to what Pawson scathingly but accurately describes as “the now-­you-see-­them-now-­you-don’t” nature of empirical regularities, critical realists resolutely dismiss empiricism for proposing that “only items directly given in sense-­experience may be said to be known to exist” (Bhaskar 1989:27). On his way to criticize empiricism more specifically, Bhaskar takes a radical, and to me, problematic, step to dismiss epistemology in general, for accusing its denial of the ontology; he writes that: the world may now, from the point of view of epistemology, be regarded as constituted by facts which are as given as the real objects of perception and certain as a result of the analysis which identifies them with the latter [i.e., empirical regularities]. In this way facts, which are social products, stand in, in philosophy, for the particulars of the world and there is no need to bother with the question of whether things [i.e., the “real”] exist independently of them [i.e., regularities, the “actual”]. It should be noted that ontology is denied while being presupposed. (Bhaskar 1989:27; my emphases) There is always an ambivalence in understanding Bhaskar’s assertion of “epistemic fallacy” (2008:16–17), which characterizes any endeavors allegedly reducing ontology to epistemology. This ambivalence rests upon whether one reads the “epistemic fallacy” in light of a strong or weak form of ontological realism. To read it in light of a strong form of ontological realism, which is mainly reflected in Bhaskar’s own writings, there exists a continuing ontological tension induced by the “conflict between the rational intuitions of philosophers about science and the constraints imposed upon their articulation by their inherited ontology” (1989:14; original emphasis). And, since the constraints imposed by the ontology only produces partial regularities, any patterns identified in the empirical world do not ineluctably constitute the necessary or sufficient

76   Pinning down experience condition for explaining a phenomenon. By the same token, any seemingly arbitrariness observed in the empirical world does not necessarily infer a causal force (or mechanism) does not exist. If to apply this all-­out version of ontological realism, all epistemological endeavors to understand the ontology, for example, “induction,” becomes problematic (Bhaskar 1989:14). This strong version utterly infers an epistemological impasse because we are unable to understand the causal forces behind an observed pattern – which is not result of “cognitive operation of man” – without man. King (1999) is right to pinpoint a core antinomy inherent in Bhaskar’s realism, such that “society is dependent on individuals and yet also independent of them” (1999:269). King’s argument is also in line with Burawoy’s viewpoint. Burawoy objects against what he calls the “methodological dualism” which asserts the existence of “an ‘external’ world that can be construed as separate from and incommensurable with those who study it” (1998:10; cited in Decoteau 2016:64). The undesirable consequence of the strong form of ontological realism is that epistemology and ontology will talk past each other as the “questions of epistemology are clearly distinguished from those of ontology” (Frauley & Pearce 2007:5). One can understand Bhaskar’s “epistemic fallacy” in light of the weak form of ontological realism that is mainly reflected in the writings of Bhaskar’s followers and critics. This view suggests that the ontological depth of the social world does possess certain bearing upon our accounts of phenomena observed at the surface; however, the empirical investigation still represents “a springboard or gateway to understand the complex, layered, and contingent processes or structures which cause those [partial] regularities, facts, and events” (Archer et al. 2016:n.p.; my emphasis). Also targeting ontology, Pawson suggests that the basic structure of hypotheses-­making in empirical research takes the form of “speculating upon the generative mechanisms that give rise to observable outcome patterns” (2000:294; my emphasis). Admitting that their abductive analysis “does not go deeper into the realm of the real,”5 Tavory and Timmermans argue that their pragmatist-­based explanation can lead one to “gain more confidence in a proposed causal account” (2014:689; my emphasis). Therefore, rather than a complete fissure between “the methodological implications of epistemology” and “the realist practice of science [that deals with the ontology]” (Bhaskar 1989:14), a weak version of ontological realism posits that all meta-­theoretical investigations of the “real” need “to be answerable to empirical investigations” as long as these investigations are “ontological reflexive” and “vigilant” enough as “able to examine our presuppositions about the nature of the social world and the ontological baggage behind the terms we use (structure, causation)” (Archer et al. 2016:n.p.; my emphasis). My proposed realism subscribes to this weak ontological realist position. In fact, the strong ontological realist position presents a paradox. If science, as proposed by Bhaskar, eventually produces “the knowledge of the mechanisms of the production of phenomena in nature, the intransitive objects of inquiry” (1989:18); the unknowable unknown then becomes known. This is to say, the original ontological “black-­hole” – i.e., the generative mechanism behind a

Engaging realism   77 phenomenon – now, for instance, becomes a mathematical matrix that has been solved, or is waiting to be solved. By then, the ontological question is reduced to the epistemological question. Ironically, it is exactly the position that ontological realism determinedly resists in the first place. Another problem with the strong form of ontological realism rests upon its obsession with ontological causality and at the same time, heavy-­handed dismissal of observable regularities, which usually refers to the nerve of “reducing causation to constant conjunction forms in which event A is always followed by event B” (Archer et al. 2016:n.p.). I subscribe to the view that there are external, deep causal powers which give rise to, or impose limits on how actors act, and how I – as a researcher – intelligibly explain the actors. I am also vigilantly aware that these causal powers are irreducible to the observable patterns of events and discourses as the manifested regularities can only be partial. However, I – as an ethnographer cum scientist – also realize that we – as humans – simply have no way to judge whether an explanation of an empirical regularity is causally or conjunctionally based. For example, to explain why a group of peasants came to resist authority, an ethnographer identifies various factors, including the perceived power structures, cultural schemas, and material conditions, which were antecedents to the resistance. The ethnographer may observe certain regularities that, for example, certain peasants who were born in coastal regions, of higher educational level, and culturally more receptive to risk are more likely than their inland, low-­educated, and risk-­adverse counterparts to engage in collective resistive actions. Is the explanation that features a linkage between these factors (explanan) and the phenomenon (explanandum) based on causation, or conjunction? Undoubtedly, “conjunction” will be a less controversial answer. One’s confidence in making the conjunctural claim will be greatly boosted if one day, a brilliant scientist successfully identifies DNA which determines resistive behavior in response to domination, and finds that this “resistive-­DNA” is more likely to be found in the genes of coastal peasants than those of inland peasants. In this case, the “resistive-­DNA” is the “cause,” and the relation between the perceived factors identified earlier and the phenomenon of resistance becomes conjunctural. But, if one day, another scientist discovers that the genesis of “resistive-­DNA” in human bodies is determined by the magnetic field of a galaxy five billion light-­years away from the earth, the “resistive-­DNA” and the resistance then become conjunctional events. It is thus beyond the reach of a scientist to ascertain whether an observable regularity is a causational, or a conjunctional outcome;6 and along this line, I deem that Bhaskar’s distinction of the “actual” and the “real” is of limited significance to the growth of scientific knowledge. To speak of an-­ontological-realism-­that-is-­answerable-to-­epistemology is to fully acknowledge the limits of the human epistemological boundary in face of ontology, which is by nature, as I pointed out early on, the unknowable unknown.7 Back to the context of ethnographic inquiries, any regularity empirically identified by the researcher is sufficient for him/­her to initiate the process of theory–data fitting. The analytical process involved does not consider

78   Pinning down experience ontology as an afterthought; rather, the ontology constitutes the overarching, guiding questions (e.g., what is agency? Or, what is humanity?) to which the researcher’s theoretical narrativization of the empirical data endeavors to make inference. The situation of making epistemological inferences in order to glimpse the ontological ground behind a phenomenon can be understood metaphorically in terms of throwing stones (i.e., epistemological inferences, the researcher’s maneuvers) to the black-­hole (i.e., the ontology, the unknowable unknown). What ontological realism criticizes is that people are only concerned with their stones at hand (something they know for certain, e.g., their shape, weight, color, etc.), while leaving the black hole unexamined. Engaging realism, however, attends to the ways that different stones are cast – from different angles, with different speeds and spins in their course – into the black-­hole. By knowing more information about the way the stones are being sucked into the black-­hole, we also know more about the black-­hole. Back to anthropology, by observing how people resist domination, under what situation, context, time, and space, ethnographers know a little more about “agency” of which resistance is a part; and, by knowing more about agency, they know a little more about “humanity” of which agency is a part; and, by knowing more about humanity, they know a little more about what is the purpose of being humans, of which the nature of humanity is a part. Still, we do not know with certainty what humanity is, and what humans are for, but, we,as humans who act within certain epistemological boundaries we call science, know more about the ontological myth of social world. With the thesis of an-­ontological-answerable-­to-epistemology in mind, ethnographers attend to data analysis based on the explicit object-­sign-interpretant nexus, and produce shareable and expandable knowledge through engaging debates with other participants in the scientific community. The resulting knowledge is not to ascertain how mechanisms work in order to produce phenomena in nature, but – to follow the spirit of the weak form of ontological realism – acts as “a springboard or gateway to understand,” or “a form of speculating upon,” or a means to “gain more confidence in” the interaction of the forces that might give rise to an observed pattern. Such conceptual relation between the ontological and epistemological questions seems to be only way forward if one wishes to attend to the ontology without simply giving up empirical investigation altogether in ethnographic inquiries.

Epistemic relativism validated by judgmental rationality In recognizing the existence of external causal pressures in shaping worldly phenomena, realist scientists offer different perspectivized accounts of these pressures in different times and places, and for different purposes. To consider that ethnographic knowledge is constituted by theory–data, has already taken into due consideration that the constitution of ethnographic knowledge is conceptand context- dependent, hence, relative. Rorty is right that there is no way to

Engaging realism   79 ascertain one single account as the perfect one which entails a “correspondence with reality” (Rorty 1999:54). However, realist scientists generally hold that no perfect shot is still worth a shot as we may risk knowing nothing by avoiding knowing something uncertain. Then, on what ground can one adjudicate between rival or competing accounts, or to make judgment on which accounts about the world are better or worse? On this point, engaging realism – similar to critical realism – subscribes to the principle of epistemic relativity, while rejecting the doctrine of judgmental relativism; Bhaskar writes that, epistemic relativity … states that all beliefs are socially produced, so that all knowledge is transient, and neither truth-­values nor criteria of rationality exist outside historical time.… [T]he doctrine of judgemental relativism … maintains that all beliefs are equally valid, in the sense that there can be no rational grounds for preferring one to another. (Bhaskar 1989:23–24; original emphases) However, to put the two ostensibly conflicting claims – epistemic relativity and judgmental rationality – together on the same plane easily leads to a logical paradox. For example, Pleasants considers it a “conjuring trick” that assumes the principle of epistemological relativism being applied to all but the critical realists’ own ontological hypotheses (1999:8; see also Kivinen & Piiroinen 2006:227). Taking another route, engaging realism explicitly puts the two principles on two different contexts with clear division of labor: the level of theory– data fit and the level of community of inquiry. The former is concerned with different ways in which relevant theoretical concepts and hypotheses can best explain the data; hence, with discovery. The latter is concerned with the evaluation of the plausibility of the resulting analytical products, i.e., theory–data pairs, within the scientific community; hence, with validation. Although the community of inquiry is by nature open-­to-all, those who want to participate in the validation exercise must be able to articulate their knowledge in terms of the relevant scientific language so that it is made comprehensible and shareable in the scientific discussions. However, the language prerequisite should not be confused with a certain strain of anti-­realists or constructionists who consider rational persuasions in the scientific communities as equivalent to the “scientific language game,” which is opposed to the layman’s constructions. The objective of the “scientific language game” is to portray “the existence of some metaphysically absolute standpoint,” or, superior standpoints, which do not exist (Kivinen & Piiroinen 2006:239; see also Gorski 2013:661). Therefore, the truth claims of ethnographic knowledge based on engaging realism are validated neither by “ultimately” returning to “some actor’s point of view” (Kivinen & Piiroinen 2006:239); nor by the “check [of the knowledge] against reality” (Joas & Knöbl 2009:5), nor a mélange of different checks aiming to identify the most “useful” and “illuminating” explanation (Maggs-­Rapport 2000:221).8 My position is that the call to the “actor’s point of view” is an impossibility. Besides, the check with the “reality” is problematic as the “yardstick reality” is likely to

80   Pinning down experience refer to another set of knowledge which requires yet another “yardstick reality” to be checked against. And, the call to check the knowledge against a combination of factors without discerning the different qualities of each factor, and the roles each factor plays in the validation process is itself an unproductive proposal for scientific reasoning. Rather, my proposed realism suggests that an explanation – i.e., a specific theory–data fit – be checked against other established explanations in the form of debates within the pertinent scientific community. The process involves judgmental rationality, which is opposed to judgmental relativism, and the “criteria for judging which accounts about the world are better or worse” rests with the (re-)engagement with existing knowledge positions, each of which is concretized as an explicit theory–data pair.9 The purpose of the debates is not to conduct the ultimate truth test as to warrant certain timeless, universal knowledge akin to what Nietzsche calls, something derived from a “God’s-eye perspective” (Owen 1995:32). Maanen has already reminded us that “[e]thnography has no ultimate truth test” (1995:68–69). Here, I follow Ricoeur’s concept of “validation” as such that an explanation “is more probable [than the other] in the light of what is known [i.e., established knowledge]” (1973:107). And, in contradistinction against what verification10 does to show that “a conclusion is true [or false],” Ricoeur succinctly puts: “Validation is an argumentative discipline comparable to the juridical procedures of legal interpretation. It is a logic of uncertainty and of qualitative probability” (1973:107). One should remember that engagement with the scientific community is by no means “a pure and perfect competition of ideas, infallibly decided by the intrinsic force of the true idea” (Bourdieu 1991:8); rather, following Bourdieu, scientific reason realizes itself “in the social mechanisms” that involves “competition between strategies armed with instruments of action and of thought capable of regulating the very conditions of their use” (1991:21). While the issues of power struggles in the scientific field of ethnography will be further discussed in Chapter 8, it is sufficient for ones at this stage to see that engaging realism leads to truth claims which are produced and can be validated by the community of inquiry through (re-)engaging in debates. This position is in line with Tavory and Timmermans on the roles of the “community of inquiry”; they write that: the community of inquiry helps constitute truth claims, but not just anything goes. The community’s power to adjudicate beliefs is limited by the empirical results and thought experiments of inquiry. The evaluative criteria of qualitative research, then, hinge not on consensus formation but on the challenges to evidence and theoretical inferences [i.e., theory–data pairs]. (Tavory & Timmermans 2014:148n13)

The growth of scientific knowledge Since engaging realism is ultimately not a relativism; logically, it leads to the growth of knowledge. But, how such a kind of consensual knowledge distilled

Engaging realism   81 from differences (debates) in the community of inquiry can eventually lead to the growth of knowledge? To answer this question, we have to go back to the nature of the scientific community – a term which has been used interchangeably with the notion of the community of inquiry. For the concept of “scientific community,” it is suggestive to return to Thomas Kuhn’s classic of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (hereafter, Structure) in which he presents a very close relationship between “scientific communities” and the knowledge claims they produce, including his signature concept of “paradigms.” Similar to what has been portrayed in my proposed realism, scientific communities, in Kuhn’s sense, also refer to “as producers and validators of scientific knowledge” (2012:177). To Kuhn, the scientific communities exist at “numerous levels” (2012:176). Here, I take the notion in a particular Kuhnian sense such that it refers to the community which includes virtually all scientists.11 The reason for adopting the notion in its “most global” sense12 is that unlike communities in the natural sciences, such as physics and chemistry, members producing and validating ethnographic knowledge do not need to have “undergone similar educations and professional initiations” (Kuhn 2012:76). Relative to the data and theory in natural sciences, the knowledge competence required by one to meaningfully engage in debates over the plausibility of a theory–data pair in anthropology and sociology is lower. Neither does one need to possess special external apparatuses, such as cloud chambers or electronic microscopes, in order to get hold of ethnographic data; nor does one needs to share with the other scientists who “have absorbed the same technical literature and drawn many of the same lessons from it” (Kuhn 2012:176) in order to offer a hypothesized (proto-­theorized) view of the data at hand. To engage in the debates of the scientific community pertinent to ethnographic knowledge production and validation, all one basically needs is to equip oneself with is a conceptualized account of the phenomenon in question, and the will to conduct a discussion with others with reasoned, and evidentially supported arguments. To adopt the concept of scientific community in such a broad sense is indeed aligned with Karl Popper – one of Structure’s critics – who opines that “the scientific community ought to be, and to a considerable degree actually is, an open society in which no theory, however, dominant and successful, no ‘paradigm’ to use Kuhn’s term, is ever sacred” (Watkins 1970:26). With this definition in mind, debates in the scientific community pertinent to social sciences in general, and anthropology specifically, are not going to end quickly as, Kuhn implies, in those taking place in natural scientific communities. Rather, debates are long-­lived, and in principle, can last as long as humans exist. It is because different explanatory references (i.e., different theory–data fits) and different “paradigms” – a concept I shall quickly turn to below – are competing among each other not to refute, or invalidate, each other; but to adjudicate a better explanation from a poor one, or a more appropriate “paradigm” than the other. It means that even though an explanation based on witchcraft magic on an ethnographic study of a labor strike in contemporary China can be quickly considered implausible, it is by nature not invalidated. It will “compete” again

82   Pinning down experience with another emerging theory–data pair though the witchcraft one is likely to be considered implausible again. Stemmed from this logic, all existing theory–data pairs are potentially competing. In other words, all theory–data pairs are shared with, though not necessarily agreed by, the members of the scientific community. The characteristic of “sharedness” of different explanatory references and paradigms in the scientific community pertinent to ethnographic inquiry indicates that the community boundaries are not totally permeable. The community (open-­to-all, in principle) is likely to exclude at least three groups of people in reality. The first group refers to those who do not produce accounts of ethnographic data in textualized forms. The second group refers to those who produce textualized accounts, but only emphasize – and mistakenly believe they can produce – first-­person “stories.” This group of people consider that all explicit conceptual narrativizations of the first-­person constructions are pigeon-­ holing or delimiting; hence, misrepresenting, the agency of the informants. The third group refers to those who perform theorized accounts of ethnographic data, but subscribe to a strong form of epistemic relativism that all accounts are equally good, and there exists no objective criteria that one can judge otherwise. Roughly speaking, the first group represents a form of subjectivism sanctifying the coeval and co-­contextual production of ethnographic data; the second group represents a particular strain of constructionism triumphing the actor’s discursive reality-­making ability without the need to seek theorization behind the very constructed reality; and the third, a strong form of epistemic relativism – which suggests that to judge an interpretation as correct in any sense “would be a foolish ideal” because “[e]very interpretation has to adapt itself to the hermeneutical situation to which it belongs” (Gadamer 1988:397). I have mentioned in passing that one notable characteristic of the community of inquiry in my proposed realism that deviates from Kuhn’s concept of scientific community is that controversies between different explanatory references, or debates between rivalry paradigms in the former do not end quickly, and the resulting “incommensurabilities” do not lead to “arduous” communications or “misunderstandings.” Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis has been rightly criticized by Musgrave who illustrates his own argument by using Kuhn’s own example in Structures; he writes: [A] Copernican will class the earth as a planet while an Aristotelian will not. But I fail to see why, if this leads to a “communication problem,” the Copernican cannot explain that on his theory the earth, since it revolves around the sun like the other planets, must be classed with them. I also fail to see why the Aristotelian cannot understand this, without of course necessarily accepting it – or why he cannot make the Copernican understand his own reasons for classing the earth differently. (Musgrave 1971:295) Seeing that Kuhn’s apprehension of “communication breakdown” (2012:200) due to incompatible paradigms as an overstatement, Musgrave remarks:

Engaging realism   83 The participants can [quoting Kuhn 2012:200–201] “recognize each other as members of different language communities and then become translators.” And having translated each other’s theory, the participants can engage in rational persuasion. (Musgrave 1971:296) Engaging realism thus considers that debates which involve participants who see the world differently, and nourish on different explanatory references regarding their data at hands lead not to an epistemological standstill, but to “rational persuasion” and the growth of scientific knowledge. This line of thinking resonates with Borofsky (1997) who cherishes the dialogues among different scholars in the Sahlins-­Obeyesekere debates over the explanation of the death of Captain Cook during his visits to the Hawaiian Islands in 1778–1779. Borofsky’s own words are so superb that are worth quoting at length, and the relevance of his arguments to mine is indicated in square brackets as follows: [W]ithout dialogue [in form of debate,] we lose the ability to evaluate [i.e., validate] scholarly works. In the social sciences and especially in anthropology (where few can “check” [i.e., verify] an ethnographer’s observations [Chapter 1]), intellectual authority tends to reside not in scholarly assertions but in the interactions of scholars with their audiences through time [i.e., the engagement with different participants in the scientific community in terms of debate]. It is something that gradually gets established through collective conversations, through “comparison, evaluation, and debate” (Kuper 1989:455). Without such interaction, we can only whistle in the dark, trusting our own impressions as to what is (and is not) credible.… Just as critical, the loss of conversation means that we rarely learn from our differences. We become frozen into positions and less able to move beyond the complacency of our own constructions toward increased knowledge [i.e., in my case, the growth of scientific knowledge]. (Borofsky 1997:264) Specifically speaking, engaging realism bolsters the growth of ethnographic knowledge for scientific reasoning at three different levels: explanatory reference, consensual knowledge, and paradigm. The first level refers to the stock of explanation repository in terms of different theory–data pairs based on different ethnographic fieldwork settings with specific locations and time-­spans. The theory–data pairs are ideally made explicit in textualized form. They constitute what I have called the established explanatory references which are ready to compete with emerging theory–data pairs, and make possible the evaluation of the plausibility of an ethnographic explanation. To consider how it actually works in reality, one can recast the Sahlins-­Obeyesekere debate in light of engaging realism in order to see how two rivalry theory–data pairs compete with each other in the scientific community, which leads to adjudicative judgments.

84   Pinning down experience Put in simpler terms, the two explanations represent two distinctive theory-­ data fits, each of which involves a specific view regarding how the Hawaiians coped with the anomalies of Cook’s visit.13 Sahlins’ theoretical concern was “not merely to know how events [which were triggered by Cook’s visit] are ordered by culture, but how, in that process, the culture is reordered. [In other words,] [h]ow does the re-­production of a structure become its transformation?” (1981:24). To Sahlins, “[t]he killing of Captain Cook was [neither] … premeditated by the Hawaiians … [, nor] an accident, structurally speaking” (1981:24). He made the theoretical claim that Cook’s death at Hawaiian hands was the religious celebration of the “Makahiki in an historical form” (1981:24). It was a “ritual sequel: the historical metaphor of a mythical reality” (1985:106). And, based on a wide spectrum of documentary data, Sahlins came to speak with confidence that the Hawaiians received Cook as a return of “Lono” – a concept akin to what we understand as God. Compared with Sahlins, Obeyesekere was more selective in considering which piece of documentary material as reliable data. Obeyesekere paid due effort in weighing different pieces of information, and was more explicit than Sahlins in examining their contexts of production. Obeyesekere accused Sahlins of neglecting the hidden agendas underlying the historical materials used in analysis. Perceiving a host of biases in the data, Obeyesekere wrote: “I do not treat all texts the same way, … [and] am suspicious of some and treat others more seriously. I try to disentangle fantasy, gossip, and hearsay from more reliable eyewitness accounts” (1992:xiv). Obeyesekere then offered his theoretical account based on the theoretical concept of “practical rationality.” The concept refers to a common mode of cognition which underlies all human thoughts and actions – including the Europeans and Hawaiian islanders. It referred to “the process whereby human beings reflectively assess the implications of a problem in terms of practical criteria” (1992:19). With this pragmatic sense, the native Hawaiians, as Obeyesekere explained, would not mistake a European naval captain, who did not look Hawaiian in terms of both appearance and language ability, as a Hawaiian God. Hence, Obeyesekere issued his own explanation over the death of Captain Cook. Rather than considering Cook’s death as attributable to the mythical world view that the native Hawaiians subscribed to, Obeyesekere asserted that they did not kill Cook as “Lono” (a god); but as a chief named “Lono.” The two competing explanations have opened up fierce debates among anthropologists and Pacific historians that made possible that one can rationally judge which explanation was better and in which specific aspects. Borofsky, for instance, manages to draw certain patterns from this rigorous exercise of plausibility text such that “various Hawaiian scholars … sid[ed] generally with Obeyesekere against Sahlins … but [at the same time] sid[ed] with Sahlins in relation to key specifics against Obeyesekere” (Borofsky 1997:264). The second level refers to the growth of consensual knowledge distilled from specific debates over different theory–data pairs in the scientific community. The Sahlins-­Obeyesekere debate can once again serve to illustrate how it works.

Engaging realism   85 Even if one was not interested in the controversies aroused by the criticism of the alleged ethnocentrism/­imperialism of Western studies of Hawaiian history or who had the right to speak for native Hawaiians, the whole debate did bring about certain common, cumulative knowledge of the other. For example, Borofsky observes that the conversations among different scholars did “build [certain] common points of reference” across different views; and he perspicaciously forecasts that if the controversy continues, “we might expand our common points of reference so that we can effectively evaluate – together – the credibility of conflicting claims about Cook’s visit” (1997:264; my emphasis). What Borofsky means is that no matter “how deep cultural differences go – with Sahlins stressing difference, Obeyesekere cross-­cultural similarities,” virtually all participants of the debates can converse on certain shared knowledge across the differences (Borofsky 1997:264). For example, both Sahlins and Obeyesekere share the view that nowhere else in Polynesia did the British describe Cook as being taken for a god (Borofsky 1997:260). Besides, both tend to agree that that there is “no necessary contradiction between the view that Cook was Lono the chief and the view that he was Lono the god” (1997:259). Moreover, neither Sahlins nor Obeyesekere disputes that “magical” (i.e., cultural) and “practical” reasoning can be intertwined. Sahlins does not disagree with Obeyesekere that there exists a “common humanity … [underlying] formal differences [between the Europeans and Hawaiians]” (1997:259). The third level of my proposed realism sees the expansion of scientific knowledge as the growth of “paradigms.” Among the two meanings of “paradigm” that Kuhn consolidates in the “Postscript” of Structures, I oppose the first meaning, which entails “the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community” (Kuhn 2012:174). Rather, I adopt Kuhn’s second meaning of the term that refers to the “technical problem-­solutions found in the periodical literature,” or what Kuhn calls “exemplars” which come to determine the “community fine-­structure of science” (Kuhn 2012:186). Paradigms in this sense manifest themselves effectively in scientific education, and in particular, in textbooks through which the students are confronted with exemplary solutions to problems. A new student of a given scientific community is thus presented with: a set of recurrent and quasi-­standard illustrations of various theories in their conceptual, observational, and instrumental applications. These are the community’s paradigms, revealed in its textbooks, lectures, and laboratory exercises. By studying them and by practicing with them, the members of the corresponding community learn their trade. (Kuhn 2012:43) One should note that the level of paradigm distinguishes itself from the previous two: explanatory reference and consensual knowledge. The first level is constituted by concrete theory–data pairs; the second level, by empirical data; and the third, by theory. The exemplary models in the third level are derived from

86   Pinning down experience debates with their plausibility being repeatedly confirmed through empirical investigations. The resulting constitution of paradigms in the scientific community is akin to Merton’s proposed methodic process through which different middle-­range theories are consolidated into “wider networks of theory”; he writes: These [empirically confirmed] theories do not remain separate but are consolidated into wider networks of theory… [They are] sufficiently abstract to deal with different spheres of social behaviour and social structure. (Merton 1968:68; cited in Pawson 2000:289) Different explanatory paradigms essentially serve to train successors of a scientific community; and thanks to them, members of a given scientific community are never, epistemologically speaking, tabula rasa – a “blank slate” – which allows new things to impinge on without bias or barriers as “sense-­data.” Rather, paradigms in this particular Kuhnian sense constitute the “prerequisite to [one’s] perception itself [in a scientific community]” (Kuhn 2012:113). In the community pertinent to ethnographic inquiries, exemplary models of this type that come to my mind include Foucault’s power/­knowledge paradigm, Scott’s domination/­resistance paradigm, and two major paradigms in social movements: resource mobilization and new social movements. In our field, these paradigmatic conceptual narrativizations are seldom lingered on seriously with the nitty-­gritty of the data in the training process. These paradigms represent the tradition which binds ethnographers to their data in the first place. This tradition functions as a conduit between the ethnographer and his/­her data, and through which the ethnographer can attain a bond to the subject matter, and can start to seek to understand it in the scientific field.

Concluding remarks Engaging realism deems that ethnographic knowledge is neither a mirror correspondence of the ontological reality (against scientific realism), nor a contingent empirical outcome with its relation to the ontological reality highly ambiguous, if not simply irrelevant (against critical realism). This proposed realism acknowledges the alterity of the other which enters the researcher’s gaze as ethnographic data, whereas the knowledge of the other cannot be validated by directly returning to the first-­person experience. Instead, it can only be done circuitously in terms of the plausibility check of the pertinent theory–data pair; and through engaging with other participants in the scientific community in form of debate. With reference to the work of Bachelard, Bourdieu is sharply aware that “[t]wo people, if they truly wish to understand one another, must have first contradicted one another. Truth is the daughter of debate not of sympathy” (1991:3). Along a similar line, engaging realism presumes that there is no timeless, universal knowledge which is produced and validated by the scientific community. However, engaging realism presumes that there is no timeless universal truth

Engaging realism   87 value inherent in ethnographic knowledge which is itself historically transient, hence, always fallible. One who is devoted to conducting ethnographic inquiries and committed to scientific reasoning with others in the community should not be mistaken that we are given the options of “truth” and “no-­truth”; and that we will gain a privileged access to the first option if we work hard. No. What we have before us are the options of “know-­something” and “know-­nothing.” This “something” is still worth the effort of knowing not because of the guarantee of its truth value or of “progress,” but because it will lead us to glimpse into the unknowable unknown with the growth of knowledge.

Notes   1 This situation reminds me of Gorski’s version of describing a very similar situation in social sciences in general which I always find amusing; he writes: Amidst all this confusion and tumult in the haunted house of philosophy, workaday researchers carry on calmly with their routines. Models are run, ethnographies are written, interviews are conducted, and archives are scanned. Some of the work is very good. Knowledge seems to grow. But no one really knows how or why. Except Roy Bhaskar. (Gorski 2013:663)   2 Bhaskar (1989:17; my emphasis) asserts that “there must be an ontological distinction between such regularities and the laws they ground. (We produce not the laws of nature, but their empirical grounds).”   3 Martin seems to tackle this trouble by suggesting that the actor is a prototype of the social scientist who theorizes patterns in social life. At the close of his book, he remarks that theories are what actors make – sometimes – as they confront patterns in social life. [Therefore,] [o]ur task is not to steamroller over these theories but to compile them in a descriptive fashion that allows us to understand and to explain– to go, in a sense, from one interiority to another as we go from one position to another. (2011:350; my emphasis)   4 For other discussions in objection against the return to the first-­person experience in validating explanation in social sciences, see Mahoney (2004), Sica (2004) and Tilly (2004).   5 In Tavory and Timmermans (2014), they write that “critical realism has adopted Peirce’s notion of abduction in order to explain how one moves from the realm of the perceived phenomena to what critical realists call the realms of “the actual” and “the real”; see, for example, Bhaskar (1997, 1998). However, without elucidating the sources of abduction, critical realism obfuscates the process of research and uses pragmatist terms as a deus ex machina for what we see as erroneous ontological and epistemological conclusions – abduction does not go deeper into the realm of the real. In a pragmatist account there are no ontological layers such as critical realists wish to introduce” (2014:139n18; my emphasis).   6 Here, I disagree with Tavory and Timmermans who consider qualitative research possesses a particular “causal niche,” implying that qualitative research fares better than quantitative research in identifying causal relations. This is because, to them, a qualitative researcher has a privilege over a quantitative researcher “in capturing unfolding meaning-­making processes” (2014:88). I suggest that to judge whether an account (a theory–data fit) is “amenable to mechanism-­based” account, or better in leading one

88   Pinning down experience to look into the “underlying structure” of “a social phenomenon” (2014:88) depends on the result after engaging that theory–data fit in debates with the community of inquiry, not on its methodic source. Other scholars have pinpointed that despite the ethnographer’s methodic advantage in gaining deep knowledge of particular situations, it is “problematic for ethnographers to assess the ‘effects’ of situations if there is no comparison across situations,” and is “difficult to know precisely which features of situations are causally important in shaping action” (Lamont & Swidler 2014:166).   7 Here, the nature of ontology follows Lévinas’ signature concept of the “other” which is by nature the “infinity” or a “myth” as opposed to the “finitude” of the actor (1969). Day also points out that ontology refers to “a realm that can never be known or controlled by human subjects” wherever the term is conceptualized in thoughts of Lacan, or Deleuze, Guattari, or Bhaskar; and given the clear incommensurabilities among their thoughts (2007:135).   8 More specifically, Maggs-­Rapport (2000:221) writes: To explore whether or not our interpretation is valid, we need to consider not only is it right, but also “is it useful?” and “is it illuminating?” The above views, though widely different, have one thing in common. They suggest that data can only be validated, or seen to be trustworthy, if a combination of issues are considered collectively: the activity of research, the cognitive process of validating data and the involvement of external measures, second opinions and the subjects’ own perception which add weight to the decisions reached by the researcher.   9 Archer et al. (2016:n.p.) writes that judgmental rationality suggests that being realists about ontology and relativists about epistemology, we must accordingly assert that there are criteria for judging which accounts about the world are better or worse. The goal of any investigation is the creation and relative stabilization of a descriptive or explanatory account which provides a plausible model of our object of inquiry. But not all accounts are created equal. We are able to, and required to, adjudicate between rival or competing accounts, and there are often relatively objective reasons for affirming one model over another. 10 Anthropologists may easily conflate validation and verification. For example, Talburt believes that ethnography is not a work with the “real” as no facts can be verified (2004:80). 11 Here, I find that Musgrave’s exegesis of different levels of scientific community is very precise. He writes that scientific communities in Kuhn’s sense exist “from the community of all scientists, to those of physicists, chemists, etc., then to sub- communities (e.g. solid-­state physicists), and finally to sub-­sub-communities” (1971:288; my emphasis). 12 Kuhn writes: “The most global [sense of scientific community] is the community of all natural scientists” (2012:176). 13 My discussion of the Sahlins-­Obeyesekere debates is mainly based on Borofsky (1997) which succinctly outlines the major arguments from the two sides; and more importantly, presented a fairly argued analysis of their debates.

Part II

Expounding experience

5 The non-­discursive and transcendence

The previous chapters have relied on the concept of experience rather unreflexively to capture the intricacy of human existence in the lifeworld (Lebenswelt), which feeds into the data of the researcher, and later becomes an ethnographic object to be theorized and pinned down as texts (Desjarlais & Throop 2011:93). Philosophers have be the pioneers who consider lived experience (Erlebnis), which is an essential part of human experience in general, as a fundamental concept which makes our understanding of life – including the scientific understanding of life – possible. For example, Dilthey claims that lived experience is “real,” the “basic unit of consciousness,” and “there is nothing more ultimate behind it” (Makkreel 1992:8). Gadamer suggests that lived experience means “something unforgettable and irreplaceable, something whose meaning cannot be exhausted by conceptual determinations … [for] its being the ultimate datum and basis of all knowledge” (1988:67).1 That being said, what essential features of lived experience should we attend to when perspectivizing (theorizing) it as an ethnographic object? This chapter points to two of these features, which are interrelated and, relatively speaking, little-­discussed among anthropologists and sociologists. To be specific, these two features are about the nature of the lifeworld such that the experience of transcendence is an essential component of human actions, and that lived experience is founded on the non-­ discursivity of the lifeworld, i.e., the pre-­predicative background expectancies from which the discursive arises. My route of illustration will begin with Schutz who developed his mundane lifeworld theory from appropriating Husserl’s notions of appresentation and apperception, and progress to Garfinkel who later extended Schutz’s concept of lifeworld to the empirical investigations of constitutive social orders. Approaching the end of this chapter, I shall raise my concerns about a strain of constructionism in anthropology and sociology, which tends to ignore these two features of lived experience, and misconceive social realities solely as the actor’s discursive accomplishments.

Schutz’s vantage point In his early major work, The Phenomenology of Social World, Schutz fully anchors Weber’s concept of social action to the experience of the other, i.e., the alter

92   Expounding experience ego. Schutz deems that the actor does not contemplate the other as “physical object,” but “the other as other, that is, as a conscious living being” (1980:144; original emphasis). Showing that such intentionality toward the other self is exactly where Weber’s definition of social action falls short,2 Schutz maintains that for one to act socially upon an other’s consciousness, one must pay attention to the flow of the consciousness of the other as it occurs in the chain of interlocking motives. Schutz also underscores the differentiation between the “in-­order-to” and “because” motives. While the former is oriented toward the future and premised on fantasizing the projected action, the latter is a subjective reflection made about finished actions. Later, in his well-­known 1945 paper, “On Multiple Realities,” Schutz states that we experience many realities (the work world, the dream world, the world of scientific contemplation, and so on), each of which constitutes a distinctive “finite province of meaning” with a unified and specific cognitive style (1982:230). It is in this paper that lifeworld experience attains an explicit constitutive outlook as it is not “the ontological structure of the objects,” but “the meaning of our experiences … [that] constitutes reality” (1982:230). It is not until The Structures of the Life-­world: Volume One that Schutz (with Luckmann) (1995[1973]) delves into each finite province of meaning as well as the cognitive style in the everyday world. His call to study the lifeworld as “meaning-­compatible experiences” with specific experiential categories is then rendered more explicit.3 In Schutz’s exegesis of the lifeworld, the experience of the “living present” (lebendige Gegenwart) in the orientation to the other is possible only because of the transcendent experience of something beyond “my actual reach”; or, in other words, because of the human agency to extend the appresentational reference to the intersubjective signs, the we-­relations, or the nature and society that have been already pre-­given to me and my fellow-­men. In a letter to Gurwitsch, Schutz makes this point explicit as he writes, “the mechanism by means of which the transcendent is appresentatively incorporated into the now-­here-thus is what makes the life-­world at all possible” (Grathoff 1989:235).4 And, to speak of the non-­discursivity of the lifeworld experience by no means implies that people are dumb. Rather, Schutz claims that when interacting with others, actors always already bring to bear a stock of pre-­constituted knowledge which includes “knowledge of expressive and interpretive schemes of objective sign systems, in particular, of the vernacular language” (1964:29–30). What is non-­ discursive to actors is the sign system of language which constitutes a “meaning­context” of experience and is essentially a configuration formed by interpretive schemes. By the “non-­discursive,” I mean the “pre-­predicative” that makes possible the experience of things prior to all discursive constructions of meaning. As will be made apparent, Schutz (and also Garfinkel) presume that the discursive always “presupposes” the non-­discursive. Such a presupposition should not be understood in any technical sense, but rather as the unquestioned, background expectancies from which the discursive emerges, or, I might say from a Husserlian perspective, the condition for the possibility of the discursive. Such a feature is parallel with the lifeworld as “the unquestioned but always questionable

The non-discursive and transcendence   93 background within which inquiry starts and within which it can be carried out” (Schutz 1982:57, 326–327). Consequently, when something in the lifeworld is questioned through discourse, like someone asking, “have I understood you correctly?,” the object (Gegenstand) that appears is no longer unquestioned by the actor and immediately turned into cogitatum – being thought. The actor then necessarily experiences a specific shock and is compelled to break through the non-­discursivity of the lifeworld; from this moment on, in Schutzian terms, he/­she shifts to the accent of another reality (1982:231).

Husserl’s lifeworld: perceiving the unseen Husserl is the first person to systematically define the way in which the predicative domain of human experience is related to the pre-­predicative domain in the intersubjective lifeworld. To him, all phenomenological reduction is grounded in “one spatio-­temporal fact-­world to which I myself belong, as do all other men found in it and related in the same way to it” (Schutz 1982:96). The lifeworld “was always there for mankind before science” (Schutz 1970:123); it is the “only real world, the one that is actually given through perception, that is ever experienced and experienceable” from the natural standpoint (1970:49). Rather than “what,” Husserl is concerned with “how” our intentionality of pure consciousness toward the object (Gegenstand) can be described in the lifeworld. In question is a series of processes known as appresentations and apperceptions. To Husserl, an appresentation, according to Rodemeyer, is a “co-­presentation of the object before me that is not being ‘presented’ right now, but which is implied by what is given in the profile directly before me” (2006:48). Appresentation thus points to my common experience that an object is before me but not all its faces are within my visual gaze. For example, my perception of a dressed man walking toward me on campus goes beyond itself to other possible experiences of this man as a whole because his back is not currently in my view. That man who is perceived as not naked at his back essentially involves elements not directly presented to me. This active perception in the natural attitude that takes for granted the “unseen” as it actually is, and that correlates to the appresentational reference extended beyond the actual presentation of the object is known as apperception.5 The natural attitude, hence, is “the total field of possible research,” or in a single word, the “world” that is self-­evidently existing before us as unquestioned givenness (Husserl 1962:45). It is the general field where our practical and theoretical activities begin and end, and only when we abandon the natural attitude, can we “find ourselves in a new cognitive attitude” (Husserl 1971:83). To speak of the “fact-­world” that belongs both to myself and to all others necessarily implies a shift from me to we. Husserl then brings to the fore the “problem” of constitution of intersubjectivity – a must-­be-solved “problem,” or the whole theory slips into a solipsistic impasse. The diverging views on the intersubjectivity of the lifeworld have sharply marked where Schutz parts company from Husserl – a point that has been clearly stated by Schutz himself

94   Expounding experience and his interpreters (Schutz 1975:51–91; O’Neill 1980:9–10; Wagner 1983; Spiegelberg 1994:256; Zaner 2002; Yu 2005:268–270). Unlike Husserl who begins his inquiry with the subjectivity (i.e., I, the ego), Schutz begins with we (i.e., ego-­alter ego) which is pre-­given in the lifeworld,6 and considers intersubjectivity as not a “problem of constitution,” but “a datum (Gegebenheit) [a “given”] of the life-­world” (1975:82). Along this vein, “[n]either the fact that the world … is a world for all of us, nor the fact that my experience of the world refers a priori to others, requires explanation” (1975:83). But, one should be reminded that throughout his lifetime, Husserl did not share Schutz’s enthusiasm for articulating the lifeworld experience in a way as to make it amenable to the gaze of social scientists. The paramount concern of Husserl is the foundation of sciences.7 Husserl sees, since the times of Galileo, the emergence of a crisis that our everyday lifeworld is being surreptitiously substituted by the “mathematically substructed world of idealities” (1970:48–49). He decries that exact science has been inducing a kind of alienation among scientists that only leads them to see what the conceptual constructs created by themselves allow them to see. In question is what he calls “forgetting the meaning-­fundament of natural science” (1970:48). To him, to prevent this “forgetting,” one has to master the transcendental “regression” technique to expose the Objectivity of a single universal science which embraces all the positive sciences (Bernet et al. 1993:219). Such Objectivity is based on the “founding stratum” (fundierende Schicht) of the lifeworld (Husserl 1988:96) that can only be explored by the phenomenological epoche, a transcendental method through which consciousness is stripped of the sense of mundaneity.8 Husserl further suggests that “the life-­world does have, in all its relative features, a general structure” unanimously agreed by all, regardless of race or ethnicity (1970:138; original emphasis).9 Given the different goals, Husserl and Schutz think that phenomenology should pursue, it is inevitable that Schutz regards the transcendental approach on intersubjectivity as possessing limited utility in the social sciences. Schutz first casts doubt on it in The Phenomenology of Social World,10 then criticizes it as problematic in a 1942 paper, “Scheler’s Theory of Intersubjectivity and the General Thesis of the Alter Ego,”11 and rejects it outright at the Royaumont conference in 1957, two years before he died. In the paper, he writes that: [W]e must conclude that Husserl’s attempt to account for the constitution of transcendental intersubjectivity in terms of operations of the consciousness of the transcendental ego has not succeeded.… The possibility of reflection on the self, discovery of the ego, capacity for performing any epoche, and the possibility of all communication and of establishing a communicative surrounding world as well, are founded on the primal experience of the we relationship [rather than something to be resolved within the transcendental sphere]. (Schutz 1975:82)

The non-discursive and transcendence   95

Schutz’s lifeworld: knowing the other as being founded on the unsaid Despite being troubled by Husserl’s insistence on the transcendental constitution of intersubjectivity, especially in his fifth Cartesian Meditations (1988), Schutz inherited a vast intellectual legacy from Husserl’s phenomenological descriptions of the lifeworld, such that our everyday world is “the unquestioned but always questionable background” (Schutz 1982:57); we “encounter [the everyday world] … as already constituted,” “already-­given”; we “are always conscious of its historicity” (1982:133; original emphasis) as it is “pre-­given to both the man in the world of working and to the theorizing thinker” (1982:247). But above all, I concur with Zaner that “Schutz’s reflections on intersubjectivity were profoundly shaped by Husserl’s notion of appresentation, even while at times he was severely critical of Husserl” (2002:1). Yu also sharply remarks that “Schutz transformed [Husserl’s notion of appresentation] … and broadened its  application, i.e., to all the experiences of transcendence in lifeworld” (2005:271). What is of paramount importance in Schutz’s appropriation of Husserl’s notions of appresentation and apperception, is his extension of the appresentational reference to the experience of the other that transcends the I (ego) in the concrete we-­relations. In the everyday world, I apperceive another ego that is “endowed with a consciousness … essentially the same as mine” (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:4). However, constituted as it is within the unique stream of consciousness of each individual, the alter ego can never be fully perceived or directly experienced, or in Schutz’s terms, it is “essentially inaccessible to every other individual” (1980:99; original emphasis). The apperceived “realness” of the other can only be “appresentatively constituted”; hence, experienced within the realm beyond the face-­to-face simultaneity with the other such that it necessarily involves the experience of transcendence. In Schutz’s terse explications, the other – being so experienced (or apperceived) – must be “appresentatively constituted in my monadic sphere as an ego that is not ‘I myself ’ but a second ego [i.e., the alter ego] which mirrors itself in my monad” (1982:125). One should remember that Schutz adopts the notion of “realness” from W. I. Thomas’ iconic statement: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Schutz 1982:348).12 Guided by appresentational reference, the experience of the transcendental on the part of the actor who confronts the other face-­to-face is incorporated into what Schutz calls the “Thou-­orientation,” i.e., “a prepredicative experience of a fellow being” (1964:24). The essential feature of Thou-­orientation is the recognition that another Self – as a human being – alive and conscious – exists before me “while the specific content of that consciousness remains undefined” (1964:24). But still, I can, “up to a certain point,” obtain knowledge about the lived experiences of my fellow-­men as real; and the same also holds true reciprocally for my fellow-­men with respect to me (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:4). Readers should remember that Schutz calls it perspective reciprocity in a shared

96   Expounding experience time and space, within which “phases of my own consciousness” presuppose the “corresponding” phases of your consciousness, and “my fellow-­man and I grow older together.” The favorite example Schutz uses to illustrate this point is two individuals observing a bird-­in-flight; he writes: Neither you nor I, nor any other person, can say whether my experiences are identical with yours since no one can have direct access to another man’s mind. Nevertheless, while I cannot know the specific and exact content of your consciousness, I do know that you are a living human being, endowed with consciousness. I do know that, whatever your experiences during the flight of the bird, they are contemporaneous with mine.… Therefore, I may coordinate the event of “bird-­flight” not only with phases of my own consciousness but also with “corresponding” phases of your consciousness. Since we are growing older together during the flight of the bird, and since I have evidence, in my own observations, that you were paying attention to the same event, I may say that we saw a bird in flight. (Schutz 1964:25; original emphasis; see also his 1980:165) In the natural attitude, I apperceive the world which I was born into is not my private world but a reality that transcends “I myself.” It is a world founded by intersubjectivity and we-­relations so as to make possible “all other categories of human existence” (Schutz 1975:82). Moreover, thanks to the intersubjectivity of the mundane world, we “know” what it is that another is doing, why he does it, and why he does it now and under these circumstances (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:15). The experience of transcendence is premised on Schutz’s doctrine: “I know he knows that I know” (1995:16). It is under this light that several astute interpreters of Schutz have identified the experience of transcendence – the experience of living in a world that extends beyond one’s immediate here and now – as a prominent theme that unifies Schutz’s diverse body of writings. For example, Natanson writes that “if there is any concept which qualifies as being ‘thematic’ in Schutz’s work, I would say that it is transcendence” (1986:124). Natanson further claims that “[i]t is the experience of the transcendental which is the condition for our achieving human being” (1986:125). Stoltzfus suggests that, “[t]hroughout his writings, Schutz identifies transcendence as a fundamental category of human experience” (2003:184; see also Yu 2005). Apart from acknowledging the mere existence of the other under the apperceptive gaze, lifeworld experience also involves my knowledge of the other’s motives for any intended activity. According to Schutz, my knowledge of the other’s motives always presupposes a set of typified knowledge sedimented in my autobiographic experience. It refers to a set of more-­or-less loosely connected rules and maxims of behavior in typical situations, recipes for handling things of certain types so as to attain typical results, including necessarily, “the pertinent system of appresentational references” (1982:348). Simply put, it is the “knowledge of the typicality of the objects and events in the life-­world” (1975:127). Schutz adds that, “[a]ll projects of my forthcoming acts are based

The non-discursive and transcendence   97 upon my [stock of] knowledge at hand at the time of projecting” (1982:20). As my stock of knowledge is “socially derived,” “approved,” and “distributed” (1982:348–350) for me to bring this stock into each concrete situation, I confront my fellow-­men in the everyday world, this stock of knowledge is by nature “pre-­constituted.”13 It is the stock of knowledge at hand that gives the lifeworld its typicality. Once established, this network of typificatory schemes for me and my fellow-­men means that our experience remains unquestioned until further notice; or in Schutz’s words: “as long as the actions and operations performed under its guidance yield the desired results, we trust these experiences” (1982:228). Based on this typicality – necessarily guided by a “pertinent system of appresentational references” – our lifeworld is, most of the time, “unquestioned,” or appears to be “not worth knowing … at least ‘for the time being,’ ‘in the present context,’ or ‘from our point of view’ ” (Schutz 1970:149).14 In question here is how the “appresentational references” work so that the preconstituted-­ness of the stock of knowledge – the non-­discursive – takes on the appearance of the discursive in everyday life. For example, when I was working in my office, a man knocked and walked in. I did not know this particular man. Wearing a smile on his face, he said, “Hello, Dr. Ho, I am Ryan Cheng, from BIA Insurance. Sorry for interrupting. Could I talk to you for a moment?” Together with his garish velour suit, I immediately recognize and perceive him as of a type – “an(other) insurance guy.” As a social scientist, I may feel fine with the non-­discursive, and am only interested in apperceiving him as instantiating the type – insurance agent. But, as a member of society, I need to enter the discursive. Thinking that it was not the first time an “insurance guy” had interrupted me when I just wanted to work, I attempted to deal with the discursive with the generic traits immanent and embedded in the type perceived. It is the first step in constituting a discursive consciousness of the type – insurance agent. Within the natural attitude, I do not doubt the typificatory schemes, the “meaning-­context” between me and the other whom I can attend to his/­her stream of consciousness, just as I can attend to my own. And, through making constant and unquestioned use of a specific epoche that neglects – for the time being –things being rendered taken-­for-granted, I can, “up to a certain point,” obtain knowledge of what is going on in the mind of the other. On this point, the explication from Berger and Luckmann,former students of Schutz,on the relationship between speech (in conversation) and the silent taken-­forgrantedness is suggestive; they stress that, the greater part of reality-­maintenance in conversation is implicit, not explicit. Most conversation does not in so many words define the nature of the world. Rather, it takes place against the background of a world that is silently taken for granted. (Berger & Luckmann 1991[1966]:172; my emphasis) Of course, Schutz reminds us that we can always question in discourse whether “Have I understood you correctly?” “Don’t you mean something else?” “What

98   Expounding experience do you mean by such and such action?” and do it, in principle, ad infinitum (1980:140). But, once such questions are raised, I abandon the immediate grasp of the other in the simultaneity of time and space in the world of consociates. From now on, the other is no longer unquestioned. I jump out of the non-­ discursivity of the lifeworld experience as the natural standpoint vanishes. The other, as well as the world and its objects, no longer confronts me coevally in the intersubjective we-­relation; rather, the other is turned cogitatum. I need to step out of the stream of our experiences and begin to “think about him … like a social scientist” (1980:141), i.e., in the world of contemporaries. At times, we revise our former schemes of knowledge when special motivations emerge, “such as the irruption of a ‘strange’ experience not subsumable under the stock of knowledge at hand or inconsistent with it” (Schutz 1982:228). But, once it is all set, I return to the natural attitude in which the world and its objects are taken-­for-granted until some counterproof imposes itself. Consequently, we come to acquire sets of typifications through which the everyday world can be grasped as repeatable, continuous, and shared, and simply taken-­for-granted in the attitude of commonsense, i.e., we are just satisfied with how things go. Schutz maintains that this subjective satisfaction is founded upon the non-­discursivity of the lifeworld experience, or what he calls the “essential opacity of the life-­world,” he remarks: It shows that our curiosity is satisfied and our inquiry stops if knowledge sufficient for our purpose at hand has been obtained. But this breaking up of our questioning is founded on an existential element of all human knowledge, namely the conviction of the essential opacity of our lifeworld. (Schutz 1970:148; original emphasis) The opacity of the lifeworld points to the “unknown” elements of lifeworld experience, the elements which are not within my reach – for the time being – but potentially within my reach;15 the elements which are unsaid but have the possibility of being said. The existence of the non-­discursive realm of the lifeworld therefore constitutes the main thesis of Schutz’s lifeworld experience. For if we were to always question (say) everything instead of leaving things unsaid, and assuming others will understand the things we leave unsaid, our interactions with others would become very difficult, if not impossible, as a result of the length and complexity of our conversation. Indeed, we can always question the taken-­for-granted lifeworld to an extreme degree, like Descartes in his famous meditation, we can question whether we are really dreaming when we think we are awake and vice versa. But, once we do that, to experience in the attitude of the natural standpoint becomes impossible. It is thus sound, both theoretically and empirically, that our everyday experience necessarily involves a certain degree of soliloquy. As Berger and Luckmann remind us, “[m]any actions are possible on a low level of attention” (1991:75). In a nutshell, the two features of Schutz’s lifeworld that I have elaborated upon are: first, our apperception of the intersubjective everyday world is

The non-discursive and transcendence   99 paralleled by the experience of transcendence. Guided by appresentational references – as “means of coming to terms with transcendent experiences of various kinds” (Schutz 1982:326) – one can experience the “unseen” faces of the other in the natural attitude. Second, the pre-­constituted typicality of the lifeworld renders lifeworld experience fundamentally non-­discursive in a sense that one’s experience of meeting the other is founded upon the essential opacity of the lifeworld. Withholding my critique of Schutz’s theory of lifeworld experience in this chapter,16 I must acknowledge that Schutz has successfully incorporated habitual, typified rationality into the lifeworld experience, which makes possible the orderliness of social interactions in the everyday wor1d and hence renders the social order observable under the empirical gaze. Pursuing these possibilities, Garfinkel later develops his ethnomethodology to study empirically observable (rational) structures that underlie human intersubjective experience.

Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology: social order seen, but unnoticed It has been widely noted in the literature that Garfinkel directs Schutz’s social phenomenology to studying empirically recognizable routine patterns in everyday life though he also acknowledges his intellectual debt to Talcott Parsons, Gurwitsch, and Husserl (Garfinkel 1967:ix; Heritage 1984; Psathas 1979; Maynard & Clayman 1991; Rawls 2002). Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology is premised on the importance of a range of empirically recognized “methods” which are possessed by and shared among members of society. He calls them “members’ methods” or “artful practices” (Garfinkel 1967:vii–ix, 31–34). When put into concrete situations, these “methods” engender the observable order­ liness of social situations in the concreteness of things as the “ ‘incarnate’ character of accounting practices” (1967:1). Garfinkel subscribes to Schutz’s theoretical tenets that our lifeworld is from the outset intersubjective (Lynch & Bogen 1994:9) such that the shared-­ness of “methods” and the meaningful orderliness of social situations – i.e., the social order – can be empirically ascertained. Garfinkel explicitly spurns the Parsonsian functionalism in which the phenomena of the shared-­ness of everyday experience would be lost through formal, normative, and over-­theorized generalizations (Heritage 1984:33–34). Garfinkel insists that ethnomethodologists must return to concrete situations, to the ongoing course of producing an accountable existence of the social order. Rather than a result of theoretical abstractions (or what he calls Formal Analysis) that filter out the distracting variability and contingency of particular events, social order only exists as the local accomplishment in juxtaposition with accounting practices in situ. The theoretical premises to return to the “just this-­ ness” of the social world, or the “concreteness of things” (Garfinkel 1988:106); and to see the locally accomplished coherence of experience without mediation are all in keeping with Husserl’s phenomenological call to go “back to the thing itself ” (Zuruck zur Sache selbst).

100   Expounding experience In light of the foregoing discussions of lifeworld experience, what is called into question is how locally accomplished social orders reflect the experience of transcendence as an essential component of human actions, and that the lifeworld experience itself is fundamentally non-­discursive. In the classic Studies in Ethnomethodology, apart from illustrating repeatedly his fundamental insights of treating facts as ongoing social accomplishments and claiming to discover the formal properties of commonsense actions “from within” actual settings (1967:viii), Garfinkel does not formulate a unified theoretical thesis of his own (Coleman 1968:126). It was not until over 30 years later that Garfinkel (together with his associates) began to unravel the occasional and practical foundation of social order. In Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working out Durkheim’s Aphorism, as well as several papers in juxtaposition with it, Garfinkel claims that, the programmatic task of Ethnomethodological studies [is] to specify the naturally accountable work of making and describing the social facts of immortal, ordinary society. These are the things of social order – the phenomena of ordinary society that Durkheim was talking about. (Garfinkel 2002:92–93) According to Rawls, the editor of Ethnomethodology’s Program, ethnomethodology “is the fulfillment of Durkheim’s promise that the objective reality of social facts is sociology’s fundamental principle” (2002:9). She further remarks that Garfinkel is more in keeping with the later work of Durkheim (2002:20) in the fact that – i.e., Garfinkel’s social order – is not something totally “out there” as implicated in the concept of “social fact” set out in The Division of Labour in Society.17 Rather, Durkheim puts forward the notion of “a double center of gravity,” that there is “[s]omething else in us besides ourselves [that] stimulates us to act” (1960:328). Along this line, I might say that to Garfinkel, social order is “something” within our subjective experience but not originating from or belonging to the subjectivity.18 Rawls explains: Where Garfinkel parts company from Durkheim is in replacing the assumption that objective reality is the result of conforming with institutionalized forms of constraints, with the proposal that social facts are orderly endogenous products of local orders, as the achievement of the immortal ordinary society. (Rawls 2002:9) But, what are the “formal properties of commonsense actions ‘from within’ actual settings” that Garfinkel sets out to discover in Studies in Ethnomethodology? Various pieces of textual evidence suggest that Garfinkel points to what he calls the “phenomenal field” that recognizes the variability and concreteness of the locally accomplished social order. For example, Garfinkel argues in Ethnomethodology’s Program that the unique coherence of the social order

The non-discursive and transcendence   101 rests upon “the phenomenal field properties of figural contexture” (2002:97). Ethnomethodology, as he states in another paper, is to “recover in … a phenomenal field of ordered details the work [i.e., local accomplishments] that makes up” actual settings (Garfinkel 1996:10). He also stresses that the phenomenal field properties of orderliness are being ignored in Formal Analysis (Garfinkel 2007:15). Garfinkel only discusses thematically the “phenomenal field properties of [social] order” in one paper co-­authored with Livingston (2003). Using formatted-­queues-for-­service as an example,19 Garfinkel suggests that the case displays the “ongoingly accountable exhibited immortal, objective, transcendental, transient structures of the order of service … [and] the order of service is a Durkheimian social fact” (Garfinkel & Livingston 2003:23). Of the four properties of the phenomenal field: immortality, objectivity, transcendence, and transience; Garfinkel only further elaborates on immortality as he remarks: Immortal is used to speak of human jobs [that can range in scale from a hallway greeting to a freeway traffic jam] as of which local members, being in the midst of organizational things, know, of just these organizational things they are in the midst of, that it preceded them and will be there after they leave it. Immortal is a metaphor for the great recurrencies of ordinary society, staffed, provided for, produced, observed, and observable, locally and naturally accountable in and as of an “assemblage of haecceities.” EM [ethnomethodology] places heavy emphasis on “immortal.” (Garfinkel 2002:92fn1) Characterized in the typical tortuous sentences of Garfinkel, immortality seems to refer to the nature of the social order that something pre-­exists before it is embodied in the details of human interactions in concrete situations, and it “will be there after they [i.e., those interactions] leave it.” Clearly noted here is the conceptual connection between immortality, objectivity, and transcendence. These three concepts represent a property of social order such that it presumes the experience of transcendence akin to what is presumed in Schutz’s theory of lifeworld. Schutz explicitly expounds that the world “existed before my birth and will continue to exist after my death.… I know, furthermore, that in a similar way the social world transcends the reality of my everyday life” (1982:329). Since Garfinkel believes that members’ “methods” are essentially shared, his theory of social order necessarily entails the intersubjective we-­ relations which transcend “I myself.” The situation is similar to my personal experience of visiting a nearby Starbucks. When I stand in front of the counter after queuing for a while and say: “A hazelnut latte, tall please,” I take for granted that the barista and all the other waiting customers “know” the rules so that a recognizable social order can be produced. In Schutzian terms, I presume in my experience that the world within the other’s actual reach lies within my potential reach. I also presume that the others in the we-­relations exist, and that I “know” the motives of the others which are appresented through signs and symbols – such as the dress-­code, music, and the color tone of the decorations

102   Expounding experience and so on – which transcend the existence of individuals, including my existence (Dreher 2003). On this point, Rawls sharply remarks that Garfinkel’s concern is not “the individual, as has often been claimed,” she writes, The individual persons who inhabit social situations are of interest only insofar as their personal characteristics reveal something about the competencies required to achieve the recognizable production of the local order that is the object of study. Garfinkel refers to persons who inhabit, and through their activities “make” and “remake” social scenes, as local production cohorts. (Rawls 2002:7) Transience – the fourth phenomenal field property of social order – marks one of Garfinkel’s theoretical innovations, for he is not content with treating social orders simply as manifestations of the intersubjective “given” like Schutz, nor as theoretical, or conceptual, constructions like the Formal Analysts. To Garfinkel, social orders are always constitutive, as they can only be accomplished locally in ongoing accountable practices. But, unlike some (mis-)readings of him, the fact that social orders are constitutive do not mean that social realities are simply publicly constituted in language (e.g., Miller & Metcalfe 1998:239). Rather, what is perceived as social reality and how we would relate with others are informed with typified categories, occasional relevances, and many other pre-­ predicative matters that are bound up with the organization of a language and its communicative use. It should be noted that Garfinkel markedly delineates himself from the formal conversation analysts, and by implication, discursive constructionists; he writes: EM is not in the business of interpreting signs. It is not an interpretive enterprise. Enacted local practices are not texts which symbolize “meaning” or events. They are in detail identical with themselves, and not representative of something else. The witnessably recurrent details of ordinary everyday practices are constitutive of their own reality. They are studied in their unmediated details and not as signed enterprises. (Garfinkel 2002:97; see also Garfinkel 1996:8) What matters to Garfinkel are the procedures of producing the social order no matter whether they involve semantic expressions (like greeting someone in the hallway) or non-­discursive behaviors (like queuing for a service). These procedures are themselves unquestioned, shared among members, and founded on the non-­discursivity of the everyday world.20 To use my Starbucks visit as an example, the discursive is surely a component of my experience, but it explicates little about the phenomenal field properties of social order – immortality, objectivity, transcendence, and transience. Craig makes this point precisely; he notes that since Garfinkel’s social order exists only in the embodied details of human interactions in actual settings, “verbal specifications of social facts do not

The non-discursive and transcendence   103 constitute them as social facts but can at best serve as aids or ‘instructions’ that for competent observers can index their recognition of generic phenomena in particular cases” (2003:474).

The alleged oblivion of the non-­discursivity of the everyday life in social science What has been suggested is that since Schutz, the everyday world of experience is conceived as constitutive of the transcendental and the non-­discursivity of the lifeworld, and these features have been kept intact in the studies of Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology. Stemmed from this logic, a phenomenology informed approach to anthropology and sociology should direct the researcher to uncover the prepredicative meaning structures of the social world in a systematic way. The major task will be to identify the non-­discursive stratum of human experience from which social order and rationality are derived, and empirically acknowledged by the actor.21 However, there has been a strain of constructionism, which ostensibly avows its adherence to social phenomenology and/­or ethnomethodology, and implicitly or explicitly, overstates the capability of empirically recognized discourse in the constitution of reality on the other. This perspective analyzes what its proponents sometimes call “Lebenswelt discourse” (Tan 2002), or studies the discursive “description of the person’s lifeworld” (Ashworth & Ashworth 2003; Ashworth et al. 2003).22 Their investigations seem to imply that the discursive is part and parcel of the lifeworld, and that the individuals’ discursive articulations of meaning constitute the field within which social science inquiries should begin and end. Also impacting on ethnographic inquiries, this perspective evokes an active view of reality construction with an empirical emphasis on actors’ local discursive productions and pays relatively less attention to exploring the non-­discursive domain of the lifeworld which constitutes the conditions for the possibility of any empirical meaning construction. One version of this perspective is outlined in Spector and Kitsuse’s Constructing Social Problems (2001[1987]) (hereafter Social Problems).23 This constructive approach criticizes conventional scientific preoccupations with the “expert” role in judging the “rationality,” “value,” and “sensibleness” that define what a social problem is and what caused the problem (Ibarra & Kitsuse 1993:27). Social Problems aligns itself with ethnomethodology’s program to examine the “members’ perspective” (Bogen & Lynch 1993:232fn5), and focuses on the social problem discourse of the members, which is open-­ended and contingent upon the courses taken by individuals to make claims about particular social problems. Laying heavy stress on the fluidity of the discursive definitions of the actors, Social Problems has been criticized for relegating to the background the objective social conditions from which particular discourses are derived. Speaking along this line of critique, Woolgar and Pawluch (1985) point out that there has been a “selective relativism” in Social Problems studies which prompts the researcher to claim the conditions of the social problems as “constant,” while

104   Expounding experience the discursive activities of the actors derived from these “constant” conditions are a lot more varied, highly relative to the individual specific social milieu.24 Another version of constructionist perspective, that has a closer connection with ethnographic investigations, is featured in a corpus of publications authored by Jaber Gubrium and/­or James Holstein. Their approach adopts a constructionist gaze onto the everyday discursive practices through which domestic reality – family, not the family – is constituted (Gubrium 1988; Gubrium & Holstein 1993a; Holstein & Gubrium 1994a). Based on a similar line of critique of essentialism adopted in Social Problems, the Gubrium-­Holstein approach opposes “family as a distinct social form, as abstract thing separate from its individual members and personalities” (Gubrium 1988:273). They suggest that the discursive “family usage” can link the abstract entity of “family” or “community” to experience, “creating practical understandings of domestic reality” (Holstein & Gubrium 1994a:232; see also Potter & Halliday 1990; Potter & Reicher 1987; Mulkay 1994). This strain of constructionism put forward by Gubrium and Holstein will be discussed in detail in Chapter 6. Before proceeding further, I must point out here that the emphasis placed on considering “facts” and “happenings” as a process of discourse, and treating objective realities as “discursive accomplishments” (Holstein & Gubrium 1994b:265) has been quite successful in stripping the essentialist traces that sustain specific social problems, or “the” family as abstract, idealized social forms assigned by “experts.” However, what has not been thoroughly pursued is the pre-­predicative meaning that makes possible a particular phenomenon meaningful to the actor that antedates explicit discursive constructions (Mclain & Weigert 1979:165). In anthropology, many scholars have raised the importance of the non-­discursive. For example, Manen has rightly pointed out that “[t]he basic things about our lifeworld … are preverbal” (1990:18); and he underscores the “epistemological silence” in ethnographic fieldwork under which “there is the rich domain of the unspeakable that constantly beckons us,” something “[b]eyond the range of our ordinary speaking and writing” (1990:113; original emphasis). Hastrup considers “silence” as “a vital part of the culture,” and reminds us that a “too narrow focus on verbal statements” will distort “the experiential reality of people where silences and other negativities also define the world” (1990:53). Being a well-­known expert in qualitative research, Silverman shows a mistrust of the discursive as he explicitly warns ones to “avoid treating the actors’ point of view as an explanation” (1989:18). Bloch is skeptical of what informants have put explicitly and discursively in the field, and argues that “ethnography backed up by our informants’ ‘actual words’ may often be quite misleading” (1998:16). He uses the simple example of learning to drive to show that once the cognitive apparatuses for efficient handling and packing of knowledge “are constructed, the operations connected with these specific domains [of knowledge] not only are non-­linguistic but also must be non-­linguistic if they are to be efficient” (1998:11; original emphases). Bloch’s non-­linguistic knowledge can be compared to John Searle’s concept of “background” which refers to the set of non-­intentional or pre-­intentional capacities that make

The non-discursive and transcendence   105 possible people’s understanding of utterances (1995:141). Searle explicitly admits that his concept of “background” refers to “the same sort of phenomena” (1995:132) that Bourdieu calls habitus, which acquires the logic of practice via “silent censures” (Bourdieu 2000:167; cited in Atkinson 2010:3). Lamont and Swidler cast doubts over considering the actors’ accounts as the ethnographic explanations as they “usually involve[e] an artificial coherency” imposed by the actors (2014:162). More recently, Decoteau denotes that “[o]ne of the key strengths of ethnography is to utilize cases in which there is a disjuncture between saying and doing to uncover often unconscious or taken-­ for-granted motivations, depositions and belief ” (2016:59). Bequeathing the intellectual insights into the non-­discursive, this chapter has tried to take one step further as to theoretically anchor the non-­discursivity, not to the methodic characteristics of ethnographic fieldwork, but to the concept of lived experience, which is a plausible ethnographic object that subsequently feeds into the researcher’s reflective gaze as data, and ultimately subjects to analysis.

Further illustration of Chapter 5: unveiling the taken-­forgrantedness of the spousal-­sexual world Chapter 5 has argued that the phenomenological thesis of the lifeworld and its attendant intersubjective experience is largely non-­discursive. In this light, when one is to study the lifeworld experience under the theoretical sponsorship of phenomenology, the fundamental empirical question is not to examine the articulated speech, the said, or what Schutz coins, the “thematic kernel” (1970:7). Rather, it is to gain access to its non-­articulated, pre-­predicative, intersubjective meaning-­context, or the “surrounding horizon” of the lived experience (1970:7) which is by nature unsaid. Put in less pedantic terms, Crotty (1996) – in his critique of some studies of patients’ experiences – introduces a pair of concepts known as “discursive reasoning” and “thinking hearing.” While discursive reasoning involves conscious, practical-­evaluative verbal reasoning, “thinking hearing” refers to a state where consciousness is passive, at rest, and is usually marked by contemplation and acquiescence. But, since any empirical exploration of the Schutzian lifeworld (similar to ethnographic inquiries) must begin with the actor’s lived experience and cannot do without the discursive, does Schutz simply pose an epistemological impossibility for empirical description of the lifeworld? Or, in Manen’s words, is it “hard to describe” the lifeworld because the basic things about it are “preverbal” (1990:18)? Unfortunately, Schutz did not give an answer. In this sub-­chapter, I attempt to accomplish the seemingly impossible by adopting the Schutzian line of thinking. To accomplish this task, two novel research techniques – the surface interview and answer-­aire – are designed to delve into the taken-­forgrantedness of the lifeworld, and the spousal-­sexual world is used as a case in point. This mini-­study aims to pioneer a way that the structures of the horizon that lie within the unsaid region of the lifeworld become scientifically examinable.

106   Expounding experience Specifically, the empirical case involves the sexual worlds of seven Hong Kong Chinese couples who have been married for over a decade, have children, and plan to have no more. Such a spousal-­sexual world constitutes an apposite case for my present concern for several reasons. First, this world is a relatively simple one involving only two actors. Second, because of the relatively private and hidden nature of sexual matters to actors other than the spouses, the world in question entails – using Schutzian terms – a we-­relation with a high degree of directness. In this case, the spouses – and only them – are acknowledgeable of their intersubjective sexual world. After such a long period of marriage, it would be safe for us to presume that the couples in question have taken for granted many issues or, in other words, rendered them non-­discursive. All these factors are to ensure a simple empirical case such that the subsequent analyses can achieve a relatively high degree of specificity and explicitness concerning the data collection and analysis methods. Indeed, to further simplify the empirical details involved, only one dimension of the spousal-­sexual world will be explored. This dimension is supposed to be an important, if not the most important, component of this particular world, which is the taken-­for-granted attitude of the couple toward extramarital affairs. One should note that by using a small sample in the analysis, this study means to illustrate the empirical possibilities bearing on Schutz’s lifeworld theory rather than rigorously exploring the empirical structures of the spousal-­sexual world. This is to say, the primary subject matter of the study is theoretical rather than empirical. Before proceeding to my major arguments and analyses, previous scholastic efforts to delve into the structures of the lifeworld experience are worth being reviewed and critically assessed.

Past empirical inquiries into the non-­discursive Different attempts in the social science literature have been made to get hold of the empirical details of the horizon of the lifeworld. Brooms (2006), for example, considers tattooing as a process that acts as a non-­discursive form of cultural expression through the body. Through the embodied affectual practice of tattooing, individuals create a relationship of co-­dependency and – in Schutzian terms – a “mutual tuning in” with each other. Furthermore, to examine the unspeakable experience beyond verbal language, Manen (1990) and Alerby (2003) suggest using painting as a form of language that speaks for the silent and tacit dimension of the adolescent experience. Also, to re-­construct past experience through textual archives, cultural historians focus on the logic of rhetorical deployments and organizing practices, for example, the use of metonymy, metaphor, irony, and special word ordering, as the essential vehicle for studying how signs come to seem experientially real for users (e.g., Uhlmann & Uhlmann 2005). Having said the above, I consider that “breaching experiments” and phenomenographic research are two empirical approaches that are most pertinent to the present illustrative study. Proposed by Garfinkel, breaching experiments

The non-discursive and transcendence   107 refer to a special research technique to produce “reflections through which the strangeness of an obstinately familiar world can be detected” (1967:38). By “making trouble” in ordinary social situations, the researcher can explore the horizon of social events, and the contextual knowledge constituting the shared recognitions of the actors involved. The purpose of breaching experiments is thus to make visible the “seen but unnoticed” background expectancies of social interaction and they can tell us “something about how the structures of everyday activities are ordinarily and routinely produced and maintained” (1967:36). While I concur with the underlying assumption of breaching experiments, that the non-­discursivity of the lifeworld experience can be exposed through the disruption of the taken-­for-grantedness of our everyday life, the utility of the approach is usually limited by, as what Castaneda suggests, the “extensive staging” required. It means that breaching experiments usually involve extensive preparation of physical, non-­natural stages for the experiment, impositions of elaborate, and strict scripting of roles for subjects (2006:78). Another suggestive empirical approach is called phenomenography. First coined by Marton and his research group in 1979, the term “phenomenography” appeared in print two years later (see Marton 1986). Richardson stresses that it is an empirically-­based approach that aims to identify the “qualitatively different ways in which different people experience, conceptualize, perceive, and understand various kinds of phenomena” (1999:53). In its actual operation, phenomenographic research applies an introspective method, in which the informants are asked to express their subjective point of view while carrying out an experimental task. For example, in a study exploring different experiential “conceptions of learning,” Saljo asked respondents to reply to a specific question, “Well, what do you actually mean by learning?” His study thematizes respondents’ learning experience in five qualitatively different conceptions of learning, including learning as (i) “the increase of knowledge”; (ii) “memorizing”; (iii) “the acquisition of acts, procedures, etc., which can be retained and/­or utilized in practice”; (iv) “the abstraction of meaning”; and (v) “an interpretive process aimed at the understanding of reality” (1979:19; cited in Richardson 1999:56). To Marton, the phenomenographic approach not only adopts a “from-­the-insider” perspective that seeks to describe the world as the actor experiences it, but also effectively classifies the actor’s conceptions of reality in terms of “categories of description” that are “logically related to each other, and forming hierarchies in relation to given criteria” (Richardson 1999:56). Thus, the product of phenomenographic research is the “outcome space” which systematically contains all conceptualizations of the relevant concept (Greasley & Ashworth 2007:821). While acknowledging the phenomenological insight into the nature of experience, phenomenography is merited as a method of data collection for involving less extensive staging than breaching experiments. However, the approach only takes an ambivalent position in the face of the phenomenological aporia of the non-­discursive, i.e., the pre-­predicative level of experience. In  summing up his reading of Marton’s work, Richardson states that while

108   Expounding experience phenomenological investigation is merely concerned with “immediate experience” in the taken-­for-granted world, Marton believes that phenomenographers are able to deal with “both the conceptual and the experiential, as well with what is thought of as that which is lived” (Marton 1981:181; cited in Richardson 1999:60). In other words, Marton suggests that his phenomenography has taken into consideration both the taken-­for-grantedness of lived experience and the importance of a systematic conceptual framework in the empirical analysis. Bearing in mind the insights and setbacks of breaching experiments and phenomenography, in the next section I shall invent new techniques in order to delve into the non-­discursivity of the lifeworld experience.

Methods to describe the unsaid: the surface interview and answer-­aire There are mainly two crucial assumptions regarding breaching experiments in the empirical study of the lifeworld experience. First, it is the socially shared stock of knowledge that constitutes our taken-­for-granted world such that we (or think that we) know something as so familiar that we do not notice it. And, in order to expose the pre-­predicative expectancies of the lifeworld that have been accepted as real for a long time, some artificial and temporary disruption must be introduced to the actor. Second, the more forceful breaching techniques that are used (e.g., the use of breaching questions), the more the actor will say and question the taken-­for-granted meaning-­context of his/­her everyday experience. The more the taken-­for-grantedness is said, the more we know about the unsaid. These underlying assumptions of breaching experiments can be understood metaphorically in terms of a person using two fingers to pinch a handkerchief and pull it through a ring. The direction and the forcefulness of the pull refer to breaching techniques. The portion of the handkerchief that has passed through the ring represents something that was originally unquestioned, but was raised to the practical consciousness owing to the disruption. The portion of the handkerchief that does not pass through the ring despite the pull refers to the stock of knowledge that the actor prefers not to question for the moment, but may do so in the future. The ring here refers to the frame of reference of all social actions, or what Schutz coins the “structure of relevance” that mediates human experience. To Schutz, the “structure of relevance” acts like a gatekeeper as it conditions what knowledge is raised to the discursive level, and what remains is taken-­for-granted. In other words, the “structure of relevance” determines how we structure fields of consciousness into discursive themes and unquestioned, surrounding horizon. Borrowing the insight from breaching experiments, our study of the spousal-­ sexual world also involves certain disruptions of the typificatory schemes respondents have built up for themselves. In concrete terms, it required the couple respondents to read a story that involved a couple where the wife was having extramarital affairs (Ng  1996:58–61), which was then followed by an interview. The two spouses were interviewed separately with the husband

The non-discursive and transcendence   109 interviewed by a male researcher (the author) and the wife by a female researcher. During the interview, the respondent was asked six questions. All questions were designed to begin with a couple of sentences or phrases stated in the story and ended on an open question – “what do you think about it?” Once the respondent stopped narrating, the interviewer either paraphrased what s/­he/­she had said, or asked “Is there anything you want to add?,” or “Any more comments?” When the respondent said: “No, nothing more”; or simply said, “No,” in response to the follow-­up questions, the respondent’s narration concerning that question was regarded as finished. The interviewer then moved on to the next question. The whole interview was completed when the respondent finished answering all six questions. Such non-­directive follow-­up questioning, with the non-­judgmental strategy of the interviewer, was used to capture the respondent’s structuring activity in the least disturbed manner. This approach is diagonally opposite to the one used in in-­depth interviews with directive follow-­up questions, which point at particular areas of interest to the interviewer. In our study, the few questions the interviewer asked were fixed and open-­ended with virtually no set limit on what the respondents could retrieve from his/­her stock of knowledge. In this light, I call this research approach, the surface interview. A pilot test of the surface interview was run with a couple. Their feedback suggested that the interview allowed them to freely express themselves without feeling that their privacy was being intruded upon, and that they had little pressure to give socially desirable responses. The next methodological challenge was how to analyze systematically the surface interview scripts so as to delve into the non-­discursive. Any systematic analysis of qualitative data necessarily involves classification and categorization. The insight into the phenomenographers is therefore suggestive, as they underscore the importance of the construction of the “categories of description,” which reflects the typical usage of utterances of the respondents during interviews. However, what is glaringly missing from phenomenography is to limit the “outcome space” within the realm of the subjective experiential categories, so it does not fully deal with the intersubjective nature of the stock of knowledge the respondents utilize during the interview. What I mean is, when the respondent spoke of a particular concept (e.g., love or sex), he/­she was inevitably engaged in a dialogue with a counterpart. One should be reminded that in a surface interview, the interviewee was talking to, but not with the interviewer, who merely acts as a tape recorder by constantly asking: “Is there anything you want to add?” Very often, the respondent was talking using the stock of knowledge in society that has been sedimented in his/­her typificatory schema and mediated by his/­her everyday experience. It is this kind of stock of knowledge taken-­for-granted by the actor that constitutes the pre-­predicative meaning-­ context of experience. Therefore, in analyzing the interview scripts so as to reach the level of the non-­discursive, one has to construct a set of stock of knowledge pertinent to a particular concept in a particular society. In simpler terms, it is a set of possible typical answers to a particular concept which have been commonly adopted in a particular society. I call this list of answers, an answer-­aire, literally

110   Expounding experience the answer-­space. Rather than identifying the answer-­space within the subjective realm of the respondents, I need to look for bits and pieces of typical answers in society. It is assumed that the non-­discursive dimension of the lifeworld has appeared in one way or the other in the discourse of society, and the spousal-­ sexual world in question is no exception. In other words, what is taken for granted by the respondents must have been in the discourse of some other individuals in the past. Some of these individuals are persons of authority. With the passage of time, they become anonymous. They might be turned into, what Gadamer coins, “tradition,” which embraces all past discourses at the present moment (1988:280–281). When the respondent began to talk about a story, he/­she necessarily referred to bits and pieces of the tradition discursively, with the rest of the tradition remaining silent as to the non-­discursive possibilities. Speaking on the topic of spousal sexuality, I notice that the typical answers are usually present in the local debates that invoke traditional conceptions of sex, love, and marriage between husbands and wives. Hence, in constructing the answer-­aire, I gathered six highly popular books written for the Hong Kong local public by doctors, scholars, and front-­line service workers. Within these books, 44 debates related to extramarital affairs in the spousal-­sexual world were identified. These 44 debates were further arranged into three broad categories and 15 categories with seven subcategories (see Table 5.1). Essentially, this list of debate categories constitutes the answer-­aire against which the surface interview scripts were analyzed. The idea can be understood schematically in Figure 5.1. For anyone who answers the same questions in the surface interview, the answers, or arguments, that he/­she makes discursive will constitute only a portion of a whole range of local debates. And those portions that remain unspoken upon repeated probing by the interviewers constitute the area of the unsaid, that is, the non-­discursive, pre-­predicative meaning-­context. It should be stressed that the list does not exhaust all debate categories pertinent to the topic. To identify the debate categories from local popular books assumes that the resulting spectrum of debates covers most of the contents solicited from the surface interview. By virtue of the two research techniques – surface interview and answer-­aire – we can proceed to empirically examine the (different) structures of the taken-­for-grantedness of the sexual world of the couples in question and the sexual world between the husband and wife respondents.

Participants Because the present study is to illustrate how the non-­discursive dimension of the lifeworld experience can be explored, the representativeness of the sample is not a crucial issue. As a result, seven couples were invited to participate in the study through a convenient snowball sampling method. All of them were in their 30s or 40s. They all agreed to be viewed as “middle class” and were open-­ minded enough to talk about sex-­related matters in an interview. The selected profiles of the respondents are shown in Table 5.2.

The non-discursive and transcendence   111 Table 5.1  The answer-aire Debate category

Local debates (44 debates)

Values A  Sex/love is guided by socio-cultural values A1  Fidelity and loyalty *1  The one-husband-one-wife system should not be challenged (Ng 1994:134). *2  Love and marriage should only be between one man and one woman. Other situations, such as that of a homosexual relationship, multiple partners, etc. only result in tears and trauma (Chow 1995:266–267). 3  Chinese morals emphasize virginity, loyalty between a husband and wife’ unlike the sexual promiscuity of the West (Ng 1994:228, 238). 4  One should not take revenge on someone he/she loves or once loved (Ng 1991:206). A2  Selfless giving

*5  Love should be unconditional (Ng 1991:44). 6  Selfless love does not exist (Ng 1991:5). *7  Love should not be all one-sided (Ng 1991:38). 8  What matters is the experience of love, not its duration (Ng 1991:38).

A3  Trust, respect, honesty, and humbleness

9  There are several universal values guiding sex and love: respect, honesty, and humbleness (Ng 1994:147). 10  A good sex life is inseparable from respect (Tam & Law 1992:48). 11  A good sex life is inseparable from trust (Tam & Law 1992:48). *12  Couples with deep mutual affection will not force the other to do something they dislike, but will appreciate and understand the each other’s preferences (Leung & Ng 1995:211). 13  A harmonious sex life is based on whether the couple can trust each other to “give” and “take” (Tam & Law 1992: 48).

A4  Confucian values

*3  The virtue of the Chinese culture is that it emphasizes virginity, one-husband-one-wife, loyalty, but not sexual promiscuity as Western culture does (Ng 1994:228, 238).

A5  Freedom and freewill

14  True love should allow both sides to have freedom (Ng 1991:188). *15  As long as the two persons involved like it, there should be no limits on how to have sex (Chow 1994:64). *16  As long as it is mutually agreed, just having sex is okay (Ng 1994:236).

A6  Christianity

*17  Christians do not have sex for reasons other than reproduction (Chow 1994:123).

A7  Fate and destiny

18  Love is fate (Ng 1991:5). continued

112   Expounding experience Table 5.1  Continued Debate category

Local debates (44 debates)

Marriage and spousal relationship B  Sex is a matter of love *12  Couples with deep mutual affection will not force the other to do something they dislike, but will appreciate and understand each other’s preferences (Leung & Ng 1995:211). 19  Loving is the prerequisite for having sex (Ng 1991:14). 20  Having sex implies love between the actors (Ng 1991:14). 21  When two people love each other, they should get married (Ng 1994:143). 22  Sex is fundamental to marriage. A harmonious sex life is fundamental to a harmonious marital relationship (Tam & Law 1992:48). C  Sex/love is by nature heterosexual

*1  The one-husband-one-wife system should not be challenged (Ng 1994:134). *2  Love and marriage should only be between one man and one woman. Other situations, such as homosexual relationships, or multiple partners, etc. only result in tears and trauma (Chow 1995:266–267).

D  Sex/love is by nature *23  Sex life is the most intimate communication between spouses (Leung & Ng 1995:13). communicative action 24  You should tell your partner you love them between the spouses (Ng 1991:182). *25  If spouses can express each other’s worries and expectations related to sex, they can often reach a consensus (Tam & Law 1992:45). *26  In a love relationship, both parties should come to an understanding before breaking up (Ng 1991:223). E  Sex is a matter between two persons only

*2  Love and marriage should only be between one man and one woman. Other situations, such as homosexual relationships, or multiple partners, etc. only result in tears and trauma (Chow 1995:266–267). *27  It is difficult for a third party to judge what a love relationship means to the lovers (Leung & Ng 1995:70). 28  Why can’t we love more than one person? (Ng 1991:200).

Specific nature and functions F  Sex/live is a matter of *5  Love should be unconditional (Ng 1991:44). logical calculation *7  Love should not be all one way (Ng 1991:38). *12  Couples with deep mutual affection will not force the other to do something they dislike, but will appreciate and understand each other’s preferences (Leung & Ng 1995:211). *25  If spouses can express to each other their worries and expectations related to sex, they can often reach a consensus (Tam & Law 1992:45). *26  In a love relationship, both parties should come to an understanding before breaking up (Ng 1991:223). 29  A satisfactory sex life should be well-planned. It will not happen naturally (Leung & Ng 1995:10).

The non-discursive and transcendence   113 Table 5.1  Continued Debate category

Local debates (44 debates) 30  One should not trust his/her lover unconditionally (Ng 1991:35). 31  One should be rational in dealing with love affairs (Ng 1991:1).

G  Sex is spiritual and sublimated, not physical and instinct-driven

32  Love should not be purely spiritual (Ng 1991:32). 33  Sex-without-love, masturbation, and having sex with prostitutes are problematic actions that turn humans into physical things (Ng 1994:264, 266). 34  Sex can create an extremely intimate feeling and a sense of mutual belonging between spouses; therefore sex is more than a mere physical activity (Tam & Law 1992:40). 35  Sex, unlike eating, can be highly spiritual and sublimated (Ng 1994:58).

H  Sex/love is a matter of basic instinct

36  Sex is a human instinct (Ng 1991:173). *37  Sex may be a human instinct but it is incorrect to think that: “sex is something that cannot be taught and that it will be known when the time comes” (Ng 1994:206).

I  Sex is a private, hidden *15  As long as the two persons like it, it doesn’t matter how matter you have sex (Chow 1994:64). *16  As long as it is mutually agreed, just having sex is okay (Ng 1994:236). *23  Sex life is the most intimate communication between spouses (Leung & Ng 1995:13). *27  It is difficult for a third party to judge what a love relationship means to the lovers (Leung & Ng 1995:70). 38  Sex is something highly private and only involves the two persons involved (Ng 1994:208). J  Sex/love is a personality- changing agent

39  Love should not be used as a means to change a person’s personality (Ng 1991: 197).

K  Sex/love is a skill and *37  Sex may be a human instinct but it is incorrect to think that: “sex is something that cannot be taught and that it will knowledge that can be be known when the time comes” (Ng 1994:206). learnt L  Sex/love is potentially 40  A satisfactory sex life can enhance one’s self respect, confidence and becoming more enriching (Leung & Ng both dignifying and 1995:13). dehumanizing M  Sex/love is a matter of gender struggles and imbalance

41  Females have a price to pay if they want to achieve gender equality (Ng 1994:159). 42  In order to maintain a good marital relationship, wives should take good care of their appearance (Ng 1994:165). 43  Males and females differ in their biological reactions and expectations in sex. Males are easily attracted by visual stimuli, whereas females are more concerned with the sense of security that a relationship brings (Tam & Law 1995:40). continued

114   Expounding experience Table 5.1  Continued Debate category

Local debates (44 debates)

N  Sex is a legal matter

44  When one is aged above 18, he/she should be mature enough to handle sex (Ng 1994:91).

O  Sex is a matter of reproduction

*17  Christians do not have sex for reasons other than reproduction (Chow 1994:123).

Sources: Chow (1994, 1995), Leung and Ng (1995), Ng (1991, 1994), Tam and Law (1992). Note * Debates that belong to more than one debate category.

Figure 5.1 A schematic representation of the relationships between discursive reasoning and non-discursive taken-for-grantedness through an answer-aire.

Procedures As mentioned before, each respondent was required to read a story concerning extramarital affairs, and his/­her comments were solicited through six set questions. Throughout the interview, the role of the interviewer remained non-­ directive. As mentioned before, the interview was conducted with the individual spouse to avoid intraspousal interference. The principle of “male-­interviewerinterviews-­husbands” and “female-­interviewer-interviews-­wives” was adopted in all cases. Before the interviews, respondents agreed to sign a consent form that

The non-discursive and transcendence   115 Table 5.2  Selected profiles of the respondents Subject (couple)

Age

Duration of marriage

Occupation (husband/wife)

Venue of Type of interview housing

Number of children

♂A, ♀A

45, 40

12 years

Admin./Housewife

Home

Private

2

♂B, ♀B

37, 36

10 years

Admin./Housewife

Home

Private

2

♂C,♀C

48, 48

10 years

Admin./Admin.

Home

Public

1

♂D, ♀D

36, 35

13 years

Nurse.Nurse

Garden

Private

1

♂E, ♀E

49, 47

17 years

Engineer/Nurse

Home

Private

2

♂F, ♀F

41, 32

18 years

Merchant/Nurse

Cafe

Private

2

♂G, ♀G

46, 44

14 years

Admin./Housewife

Home

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clearly stated the research objectives and the way data would be processed so as to uphold the ethics of confidentiality. Before the interview began, the confidentiality of data was again stressed by the interviewer. The interviews with the seven couples in question were audio-­recorded and later transcribed verbatim as texts. As all interviews were conducted by two interviewers, the contents of the audio records were cross-­reviewed after the interviews with a couple were finished. This step was to ensure that the two interviewers had upheld the principles of conducting a surface interview. This was found to be satisfactory. On average, each respondent took about 18 minutes to finish the interview.

Data analysis After the process of transcription was complete, the scripts were analyzed in several steps. First, the original texts (i.e., the natural utterances) were divided into meaningful statements that might contain one or several sentences. Altogether, 602 statements were identified. Second, each statement was sorted into three broad categories: (1) “Statements in dialogue with the text,” (2) “Statements in dialogue with the self,” and (3) “Statements in dialogue with local debates.” “Statements in dialogue with the text” refers to the statements through which the respondent was virtually reiterating the plot of the story (i.e., the text), or making “logical inferences” of the plot. Some examples of statements included in this category were as follows: Based on the whole story, the husband was not really sexually impotent. According to the story, the husband’s problem was due to his worry over hurting his wife when having intercourse. “Statements in dialogue with the self ” refers to the statements through which the respondent was virtually speaking to him/­herself without making reference to

116   Expounding experience the story, or the questions asked by the interviewer, or making other external references. Some examples of statements included in this category were as follows: It seems what I am saying is defeating the point I made at the beginning. I don’t know how to answer this question. Only the last category, “Statements in dialogue with local debates,” was of research interest to the present study. For example, the following three statements were categorized under the debate category “Sex is a matter of love.” Sex can be separated from love. However, whether these two should be separated depends on one’s perceptions. If I need to have sex with someone I don’t love, I cannot accept this. Sex and love can actually complement each other. Consequently, altogether 568 statements (♂: 255; ♀: 313) belonged to this category. These statements were then regrouped under the 44 debate categories through the process of theme identification (Ryan 2003). Essentially, the process involved identifying the theme(s) covered by each statement and matching it (them) with the debate category. And, in this process, two residual categories were further added, namely “Unclear Theme” and “Unclassified Theme.” “Unclear Theme” contained statements that possessed ambivalent meanings. These statements were very often pre-­debate sentences in the interview, and their viewpoints were clarified in subsequent utterances. For example, the following statements were categorized under “Unclear Theme”: In fact, we need to find out the reasons why the wife had the affairs. The husband seemed to have forgiven himself and perceived the problem as unsolvable. Therefore, he chose to escape from taking any responsibility for the problem. “Unclassified Theme” contained statements that were judged to be out of the debate categories identified in the answer-­aire, for example: In Chinese society, the media should reinforce this belief and education. Sexual dysfunction is just as normal as tuberculosis, or other diseases. Given technological advancement nowadays, sexual dysfunction is not incurable. Either a surgical operation, or taking medication could work.

The non-discursive and transcendence   117 Among the 568 statements, 97 (♂: 45; ♀: 52) belonged to “Unclear Theme” and 138 (♂: 83; ♀: 55) to “Unclassified Theme.” Central to the subsequent analysis are the remaining 333 (♂: 167; ♀: 206) statements. The 333 statements were grouped under the debate categories in the answer­aire. In this process, 27 statements (8.1 percent) were put under two categories because of multiple meanings. The distribution of the number of debate categories touched upon by the husband and wife respondents is indicated in Table 5.3. The counting of debates was based on whether the discursive contents of a respondent possessed direct or clearly indirect references to a particular debate category, but not on the number of statements made to engage in that particular debate. For example, two respondents would be counted equally as one even if one respondent used 10 statements to engage in one particular debate, while the other only used three statements. This counting procedure was to ensure that the results would not be affected by repetition and individual discursive style of being over-­elaborative on issues.

Results Table 5.3 shows that seven debate categories were not verbally mentioned by all the couples. These unquestioned debates thus constitute the pre-­predicative stratum of spousal-­sexual world in relation to extramarital affairs. In concrete terms, what came to be taken for granted by specific actors was the value that “love is fate” and the specific function of love as a personality-­changing agent. Moreover, none of the couples raised explicit concerns over three particularistic conceptions of the nature of sex, including considering sex as a legal matter, as a biological reproductive act, and as a technical skill and knowledge amenable to learning and maneuvering. Two debate categories related to the feminist perspective, that is, to consider sex/­love as a milieu of gender struggle and to view the sex act as potentially dignifying and dehumanizing, were also taken for granted by all couples. It was uncertain whether these unsaid themes were taken as unquestionably right or wrong, or simply irrelevant in their natural standpoint. The results only suggested that these themes constituted the unquestioned but always questionable meaning-­context of the couples’ sexual world when they were to deal with the issue of extramarital affairs. One should note that the attitude of middle-­class, middle-­aged Hong Kong Chinese couples has not been a topic of research. Several previous studies only gave general descriptions of Hong Kong couples as being influenced both by traditional Chinese cultural values and by Western ideologies due to over a century of British colonial rule (Lee 1998; Whitehead 1997). Along this line, scholars generally believe that Hong Kong couples are much more exposed to romantic Western ideals of companionate, love-­based, egalitarian, exclusive, and lasting marriage when compared to their counterparts in mainland China and other Asian countries (Giddens 1992; Hackstaff 1999). However, our findings revealed that the values which were more pertinent to traditional Chinese culture (e.g., “Confucian values,” and “fidelity and loyalty”) and to Western

118   Expounding experience Table 5.3 Number of debates mentioned by the husband and wife respondents in the answer-aire Answer-aire category

No. of debates mentioned by the husband and wife respondents

Values F  Sex/love is guided by socio-cultural values F5  Fidelity and loyalty

♂A (2) ♂B (2) ♂C (2) ♂D (1) ♂E (1) ♂F (2) ♂G (2)

12

♀A (2)♀B (1) ♀C (1) ♀D (1) ♀E (2) ♀F (1) ♀G (3)

11

F1  Selfless giving

♂A (1) ♂B (1) ♂D (2) ♂F (2) ♂G (2)

8

♀A (3) ♀B (1) ♀C (2) ♀E (2) ♀F (3) ♀G (2)

13

F2  Trust, respect, honesty, and humbleness

♂A (2) ♂B (1) ♂E (1) ♂F (1) ♂G (1)

6

♀A (1) ♀B (2) ♀C (2) ♀D (1) ♀E (2) ♀F (1) ♀G (1)

10

F7  Confucian values

♂A (1) ♂B (1) ♂C (1) ♂G (1)

4

♀G (1)

1

F4  Freedom and freewill

♂G(1)

1

Nil

0

F6  Christianity

♂G(1)

1

Nil

0

F3  Fate and destiny

Nil

0

Nil

0

Marriage and spousal relationship A  Sex is a matter of love ♂A (2) ♂B (3) ♂C (4) ♂D (2) ♂E (3) ♂F (3) ♂G (3)

20

♀A (3) ♀B (2) ♀C (2) ♀D (2) ♀E (3) ♀F (1) ♀G (2)

15

B  Sex/love is by nature heterosexual

♂A (1) ♂B (1) ♂C (1) ♂D (1) ♂E (1) ♂F (2) ♂G (1)

8

♀A (2) ♀B (2) ♀C (1) ♀D (1) ♀E (2) ♀F (1) ♀G (3)

12

I  Sex/love is by nature communicative action

♂A (1) ♂B (1) ♂F (1)

3

♀A (2) ♀B (2) ♀C (2) ♀D (1) ♀F (1) ♀G (1)

9

2

♀A (1) ♀B (1) ♀E (1) ♀G (1)

4

7

♀A (4) ♀B (1) ♀C (3) ♀D (1) ♀E (2) ♀F (2) ♀G (1)

14

♂A (2) ♂B (1) ♂C (1) ♂E (1) ♂F (1)

6

♀B (1) ♀C (1) ♀D (1) ♀E (1) ♀F (1) ♀G (3)

8

H  Sex/love is a matter of ♂B (1) ♂D (1) ♂F (1) ♂G (1) basic instinct

4

♀A (1)♀F (1)

2

2

♀B (2) ♀C (2) ♀G (1)

5

E  Sex is a matter between ♂A (1) ♂F (1) two persons only Specific nature and functions G  Sex/live is a matter of ♂A (1) ♂B (2) ♂D (2) logical calculation ♂F (2) D  Sex is spiritual and sublimated, not physical and instinct-driven

L  Sex is private, hidden matter

♂F (1) ♂G (1)

The non-discursive and transcendence   119 Table 5.3 Continued Answer-aire category

No. of debates mentioned by the husband and wife respondents

J  Sex/love is a personality-changing agent

Nil

0

Nil

K  Sex/love is a skill and knowledge that can be learnt

Nil

0

Nil

0

M  Sex/love is potentially both dignifying and dehumanizing

Nil

0

Nil

0

N  Sex/love is a matter of gender struggles and imbalance

Nil

0

Nil

0

C  Sex is a legal matter

Nil

0

Nil

0

O  Sex is a matter of reproduction

Nil

0

Nil

0

ideologies (e.g., “freedom and freewill” and “Christianity”) had influenced the informants in somewhat different manners. Table 5.3 shows that in the spousal-­ sexual world, values with stronger relevance to Western culture were likely to be taken for granted, whereas those more pertinent to the traditional Chinese values were thematized more often in discourse. Therefore, what we can describe about the spousal-­sexual world of the Hong Kong Chinese couples in question is that traditional Chinese values are more likely to be brought up to the discursive level when their unquestioned lived experience is disturbed by talk of extramarital affairs. As for Western values, they are “sedimented” more deeply in the opacity of the lifeworld. One reason behind this structure is that Hong Kong middle-­class spouses tend to perceive extramarital affairs as a more disturbing issue against traditional Chinese values than Western values. While the reason behind this structure is complex, it is beyond the scope of this study. However, the structure unveiled does constitute a seminal basis for one to delve further into the spousal-­sexual world. In the literature, several findings reflect the differential attitudes toward sex along the gender fault line, although they were not specific to the middle-­class, middle-­aged couples. For example, quoting two territory-­wide surveys, So and Cheung (2005) observed that while over 82 percent of married women agreed that wives should be able to reject their husbands’ sexual requests, only 67 percent of husbands agreed that their wives had the right of rejection. Another survey suggested that male respondents were more tolerant of men having casual sex, such as with commercial sex workers, than of women having casual sex (FPAHK 2000). However, these rather significant differences in sexual attitude between the two genders were not confirmed in the present study.

120   Expounding experience Table 5.3 indicates the number of debates being brought up to the discursive by both husband and wife respondents. The general pattern along the gender fault line showed that there was no significant difference in the non-­discursive structures of the spousal-­sexual world as perceived by the two genders. It was seen that no single answer-­aire category that was frequently thematized by one respondent group was taken for granted by the other. One explanation is that the “structures of relevance” of the two genders that mediates their interpretations of matters related to extramarital affairs are, broadly speaking, similar. Thus, what can be examined here were the more refined heterogeneous structures that constitute the pre-­predicative strata of the husband’s and wife’s experience in the sexual world. Our analytical gaze then moved to examining those themes which one gender was more likely to take for granted than the other. Relatively speaking, wives were more likely than husbands to bring up to the discursive level the values of “selfless giving” and “trust, respect, honesty, and humbleness.” Husbands tended to thematize Confucian values as the guiding ideology for sex and love, whereas wives seemed to prefer keeping these traditional Chinese values unquestioned. Here, we observe that while husbands seemed to find extramarital affairs to be more in conflict with traditional Chinese morality, wives appeared to find it more in conflict with Western, Christian-­based values. In addition, husbands were more likely than wives to take for granted the debate categories under the “marriage and spousal relationship” portion of the answer-­aire. The only category that husbands thematized significantly more than wives was “sex is a matter of love.” As for the remaining three categories, namely “sex/­love is by nature heterosexual,” “sex/­love is by nature communicative action between the spouse,” and “sex is a matter between two persons only,” they were more ready to be thematized in discourse by wives than were husbands. It was also found that husbands were more likely than wives to take for granted that “sex/­love is a matter of logical calculation” when their spousal-­sexual world was disrupted by extramarital affairs. As regarding “sex/­ love is a basic instinct,” wives, however, were more likely than husbands to consider it unquestioned. All these empirical observations inferred that wives tended to thematize or to question the relationship itself when they encounter the issues related to extramarital affairs. In their spousal-­sexual world, wives seemed to consider the relationship itself as a complex matter, and it required calculations and other goal-­directed actions to nurture it. Hence, wives tended to attribute the problem of extramarital affairs more to the bilateral, mutual aspects of the two spouses than husbands. As to husbands, they had a stronger tendency than wives to take for granted the complexity of the spousal relationship. Rather, husbands appeared to be more “self-­centered” and resort to certain general principles, or the basic instinct, as an explicit explanation of extramarital affairs. In sum, our findings suggested that there existed – relatively speaking – a high level of heterogeneity in the taken-­for-granted structures of the lifeworld in relation to marriage and spousal relationship between the two genders.

The non-discursive and transcendence   121 However, certain subtle differences were also identified in the structures of the spousal-­sexual world between husbands and wives. These differences can be accounted for by different structures of relevance regarding the two genders’ dispositions toward Chinese/­Western values and the “relationship-­centered” versus “self-­centered” views on spousal affairs.

Concluding remarks This study draws upon the insight of “breaching experiments” and phenomenology, two research techniques that were formulated to empirically investigate the non-­discursivity of lived experience in the everyday life. It is argued that the surface interview in which the role of the interviewer is non-­directive has taken seriously the tentativeness and openness of phenomenology, while keeping the methodological idea of making “temporary disruptions” to the lifeworld intact. I also suggest that the answer-­aire is the key thread connecting the discursive reasoning (from the surface interview) of the actor to the non-­discursivity of the lifeworld. Constructed through a rigorous review of local debates related to spousal sexuality, the answer-­aire offered an answer-­space for the researcher to observe the structuring activity of the respondents in questioning their taken-­ for-granted everyday experience related to spousal sexuality. A key implication of the answer-­aire as a methodological vehicle to understand an intersubjective phenomenon is that it offers a way that the social scientist might tackle the perennial epistemological dilemma of accepting the actor’s discursive reports at face value, or accepting the researcher’s own constructions of the actor’s experience. In this study, in light of the two techniques, the structures of the horizon that lie within the unsaid region of the lifeworld of seven couples became scientifically examinable.

Notes   1 The concept of Erlebnis should be distinct from that of Erfahrung, which is usually translated in English as the same word “experience.” Based on the reading of Dilthey’s work by Harrington (2001) and Makkreel (1992), Erlebnis denotes our “inner” experience of life over time, as distinct from Erfahrung, by which Dilthey understands as our “outer” experience of the world. Erlebnis precedes Erfahrung because it [Erlebnis] expresses our direct understanding of life as something already meaningful in terms of relations of wholes and parts over the flow of time. (Harrington 2001:48) Erfahrung, on the other hand, refers to “a conceptual ordering of inert sensations,” as “a phenomenal construct [of an Erlebnis]” (Makkreel 1992:8). One may draw a parallel elaboration of the distinction between “mere experience” and “an experience” by Turner (1986:35). My concern in this book, however, is to consider Erlebnis as the plausible ethnographic object.   2 Schutz admits that his “interpretation of the experiences of consciousness [as] related intentionally to the other self does not completely fulfill the requirements of Weber’s definition [of social action]” (1980:145).

122   Expounding experience   3 According to Schutz and Luckmann, the six experiential categories are: (1) a “specific tension of consciousness,” (2) a “specific epoch,” (3) a “dominant form of spontaneity,” (4) a “specific form of sociality,” (5) a “specific form of self-­experience,” and (6) a “specific time perspective” (1995:24–28).   4 It should be noted that the transcendental character of the lifeworld and the non-­ discursivity of experience have also been vital to Gurwitsch’s account of social interaction. Attempting to locate intersubjectivity in Husserl’s “natural attitude” of everyday life, Gurwitsch further suggests that we are always dealing with an “equipment totality” (Zeugganzheit) in a particular “milieu.” It is by building a shared history and tradition around the shared “equipment” (das Zeug), a group sense of “partnership,” “membership,” is formed in relation to a common milieu. For a fuller exposition, see Gurwitsch (1979).   5 Rodemeyer (2006:48) reminds us that the notions of appresentation and apperception are sometimes used interchangeably by Husserl.   6 To Schutz, “the We-­relationship itself, although originating in the mutual biographical involvement, transcends the existence of either of the consociates in the realm of every life” (1982:318). In interpreting Schutz’s social phenomenology, Kim rightly states that, “ ‘[w]e,’ the basic relationship of the social world, is the first and most original experience given by the very ontological condition of my being in the world” (2005:207).   7 It should be noted that the meaning of “science” here is not restricted to natural science and technology, but takes the broader connotation of systematic knowledge equivalent to the German term of Wissenschaftlich.   8 Husserl calls this the transcendental reduction and second epoche; this is also the most controversial concept among contemporary scholars. In his fifth Cartesian Meditations (1988), the transcendental reduction has been already performed, whereby the existential belief in the world as a whole including myself as a psycho-­somatic unity, is suspended so as to disclose a pure transcendental field of consciousness. Having then shown that the real existents attain sense only through the operating intentionality of my consciousness and in constitutive syntheses, Husserl carries out his second epoche. From within this egological sphere, all intentional activities and the results, referring immediately or mediately to other subjectivities, are excluded (1988:89–92).   9 Husserl is lucid on this point: Things: that is, stones, animals, plants, even human beings and human products; but everything here is subjective and relative, even though normally, in our experience and in the social group united with us in the community of life, we arrive at “secure” facts; within a certain range this occurs of its own accord, that is, undisturbed by any noticeable disagreement; sometimes, on the other hand, when it is of practice importance, it occurs in a purposive knowing process, i.e., with the goal of [finding] a truth which is secure for our purpose. But when we are thrown into an alien social sphere, that of the Negroes in the Congo, Chinese peasants, etc., we discover that their truths, the facts that for them are fixed, generally verified or verifiable, are by no means the same as ours. (1970:138–139) 10 Schutz makes his stand most indicative in the following text: [In the “basic We-­relationship,”] the experience of the We (die Erfahrung vom Wir) in the world of immediate social reality is the basis of the Ego’s experience (die Erfahrung des Ich) of the world in general. [Original footnote: For a treatment of these questions cf. Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, IV and V.] Of course we do not have the space in the present study to deal with the difficult phenomenological questions of how this We is constituted from the transcendental

The non-discursive and transcendence   123 Subject … In fact, however, we can for our purposes leave these questions aside. We can begin with the assumptions of the mundane existence of other people and then proceed to describe how our experiences of them are constituted from the pure We-­relationship. (1980:165) 11 Schutz remarks that “it is in no way established whether the existence of Others is a problem of the transcendental sphere at all … or whether intersubjectivity and therefore sociality does not rather belong exclusively to the mundane sphere or our life-­ world” (1982:167). 12 At one point, Schutz explicitly translates Thomas’ terminology and applies it to his own thesis of relationship toward the other in the taken-­for-granted everyday world by writing: “if an appresentational relationship is socially approved, then the appresented object, fact, or event is believed beyond question to be in its typicality an element of the world taken for granted” (1982:349). 13 Because of the pre-­constituted-ness of the stock of knowledge, Schutz argues that “only a small fraction of man’s stock of knowledge at hand originates in his own individual experience” (1982:348). 14 One should be reminded that Schutz’s process of sedimentation of stock of knowledge is very similar to Bourdieu’s habitus-­practice formation particularly in the way the actor “learns” the non-­conscious and “natural” aspects of the social world. To Bourdieu, habitus is not apparatus that actors reflect frequently upon, rather it functions “below the level of consciousness and language, beyond the reach of introspective scrutiny or control by the will” (Bourdieu 1984:466). For an outstanding exegesis of the interconnections between Schutz and Bourdieu’s theoretical thoughts, see Atkinson (2010). 15 Schutz’s notion of the “unknown” in his theory of lifeworld is complex and incomplete. Schutz brings forward three meanings to the notion. What has been examined here only involves the first two which are: (i) the “unquestioned world as the realm of attainable knowledge”; and (ii) the “world as the realm within restorable reach” (Schutz 1970:149). However, Schutz formulates the third meaning of “unknown” of the lifeworld which “resist[s] any interpretation” and “cannot be brought into any relation with our stock of knowledge at hand” (1970:151); Schutz calls it: “the unknown in the midst of the unknown” (1970:151–152). This third meaning echoes the nature of ontology I proposed in Chapter 4, i.e., the unknowable unknown. 16 One important line of critique of Schutz’s theory of the lifeworld lies in its lack of concern of power in experience. This issue will be discussed in Chapter 7. 17 The most relevant quote here is the definition of “social fact” in The Rules of the Sociological Method; Durkheim writes, A social fact is any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individual an external constraint; or: which is general over the whole of a given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations. (1982:59; original emphasis) 18 In one of his last and probably one of his least discussed papers “The Dualism of Human Nature and its Social Conductions,” Durkheim lucidly states that, our inner life has something that is like a double center of gravity. On the one hand is our individuality – and, more particularly, our body in which it is based; on the other is everything in us that expresses something other than ourselves. (1960:328) 19 Garfinkel (2007) claims that the phenomenal field properties are best studied empirically with “formatted queue”; he writes that,

124   Expounding experience [p]henomenal field properties of formatted queues are perspicuous research sites in which beginning students along with early authors of ethnomethodological studies learn to witness and recognize an open unrestricted list of formal properties of Durkheimian Things. These orderlinesses are produced and exhibited by all parties to the line that appears. The orderlinesses are easily observed but are best observed in tours. (2007:15) 20 For more recent examples of ethnomethodological studies which inquire into the non-­discursive background expectancies of everyday life, one may refer to Garfinkel (2002) for studies of inverting lenses, Helen’s kitchen, orienting with occasional maps, and freeway traffic flow. 21 Therefore, I am more hesitant than Mclain to say that the term “dialogue” can be employed to capture the immediacy and reciprocity of the Schutzian We-­relationship (1981:122). 22 In fact, I usually doubt the validity of the import of the seemingly magic adjectives of “phenomenological” or “lifeworld” to conventional theme-­identification analyses in qualitative research, for example, in many studies based on so-­called “phenomenological interview” or “lifeworld analysis” in social science databases (e.g., Hycner 1985). To me, for instance, the so-­called “lifeworld analysis” by Oberkircher and Hornidge is not so much different from a conventional ethnographic investigation. And, they are making, to me, an obvious mistaken claim when they write that “lifeworlds are essentially individual” (2011:399). Not only is the lifeworld usually used as a singular (not plural) noun, but also, it is from the outset intersubjective (not individualistic). And, when I see them claim that “the lifeworld perspective is the question of how to see and describe the world through other people’s eyes without mixing this perspective with one’s [the researcher’s] own lifeworld” (2011:399), I immediately wonder whether this perspective is particularly “lifeworld.” Or, it is simply Malinowski’s fieldwork ideal of “grasp[ing] the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world” (1961:25; original emphases) if it is not the other thing else. 23 This book once spurred a broad discussion of the epistemological stance it sustains. See Holstein and Miller (1993). 24 One can attend to Pfohl (1985), Schneider (1985), and Hazelrigg (1985) for further discussion of Woolgar and Pawluch (1985).

6 The limit of the discursive

One may have noticed that my emphasis on the non-­discursivity and transcendence of lived experience in Chapter 5 and endeavor to render the taken-­forgrantedness of lived experience scientifically identifiable and debatable are compatible with the realism I proposed earlier in this book. This approach subscribes to the general thesis that the ontology of the social is not limited to the epistemological activity of agents, and should not be reduced “to the social activity of taking part in conversations of all kinds” (Varela & Harre 1996:314; see also Bhaskar 1989:181). The present chapter aims to further consolidate this position by outlining a critique of radical constructionism which emphasizes the discourse of actors as artfully producing reality as featured in the notions of “doing things with words” and “talking reality into being.” The critique is specifically targeted at the Gubrium-­Holstein model, which exemplifies certain key features of such constructionism in understanding family experience. Another reason for choosing this target is that Gubrium and Holstein claim that their own model shares the “abiding concern” of the works of Schutz and Garfinkel which, as will be apparent, also constitute a substantial part of my arguments. This chapter also carries a larger commitment to rebuking postmodernist claims on understanding social realities as constructed and reproduced through situated, articulatory practices rather than objective structures (e.g., Mouzelis 1995; Stones 1996). However, rather than engaging the discussion only in the theoretical realm with several quintessential postmodernist approaches in question, my approach points to a single theoretical model with a clear empirical focus – that family experience is constituted.1 Before commencing with my main argument, I must define clearly the target of critique in order to avoid the problem of insufficient anchorage to the literature. This problem has been pointed out by Day who observes that many critiques of postmodernism only refer to the subject matter as: a vague, ethereal practice of some people called postmodernists, who are themselves equally wispy – they are rarely named, and their texts are apparently not only very difficult to read but in some cases impossible even to find. (Day 2007:119; original emphasis)

126   Expounding experience Quoting Monk (2004:34–35), Day further remarks that postmodernist “doctrines” are rarely stated in print, but just “assumed in the things they do write.” and espoused in “seminars, conferences, and pubs” (Day 2007:119). While Day’s observations are largely valid, I deem that the postmodernist tendency in social sciences, especially in anthropology and sociology, have been real (not “straw figures”), and their tenets can be captured textually with a high level of concreteness. In question here is one feature which is generally shared among those deemed “postmodernists,” “poststructuralists,” or “anti-­realists” – that social reality is constituted more by the actor’s usage of discourse than shaped by the social structure, which is said to be fixed and static. Put in more tangible terms, the essence of postmodernism refers to what I call radical constructionism whose formation can be identified in a number of academic texts. The term radical here is taken from the concept of “radical constructivism” put forward by Glasersfeld (1984; see also Fisher 1991). It is a theoretical approach which means to break from conventions such that “knowledge does not reflect an ‘objective’ ontological reality, but is exclusively an ordering and organization of a world constituted by our experience” (Glasersfeld 1984:24). This stream of thought suggests that our knowledge of experience is based on the fluid meanings of actors derived from interactions within a specific context. In juxtaposition with this development, a critical mass of social scientists who are commonly labeled “constructionists” – not “constructivists” – posit that knowledge (and meaning) is more social and exogenic in character, rather than individualized and endogenic.2 With this turn, discursive practice becomes an essential concept inherent in the creation of knowledge. Along this line, for example, Laclau and Mouffe argue that articulatory practice “constitutes and organizes social relations” (1985:96), and that “all ‘experience’ depend[s] on precise discursive conditions of possibility” (1985:115). One interpretation of the theoretical consequence of this approach is that “the only reality is in discursive practices” (Mouzelis 1995:59). Some scholars further expound that language and conversation are not merely words spoken to describe reality; they actually constitute reality (Stetsenko & Arievitch 1997:163–164). Potter, for example, claims that “whenever words are uttered construction gets done” (1996:102). Thus, radical constructionism carries itself an epistemology that knowledge is a “practical, situated activity” and that knowing “requires evaluation by some measures like appropriateness to particular circumstances, rather than by its being true as such” (Hobart 1993:17). As a result, “all knowledge is created from the [discursive] action taken to obtain it” (Holstein & Gubrium 1995:3). The scholars I just quoted – Laclau, Mouffe, Potter, Hobart, Holstein, and Gubrium – would by no means admit directly that their theories fit exactly the radical constructionist thesis I laid down at the beginning of the article. Rather, they would argue that their theories are more sophisticated than what the oversimplified notions of “anything goes,” or “talking reality into being” would confer. For example, although Laclau suggests that the “nature of all objectivity” is “ultimately contingent” (1990:18) and that the structure itself is so

The limit of the discursive   127 unstable that “accidents” constantly “transform and subvert” the structure (1990:30), his claim concerning “contingency” is not without limits. He remarks that to simply assert that “necessity is replaced by complete contingency” is impossible. The case of “complete indeterminacy” of the structure, writes Laclau, only “make[s] any coherent discourse impossible” (1990:26). Another example is based on the work of Gubrium and Holstein, which the rest of this chapter will focus on. While on many occasions the authors seem to hold a pure radical constructionist view in such a way that objective realities are utterly “discursive accomplishments” and that “the talk is considered as the very action through which local realities are accomplished” (Holstein & Gubrium 1994b:265), they also suggest, in a highly schematic manner, that their approach does consist of something beyond the concrete, interactional realm of “discursive practice” (Holstein & Gubrium 2008). They argue that their model also works on two more analytical levels apart from the in vivo “discursive practice.” One is the more experientially distant level of “discourse-­in-practice” that attends to the communication resources pertinent to talk and interaction, while the other concerns the conditions of interpretation that shape and are shaped by “discursive practice” and “discourse-­in-practice” (2008:376). Despite the ostensibly more sophisticated nature of models featuring radical constructionism, I shall examine its theoretical weaknesses, and cast doubt over its scope of empirical utility. My arguments will unfold in several steps. First, the background pertaining to the evolution of radical constructionism in family studies is outlined. Second, the Gubrium-­Holstein model is examined, and the reasons for using it as an exemplar of radical constructionism to family are further discerned. Third, a critique of the Gubrium-­Holstein model is presented. My argument is mainly based on the works of Schutz and Garfinkel, of which Gubrium and Holstein claim their model shares Schutz’s and Garfinkel’s “abiding concern,” and is further supplemented by the work of Bourdieu.

Family as a topic of radical constructionism Following the Parsonsian perspective, family is conventionally considered a social system with family members occupying certain positions and roles (father, mother, husband, daughter, etc.). It is assumed that these positions and roles are “in a state of interdependence, [and] a change in the behavior of one member leads to a change in the behavior of other members” (Hill 1971:12). In this vein, each family possesses a “boundary,” and is maintained by “normative behaviors,” and it becomes a functional unit that generates “successful solutions to problems” (Cheal 1991:65). However, entering the 1970s, the notion of the family boundary stabilized by normative behaviors has been increasingly challenged. For example, by the early 1970s, Jallinoja (1994) observed that family sociology had covered an impressive range of themes such as premarital sex, cohabitation, divorce, extramarital sex, gay/­lesbian relations, voluntary childlessness, and single mothers. Such studies point to a diffused spectrum of communal life, resulting from “incessant changes in the boundary

128   Expounding experience and in the composition of the family unit, which escapes any categorization.” Jallinoja (1994:20; see also Taggart 1985:120) argue that the family boundary had been relegated to “the mere container of the system’s substance designed, as it were, to keep the context at bay.” In proclaiming a “postmodern” turn in understanding family, Stacey pinpointed in the late 1980s that “the massive reordering of work, class, and gender relationships during the past several decades is what has turned family life into a contested terrain” (1992:107). She went on to argue that what “the postmodern success of the voluntary principle of the modern family system” had assured was “a fluid, recombinant familial culture” (1992:109). In her book Brave New Families, Stacey writes: The postmodern family is not a new model of family life, not the next stage in an orderly progression of family history, but the stage when the belief in a logical progression of stages breaks down. [The postmodern family thus ruptures] evolutionary models of family history and incorporating both experimental and nostalgic elements [and] lurches forward and backward into an uncertain future. (Stacey 1990:18; original emphasis) That being said, the postmodern era sees the family experience as something which “bits of the old” always embraces “bits of the new” (Hertz & Ferguson 1997:200), and people tend to defy the closure of meaning that overlooks diverse ways they organize and give meaning to their intimate relationships. In juxtaposition with this late 1980s’ postmodern turn in understanding the family, was the more general postmodern movement in the intelligentsia. For example, in the early 1990s, Bauman declared that postmodernity was already then “a full-­fledged, viable system” with logic of its own (Bauman 1992:52). To him, the postmodern world is characterized by heterogeneity and fragmented-­ness, and evolving into an undetermined direction with ever-­ increasing differentiation and mobility (Bauman 1992). In the realm of family studies, scholars identified myriad new family configurations with the decline of intergenerational care because of augmenting employment demands and geographic distance, and an increasing number of those being raised in divorced or blended families (Keith 1995; Webster & Herzog 1995; Karner 1998:71). Against this backdrop, a constructionist approach to family experience began to emerge. It was argued that the meaning of “family” became so fluid that there are no standardized, objective criteria by which “family-­ness” could be referred to (Gilding 1991). Rather than the normative family structure and composition, for instance, Struening proposes that “it is the commitment to care … that should be the basis for how we decide what counts as family” (2002:88). One key empirical focus of the constructionists is the formation and social function of “fictive kinship.” Fictive kin refers to members who are emotionally or instrumentally involved in a set of patterned relationships they consider as their family, but the members themselves are not related by blood. One should

The limit of the discursive   129 note that the topic itself is not postmodern. Rather, it had been a focus of a critical mass of anthropologists in the 1960s through to the 1970s, who set out to examine the everyday life and social exchanges in black communities or prisons with the concepts of “pseudo-­kinship,” “quasi-­familial arrangements,” “inmate families,” “prison families,” and “play families” (Ward & Kassebaum 1965; Giallombardo 1966; Liebow 1967; Lowenthal & Havens 1968; Heffernan 1972; Hochschild 1973; Stack 1974; Siegal 1978). The more recent constructionist attempts, however, make a marked turn as to underscore the mundane usage of family discourse and the practical implications this usage possesses in promoting the well-­being of actors in different community and human service settings (Gubrium & Buckholdt 1982). For example, in studying the support networks of black elders in low-­income communities, Johnson and Barer (1990) discovered that the informants usually converted friendships into fictive kin relationships that could become replacements of absent or unsatisfying genuine family relationships. In another study of low-­income black communities, Collins found that the formation of women-­centered support networks for child care often extended beyond the boundaries of biologically related individuals and included “fictive kin” (1991:120). This idea of “play” relatives was apparently useful in promoting the welfare of individuals living in deprived communities (Milewski-­Hertlein 2001). The social constructionists repeatedly report the positive role of fictive kin relationships between paid caregivers and their elderly clients (Gubrium & Buckholdt 1982; Aronson & Neysmith 1996; Karner 1998; Piercy 2000). These studies point to the formation of family-­like small groups which take on filial labels and roles in formal institutionalized settings. For example, in arguing homecare workers as fictive kin to the elderly, Karner (1998) observes the negotiation of a fictive kin relationship with its attendant rights, obligations, and sentiments when the paid caregivers provide care to the recipients like family and do what families do. In her sample of elderly clients in the homecare setting, Piercy (2000) found that some aides were granted the status of fictive kin not only by their elderly clients, but also sometimes by the clients’ primary family caregivers. Influenced by the postmodern turn and constructionist movement in family studies, a radical strain of constructionism has emerged that emphasizes the individualistic view of family experience, and considers the discourse on family as relative and fluid rather than normative and durable. Gergen (1985) and Gelles (1995:14) go on to argue that family should be defined as kinship that is a matter of “social definition,” rather than biology and genetics. This view places emphasis on the role of the discourse of the “the family” in constructing domestic realities. According to Holstein and Gubrium (1999:12), this “family discourse” informs “our politics, our senses of domesticity, the ways we experience relationships, our orientations to interpersonal responsibility, [and] even the rhetoric and accounts we use to make claims about ourselves” (see also Gubrium & Holstein 1990; Settles et al. 1999). Tilbury also remarks that family discourse “simultaneously constructs and reproduces ideas about what ‘family’

130   Expounding experience should be,” and “inform[s] the interactions of people” (2007:627). Therefore, from the viewpoint of radical constructionism, the familial is a discursive construction, and “family” is a subject of an ongoing negotiation process with its meaning constantly being challenged, reconstructed, and changed for different purposes in different contexts (Gergen & Gergen 1992; Tilbury 2007; Allen et al. 2011). One should be aware that various studies which consider family as a topic (or a process) of construction through everyday talk in particular contexts usually draw their intellectual resources from the work of Gubrium and Holstein. Treating objective realities as “discursive accomplishments,” Holstein and Gubrium (1994b:265) set out to strip the traces of modernist anthropology and sociology that sustains “the” family as an abstract, idealized social form. To them, “facts” and “happenings” are considered a process of discourse. Hence, the meaning of family is not something fixed once and for all; and the family experience is derived from discourse and its relation to the conditions of everyday life (Gubrium & Holstein 1990). Focusing on the extensive publications by Gubrium and Holstein, I shall argue that the model they put forward is an exemplar of radical constructionism, and apposite for formulating a hopefully, more sophisticated critique.

The Gubrium-­Holstein model Various works by Gubrium and Holstein place paramount importance on the role of family discourse in the reality-­construction; they claim: [W]e’ve come to view family discourse as a social process by which “family,” as a social form, is brought into being as a matter of practice, so to speak.… [W]e’ve developed an analytic perspective that looks at “family” in terms of its social construction. Our aim is to empirically document the myriad social processes through which persons in the course of everyday life produce and organize “family” as a meaningful designation for social relations. (Holstein & Gubrium 1999:4) In this light, the essence of family is found in the way family is used, not in conventional or idealized social forms. Moreover, discursive practice becomes the vehicle which mediates the construction of family meaning and domestic reality (Holstein & Gubrium 1999:7). Empirically, their analyses adhere to a position that the social world is made concrete and meaningful through our everyday talk. For example, when the elderly who are not connected by blood in a nursing home speak of being like a family, such as, “He’s like a brother of me,” or “We are just like a family,” the reality of a family gains its concrete and meaningful existence (Gubrium & Holstein 1993b:663). Thus, family discourse is considered more as the constitutive of a social relationship rather than merely spoken or transcribed description. Clearly demonstrated in their work is the consistent radical constructionist stance; for example, they write:

The limit of the discursive   131 [F]amily is a “project” … [which] is realized through discourse. (Gubrium & Holstein 1993b:655; see also Gubrium 1988) Family is constructed by practitioners of domestic order, “doing things with words” to assemble domestic reality. (Holstein & Gubrium 1994a:246) [We study how] interacting persons artfully produce reality by “doing things with words,” “talking reality into being,” in a manner of speaking. (Holstein & Gubrium 1999:6) We’ve become a self-­articulating society … collectively author(is)ing particular selves. (Gubrium & Holstein 2000:220) At one point, one might think that the model articulated by Gubrium and Holstein is simply a manifestation of “anything goes.” However, this is not the case. They clearly suggest that family discourse is “delimited by circumstance and sociohistorical context” (Gubrium & Holstein 1993b:662; see also Holstein & Gubrium 1999:7). Rather than simply following the postmodernist position on knowledge’s relativity because of individualistic differences, they argue that family discourse “conveys apparently shared ideas – collective representations [in the sense of Durkheim] – about domestic life” (Gubrium & Holstein 1993b:662). On one occasion, they discern explicitly that their “constructionist analytics” incorporate three enduring sociological preoccupations, and only one refers to the everyday discursive practice in situ (Holstein & Gubrium 2008). The second concern (or level), they suggest, is a more experientially distant or transcendent one called “discourse-­in-practice,” and the third is the conditions and circumstances of interpretation that both reflexively shape and are shaped by the previous two levels, namely, “discursive practice” and “discourse-­inpractice.” Put succinctly, Holstein and Gubrium have put forward sophisticated arguments for the existence of supra-­discursive influences, or what they call the “resources and parameters, local culture” which “are attached” and “articulated with,” but not determinative of, experience (1999:7–8). In suggesting that we gaze beyond immediate discursive activity, Holstein and Gubrium are calling us to examine the “analytics of discourse-­in-practice” which refer to the discursive environments and communicative resources (e.g., discourses, language games) in relation to specific talks and interactions; and how these broader circumstances, conditions, and interpretive resources mediate the reality-­construction process (2008:376). Rather than focusing on the present-­time face-­to face interaction, this concern attends to historical, institutional, or cultural resources that complement the study of discursive practice. However, Holstein and Gubrium emphasize that their goal here “does not – indeed, should not – seek to formulate causal or determinate relations between discourses and/­or language games and local processes of reality construction”

132   Expounding experience (2008:379). Rather, their aim is to “describe how systems of discourse mediate the social construction process, providing the practical, substantive grounds of everyday life” (2008:379). Holstein and Gubrium then further point to the “conditions of construction” which refer to “varied working ‘contexts’ that shape reality construction.” What they emphasize here is their concern over the influences of “[l]ocal culture, organizational settings, and institutional structures [that] mediate talk and interaction [and] shape the ways individuals understand and represent local realities” (2008:379). Issuing a reminder to readers, Holstein and Gubrium claim that these conditions of construction “should not be viewed as prescriptions, rules, or norms for the social construction processes.” Instead, they mainly “provide discernible frames of interpretation and standards of accountability to which members orient as they engage in constructive activities” (2008:380). The above illustrations should suffice for one to see the theoretical blueprint of the constructionist analytics put forward by Gubrium and Holstein. On the one hand, they repeatedly claim that the ongoing, artful, and agentic discursive practice is key to reality-­construction; on the other hand, they stress that discursive practice is subject to both local and more distal contextual influences. And, in order to avoid the modernist critiques on understanding experience, they also make clear caveats in their model. For example, they state that their study of communicative resources does not strive for a priori definitions of what is called “social structure,” not to mention, theorize its causal or determinate effects on individuals (Holstein & Gubrium 2008:379). Rather, they set themselves another goal to describe how external resources penetrate into the myriad social construction processes. Furthermore, in discerning the conditions of construction, Holstein and Gubrium emphasize that the discursive environments in question do not refer to any “prescriptions, rules, or norms.” Instead, they point to certain “locally accomplished” frames of interpretation through which members construct meaningful experience (2008:380). Their model has exerted considerable influence in certain domains of ethnographic studies, for examples, the studies of sex and gender by Morris (1995), and that of identity construction by Clarke (2001). Having illustrated the key features of the Gubrium-­Holstein model, my discussion can now move on to its critique.

A critique from within It should be noted that Holstein and Gubrium declare their work to share the “abiding concern” of Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology “for the interactional bases of reality construction” (1999:7). The adoption of phenomenological terms, such as “description” and “bracketing” (e.g., Gubrium & Holstein 1997:45; Holstein & Gubrium 2008:390), and ethnomethodological logic such that practice is “artful” and realities are “local”  and “accomplished” confirm this intellectual heritage. This theoretical

The limit of the discursive   133 undertaking, however, is juxtaposed with a discursive turn in the sense that objective realities are conceived as “discursive accomplishments” (Holstein & Gubrium 1994b:265). On many occasions, Gubrium and Holstein simply consider developments from the phenomenological and ethnomethodological traditions to their own model; underscoring discursive practice and talk so smoothly that further explanation seems unnecessary. For example, they put it fluently that: [t]he ethnomethodological project moves … [as to document] how discursive practice constitutes social structures. (Gubrium & Holstein 2000:499) And that, the talk is considered as the very action through which local realities are accomplished. (Holstein & Gubrium 1994b:265) Such a discursive turn has indeed ignored the key Schutzian phenomenological thesis of the lifeworld experience as fundamentally non-­discursive. It is – as illustrated in Chapter 5 – the stock of knowledge at hand that gives the lifeworld its typicality; and once established, the network of typificatory schemes for me and my fellow human beings means that our experience remains taken for granted or unquestioned until further notice. Garfinkel, despite his abstruse style of writing, sharply delineates his own approach from the radical constructionist perspective. He emphasizes repeatedly that everyday practices are not “texts” or “signed enterprises” (Garfinkel 1996:8; 2002:97). In fact, he considers that 90 percent of our everyday life “lies below [an iceberg] as an unquestioned … [and even] unquestionable background” (Garfinkel 1967:173). Hence, what interests Garfinkel are the “background expectancies” of everyday life, or certain “sanctioned properties” which constitute the conditions under which discourse becomes understandable to actors (Garfinkel 1967:41–42; see also Button & Sharrock 1993:16–17). Thus, ethnomethodologists are mainly concerned with the procedures involved in producing the social order, and whether these procedures involve semantic expressions or non-­discursive behaviors are of secondary concern. That being said, when Gubrium and Holstein speak of objective realities as “discursive accomplishments,” or make explicit claims “to work backward” from the taken-­forgranted realities to the discursive practice that constructs social realities (e.g., Gubrium & Holstein 1993b:663), they come close to missing the canons of Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology.3 Based on my observation, Gubrium and Holstein never take the discursive turn explicitly as a theoretical drift from their intellectual heritage; rather, they simply take it, and merge it quietly with phenomenological and ethnomethodological clichés. For example, rather unintentionally, they write that “family is as

134   Expounding experience much a way of thinking and talking about relationships as it is a concrete set of social ties and sentiments” (Gubrium & Holstein 1990:x). While both phenomenology and ethnomethodology place much more attention to “thinking” than “talking,” Gubrium and Holstein seem to endow the two ideas with similar, if not equal, theoretical foundations. In another text, when speaking of how the constructionist analytic mediates in the epistemology of ethnography, they make the following claim: A constructionist agenda spurs ethnographers to look at and listen to the activities through which everyday actors produce the orderly, recognizable, meaningful features of their social worlds. This is an explicitly action orientation, focusing intently on interaction and discourse as productive of social reality. (Holstein & Gubrium 2008:375) Evidently, the first sentence of the quote closely aligns with Garfinkel’s perspective, since it adopts the pertinent ethnomethodological terminology. However, upon a close reading of the second sentence, the ethnomethodologist would ascertain the unexpected sneaking-­in of the idea of “discourse” following immediately the idea of “interaction” as if – once again – the two ideas are on a similar, if not equal, theoretical footing. In the same text, they also state: “If the social construction process is artful, as Harold Garfinkel (1967) put it …” (Holstein & Gubrium 2008:376). While “artful” is obviously a term Garfinkel would use, the term “social construction” is not. Rawls has sharply observed that Garfinkel had never used the word “construction” to describe his own work (Rawls 2002:5fn9). In fact, more examples of this type can be quoted in the extensive publications by Gubrium and Holstein. It must be emphasized that to transplant their radical constructivist viewpoint to Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology may be justifiable only if a rigorous theoretical explanation is offered. Unfortunately, Gubrium and Holstein has yet to offer any. Another theoretical turn that scholars true to Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology would disagree with, is the epistemological continuum between commonsense and scientific knowledge proposed by Gubrium and Holstein. In writing about their constructionist project of family, they suggest that: the[ir] constructionist project is precisely to document ordinary knowledge and explanation in order to gain a sense for, among other things, how the familial is understood by those concerned, how it is seen as entering their lives, and how it is constructed by way of commonsense notions of the domestic. (Holstein & Gubrium 1999:15) In so doing, they claim that their project can bypass the “invidious comparisons between what people know, think, or believe, [and] what is scientifically known”

The limit of the discursive   135 (Holstein & Gubrium 1999:15). Scathingly criticizing the social scientist’s tendency to “take delight in debunking ‘what everybody knows’ ” and to “dismiss the mundane as so much uniform or illogical ‘claptrap’ ,” Gubrium and Holstein imply that their model can rescue “commonsense” from the objective view of the social scientist. Here, they seem not to realize that both Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology insist on the existence of epistemological distanciation between the world of commonsense and that of scientific interpretation (Chapter 2). One would defend the Gubrium-­Holstein model by saying that it also attends to the levels of “discourse-­in-practice” and “discursive condition” which are epistemologically non-­discursive. Put eloquently, Holstein and Gubrium remark that their construction analytic is located “at the crossroads of social interaction, discursive environments, local culture, and material circumstance” (2008:380). It is these local aspects of discursive environments, such as the local culture, organizational settings, and institutional structures “all mediate talk and interaction … [and] shape the ways individuals understand and represent local realities” (Holstein & Gubrium 2008:380). In order to avoid the criticism of attempting to eat one’s cake and have it too, Gubrium and Holstein need to make explicit their theoretical position on whether they consider discursive practice or the local aspects of discursive environments as more primordial in constituting reality. Gubrium and Holstein would definitely opt for discursive practice. Choosing otherwise, they would have found themselves difficult either in defending their radical constructionist stance highlighted throughout their research, or in offering anything new – at least, not anything more than what Schutz and Garfinkel have laid down. On this issue, it is suggestive to look into the response of Holstein and Gubrium to the critique of the radical constructionism inherent in their work. First, they query themselves: Does it suggest that the study of family construction is the documentation of whatever serves to define or undefined relationships as familial, whenever or wherever they occur, in or out of households, regardless of whether they are applied to conventional familial bonds? (Holstein & Gubrium 1999:11) Then, they answer: The answer is yes, in a sense, it does. But not just anything goes! … Accordingly, family members who have cohabited for decades, for example, may learn for the first time what they mean and, in practice, what they have been, to each other during a meeting of a multi-­family support group for the parents of substance abusing adolescents.… Interpretively, the familial is realized – both understood and assigned its reality – on any occasions that is made a topic of discussion. It is only in this sense that “anything goes.” (Holstein & Gubrium 1999:11; original emphasis)

136   Expounding experience Taking a closer look at this answer, their view that discursive practice is primordial in reality construction seems to be clear. One should note that their answer to “anything goes” is “yes, in a sense.” However, logically speaking, if this answer is replaced by a “no,” the whole argument remains intact. I deem that the artful use of “yes, in a sense” here mainly serves to underscore the agentic side, rather than the limiting side of discursive practice. Along this line, when they say, “the familial is realized … on any occasions that is made a topic of discussion,” they must imply that the local aspects of discursive environments also play a role. However, these non-­discursive entities play a relatively less fundamental role than the discursive as they only constitute the “interpretive resources and [contextual] parameters” that “are attached” and “articulated with” experience (Holstein & Gubrium 1999:7–8). Having highlighted this key theoretical position of the Gubrium-­Holstein model, my next question is: Does this position stand, at least, in the domain of understanding family experience? Undeniably, to consider “facts” and “happenings” as a process of discourse (Gubrium & Holstein 1993a:78) and to treat objective realities as “discursive accomplishments” (Holstein & Gubrium 1994b:265) have been quite successful in stripping the essentialist traces that sustain “the” family as an abstract, idealized social form. However, what has not been thoroughly pursued is the prepredicative meaning that makes possible a particular phenomenon meaningful to the actor that antedates explicit discursive constructions. In fact, in their empirical investigations into how fictive kin assignments were being made to non-­family in various settings, like nursing homes and rehabilitation centers, one may question: “Why family, and not anything else?” To anthropologists and sociologists,this is a legitimate inquiry, for it is also possible that a caring and non-­calculating human relationship is derived from, for example, the supernaturally oriented sect, or the intimate relation between the people and the monarch. In other words, while logically there exists other discursive constructs in society that confer the sentiments of mutual care and unconditional regards among non-­blood-tied individuals, why do the practitioners and inmates of institutionalized service settings seem always to find the discursive construct of the familial so easy to accept and effective in soliciting mutual “genuine concerns” among individuals? Even if it is “anything goes” only “in a sense,” Gubrium, Holstein, and their supporters should have been able to identify other discursive constructs, or, at least, a couple more discursive constructs, other than the familial in their empirical investigations. But, why has the number of empirically realized discursive constructs been so limited? Why  can’t artful and agentic discursive practice be more flexible, and express more contingency than just simply employing the familial construct? All these questions represent a rebuttal of the theoretical position that discursive practice is more primordial than the local aspects of discursive environments in constructing reality. These questions point to the more fundamental aspects of social construction. Rather than discursive practice, in question is what constitutes the “meaning-­context,” the “background expectancies” that make possible the empirical discursive construction of family experience. Interestingly, the

The limit of the discursive   137 theoretical inference along this line harkens back exactly to the genuine “abiding concern” of Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel ethnomethodology. It is exactly this “abiding concern” that Gubrium and Holstein consider relatively less important than the discursive in the construction of domestic reality. Seeing that the radical constructionist claim would relegate family experience “to the non-­existence of pure figments of thought,” Bourdieu (1996:21) once issued an unyielding critique of the model put forward by Gubrium and Holstein. Bourdieu insists that there exists a prepredicative element, a tacit law, a nomos, which constitutes some common organizing principles pertinent to the construction of family. While concurring that the family is a principle in the construction of social reality, Bourdieu suggests that this principle refers to a nomos, which “is both immanent in individuals (as an internalized collective [i.e., in all habitus]) and transcendent to them, since they encounter it in the form of objectivity in all other individuals” (1996:21). On the nature of nomos and its relation to the commonsense understanding of “family,” Bourdieu’s illustration is particularly lucid; he writes: [I]t is a common principle of vision and division, a nomos, that we all have in our heads because it has been inculcated in us through a process of socialization performed in a world that was itself organized according to the division into families. This principle of construction is one of the constituent elements of our habitus, a mental structure which, having been inculcated into all brains socialized in a particular way, is both individual and collective. It is a tacit law (nomos) of perception and practice that is at the basis of the consensus on the sense of the social world (and of the word “family” in particular), the basis of commonsense. (Bourdieu 1996:21; original emphases) In this light, Bourdieu suggests that the category of “family” possesses a “specific ontology,” and is “being rooted both in the objectivity of social structures and in the subjectivity of objectively orchestrated mental structures” (1996:21). Therefore, although the family is subject to acts of construction, the “products” of these constructions always “present themselves to experience with the opacity of and resistance of things” (1996:21). This argument echoes my early queries against the Gubrium-­Holstein model, concerning the highly limited number of discursive constructs being realized by actors across different settings.

Concluding remarks My discussion above has pinpointed that the discursive turn Gubrium and Holstein made to Schutzian phenomenology and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology means almost a theoretical subversion of the traditions. Furthermore, it shows that the epistemological continuum between commonsense and scientific interpretation supposed in Gubrium and Holstein’s analysis of constructionism is precisely what Schutz and Garfinkel would disagree. To adopt this line of

138   Expounding experience inquiry implies the limit of the discursive. One is immediately faced with the question: “Why family?” when it is ubiquitous to see across different settings that the discursive construct of the familial (e.g., fictive kin) – but not other constructs – evolve so naturally among non-­family individuals. Implicated in the highly limited number of realized discursive constructs is that the existence of the prepredicative element, the tacit law that operates like what Bourdieu coins, a nomos pertaining to experience as constituted. In Schutzian phenomenology, the small number of empirically identified habitual discursive pattern refers to the natural attitude that consists in the taken-­for-granted nature of the prepredicative stratum of experience. This prepredicative structure of the lifeworld is itself durable, and by nature non-­discursive and transcendental to the experience of everyday life (Chapter 5). In short, Gubrium and Holstein seem to have failed to offer a model that can solidly anchor to the existing theoretical traditions and enjoy wide scope of empirical utility in understanding family experience. To take discourses as key structuring principles of social reality, they tend to deny that people’s everyday life understandings of the external world are very often reflections of durable, transcendental, and a priori structures. On scanning my arguments, I realize that my central objection to radical constructionism is not that discourse is totally useless or futile in constructing domestic realities, nor that the radical constructionists have failed to provide useful insight for scholars of family studies. After all, no one can deny that the constitution of the lifeworld has an element of discursiveness. My main argument is that one must guard against the problem of radical constructionism, which has overemphasized the constitutive power of discourse as the determinant in the formation and maintenance of social order.

Further illustration of Chapter 6: a rejoinder to Gubrium, Holstein, and Weinberg An earlier version of Chapter 5 was published as the lead article in Sociological Quarterly in 2012. Following it in the same issue were two critique articles. Entitled “Theoretical Validity and Empirical Utility of a Constructionist Analytics,” the first critique article was written by Professor Jaber F. Gubrium and Professor James A. Holstein. The second was “In Defense of Radical Constructionism” by Professor Darin Weinberg. In their critique, Gubrium and Holstein refuse to be labeled “radical constructionists” as they defend their approach as reflexive that takes into account both the agency and structure, both discursive practice and the context of discursive construction; rather than, as portrayed in my article, simply augmenting the reality-­making capability of the agent via discourse. Weinberg takes a more combative style as he not only defends “radical constructionism” outright, but also attacks my claim of the Gubrium-­Holstein model as overemphasizing the discursive as unwise; and attacks my assertion of epistemological break between the experiential and scientific world in Schutz’s philosophy as “shaky.” This Further illustration represents my commitment to continue the dialogue with these three critics, as well as

The limit of the discursive   139 other participants in the scientific community, on the epistemological limits of the discursive. Before proceeding, I need to register an apologetic note that it has taken me seven years to complete this reply. Part of the reason is that I am slow in writing theoretical publications. Another reason is that I treasure deeply the opportunity to engage in debates with these three esteemed critics. To pay due respect to this rejoinder, I spent considerable time reading and re-­reading the work of the three critics beyond the two critique articles. Extra effort was also paid to reflect on matters which I come to share with them, distil the key differences between their theoretical stances and mine, and more importantly, identify the reasons behind those differences. The main reason for my slow response is that to place the rejoinder as part of a book – albeit more time-­consuming – is more effective in showing the rationale behind my paper published in 2012, and addressing many doubts and queries which are either implied, or explicitly cast by the three critics. In particular, different parts of this book address the issues raised by Weinberg.

Query #1 Ho is defending a position based on Schutz’s philosophical reflections regarding subjectivity rather than Bourdieu’s empirically grounded structuralist sociology. (Weinberg 2012:362) [Ho’s] primary interest is in Schutzian philosophy rather than the epistemological demands of empirical research. (Weinberg 2012:364)

Query #2 Nowhere do we find in Ho’s analysis anything like Bourdieu’s suggestion that theoretical attention be turned away from the lifeworld and toward the specifically socio-­historical and/­or institutional structures that shape it. Thus, Ho’s reference to “durable, transcendental, and a priori structures” turns out to be a reference not to scientifically identified socio historical and/­or institutional structures but to what Bourdieu would have called “mental structures,” structures comprised only of the socially conditioned background expectancies actors are said to bring to any particular occasion of interaction. (Weinberg 2012:362) No doubt, Ho is correct to invoke Garfinkel’s studies of inverted lenses etc. as examples of how non-­discursive practice can sometimes be revelatory in this respect. But can he really afford to so avidly disdain discourse analysis if he hopes to conduct systematic empirical analyses of the content, scope,

140   Expounding experience and influence of his research subjects’ background expectancies? A fortiori, how in the world might an exclusive attention to non-­discursive practices ever sustain an adequate empirical analysis of the background expectancies pertaining to any aspect of social life as pervasive, richly nuanced, dynamic, contested, and multiform as the family? Ho has not told us, and I do not think he could. (Weinberg 2012:364)

Query #3 As both Schutz and Ho appreciate, this decisive removal of scientific theorizing from the reach of mundane social influence creates an apparent paradox. For how can scientific theorizing regarding the nature of social life be both hived off from the world of work and also be constrained by it (both in terms of the postulate of adequacy wherein social scientists are required to reconcile their own constructs to those of their research subjects and also be theoretically responsive to the reception their work receives from colleagues)? Although both Schutz and Ho make heroic efforts to sidestep this paradox, the short answer is that they cannot.  (Weinberg 2012:369) For Query #1, this book as a whole should convince Weinberg as its primary interest is exactly what he believes that I am not interested in, i.e., “the epistemological demands of empirical research.” What this book defends is neither “Schutzian philosophy,” nor “Bourdieu’s empirically grounded structuralist sociology,” rather, it is a realism, one that is outlined mainly in Chapters 3 and 4. It is a strain of realism that is apposite to ethnographic inquiry, and that I believe can secure ethnographic analysis as human science. Query #2 casts doubts mainly over “how in the world might an exclusive attention to non-­discursive practices ever sustain an adequate empirical analysis of the background expectancies pertaining to any aspect of social life.”4 To this query, the Further Illustration of Chapter 5 represents a reply. For whether my innovative methodology of surface interview and answer-­aire have “scientifically identified socio-­historical and/­or institutional structures” that are “durable, transcendental, and a priori structures” of a specific aspect of social life, I leave it to Weinberg and other members in the scientific community to judge. However, I do believe that with more imagination and the will to leave one’s comfort zone, social scientists can glimpse into their “research subjects’ background expectancies” without necessarily just engaging in “discourse analysis.” Query #3 is by nature an overwhelming and challenging one that potentially points at anyone who endeavors to capture reflexivity within the boundaries of realism, or to tackle the antinomic tension between relativism and science. I hope that Weinberg, as well as others, will agree that the discussion in the foregoing chapters constitute a reply to this query. Simply put, my proposed engaging realism with an emphasis on the community of inquiry represents an effort to avoid

The limit of the discursive   141 “scientific theorizing regarding the nature of social life” from hiving off “from the world of work and also be constrained by it.” Once again, I dare not say that my proposal is an indisputable one. But, at least, it shows that I have not “sidestep[ped] th[e] paradox,” but tackle it head on. I also leave it to others to judge whether my position, as described by Weinberg, is “very near to … [a] transcendentalist orientation to science” akin to the “God’s eye point of view” (2012:366). The idea of “ethnographic objectivity” that Weinberg put forward in 2006 is in essence very similar to my proposition of conducting plausibility checks on ethnographic explanation through engaging debates with members of the scientific communities. In a book chapter, Weinberg begins his argument by suggesting that: [i]n the conduct of ethnographic research we inevitably engage in ongoing dialogue both with members of the communities we study and with those who make up our own professional communities. These dialogues profoundly shape the nature of our analyses.… I am, myself, convinced that it is only by embracing reflexively that we may hope to establish a stable footing from which to arbitrate the comparative objectivity of competing accounts. (Weinberg 2006:102) What he argues is that “ethnographic objectivity” is: not a matter of achieving correspondence between our analytic propositions and the things they are said to describe. It is, instead, simply a matter of answering questions in ways that account for the available evidence. Hence, ethnographic objectivity must be viewed as provisional and thoroughly nested in the historically and culturally specific dispute domains within which it is achieved. (Weinberg 2006:110)

Grounds to yield Certain common ground with the three critics about the Gubrium-­Holstein model should be established. Despite my extensive quotations from their publications that portray their approach as one that considers “facts” and “happenings” as a process of discourse, and treats objective realities as “discursive accomplishments” (Holstein & Gubrium 1994b:265), Gubrium and Holstein describe their model in their critique paper as a more reflexive one though which both the discourse and its context of production are by nature mutually constitutive; they write: We have argued for years that reality construction is centered in the real-­ time, practical work of everyday life, implicating both constructive activity [involving both thinking and talking] and the resources and conditions of construction. (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:343; original emphasis)

142   Expounding experience When I revisit some of their work under this more reflexive light, I realize that they do emphasize the way structural conditions shape actors’ reality-­making constructions; for instance, they write: Local culture, organizational settings, and institutional structures all mediate talk and interaction. They shape the ways individuals understand and represent local realities. (Holstein & Gubrium 2008:380) In their critique paper, they even share my concern about the limit of the discursive: Analytically attending to the discursive alone is insufficient for sorting … out [complex discourse-­context interactions]; we are well aware of the empirical limits of the discursive. (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:350) In this rejoinder, I accept this more reflexive outlook of their model as their real model, and sidestep the problems – which are potentially quite serious – to incorporate the seemingly incompatible reflexive and radical constructionist practices in a single model. This is the first, and probably, the most important common ground I would like to establish. Other common ground I would like to acknowledge here refers to certain errors and omissions in my paper. For example, I admit that my invocations of Garfinkel’s work is selective, and potentially problematic (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:357; Weinberg 2012:366). I also acknowledge my lack of concern for Goffman’s work (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:347) – a point which I shall come back to later. Weinberg is also surely correct in disapproving my use of the term “ontological break” to distinguish between what is commonsense and what is science as “probably too strong a term to describe it” (2012:366). Despite my yielding some ground, I am still unconvinced that Gubrium and Holstein address my concerns. For example, even for the more reflexive model that I now acknowledge, the Gubrium-­Holstein model still needs to address my query of “why family?” For a reflexive model like theirs, which allows many possible forms of “interplay” between discursive practice and contextual resource, they should have been able to identify a wide spectrum of distinctive social realms and their forms through empirical investigations. If not because of certain “common to all” historical structural forces, why “all agents [are] socialized in a particular way” (Bourdieu 1996:21)? Why it is always the principle of “family” that is constructed, but not other caring and non-­calculating human relationships? My other reservation is whether by claiming to be theoretically “promiscuous” do Gubrium and Holstein (2012:347) possess the talisman to put “thinking” and “interaction” (which are ethnomethodologically accepted reality-­making constituents) side-­by-side with “talking” and “discourse” (which are, to me, on the verge of being anti-­ethnomethodological). I do wonder

The limit of the discursive   143 whether they have addressed my concern of using “yes, in a sense” – which, to me, can mean both “yes” and “no” – to answer the problem of epistemic relativism in their model. However, in this rejoinder, I have decided not to defend these points. Instead, I only defend two. First, with the more reflexive Gubrium-­Holstein model, I believe, as others do not, that an important question to consider is whether “discursive practice” or the “local aspects of discursive environments” is more primordial in constructing reality. This issue should not be avoided as suggested by the three critics. Second, my assertion of the epistemological break in social science research is neither theoretically “shaky” in Schutz’s texts, nor empirically ambiguous to the researcher as suggested by Weinberg.

Points to defend To my first point, the description by Gubrium and Holstein has been lucid; they write: At the heart of the program – and apparently our disagreement with Ho – is the notion that the social construction process involves discursive activity as well as interpretive resources, circumstances, and conditions, and that neither warrants analytic primacy. (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:342) They cogently claim that between discursive activity and contextual resources is “a false dichotomy” (2012:343), and it is “futile and pointless” to ascertain “primacy of one over the other” (2012:344). Weinberg shares this view and states that the “categorical contrast [along this line] to be drawn between constructionists and objectivists” is unimportant (2012:365). Gubrium and Holstein then reiterate and (re-)emphasize “both constructive activity and the resources and conditions of construction” matter in the constructing reality, and claim to have used terms such as “reflexive,” “intertwined,” “mutually constitutive,” “dialectical,” and “interplay” to describe the relationship of the two dimensions of the construction process (2012:343; original emphasis). My position is that to claim both dimensions are intertwined and mutually constitutive is theoretically indistinctive. And, to elucidate whether one dimension is of primacy over the other is important because it harks back to the time-­ honored agency-­structure nexus in sociology. To speak of agency and structure being equally – exactly, 50-50 – important in constituting social reality is a bold claim that requires elaborate explanation; and to claim their relation “dialectical,” “interplay,” or else without offering insights into each dimension’s contributing capacity in constituting social reality is theoretically ambiguous. A cursory flashback of the major theories in sociology almost suggests that there is no candidate that resolutely eliminates all possible routes for agency-­ structure dialectics. I have pointed out in Chapter 6 that even Laclau, well known for his discursive constructionism, suggests that the concept of structure

144   Expounding experience is not totally subverted, or coherency in discourse becomes an impossibility (1990:30). Even for Durkheim, who proclaims in The Rules of Sociological Method that society “transcends infinitely the individual both in time and space” (1982:128), his work leaves a small conceptual space for the agentic freedom of individuals in the case of egoistic suicide.5 And, even for Marx, who maintained a historico-­structural determinism throughout his lifetime, had the idea of considering the conception of society as a product of human actors.6 There are other major theories in sociology which are better known for their emphasis on the mutually constitutive agency-­structure relation, such as Bourdieu’s theory of practice, Giddens’ notion of “duality of structure,”7 and Goffman’s frame analysis. These theorists have either addressed in their work the question of relative primacy of agency and structural constraints in the reality constitution process; or their work has left sufficient textual evidences for their supporters to make such a judgment.8 Therefore, I do not see why by proclaiming the agency-­ structure relation as mutually constitutive, one can equivocate the relative primary of the two dimensions, and criticize any endeavor by others who pursue research in this direction as “futile and pointless.” By claiming that the agency and structure simply intertwine, one’s theory will gain an undesirable theoretical advantage with its theoretical width potentially spanning from Durkheim to Laclau. Ironically, it is allegedly a “grand theory” that Gubrium and Holstein explicitly renounce. Let us return to the concrete reasons Gubrium and Holstein used in their critique article in support of their stance.

Quote #1 At no point in our publications have we specified a primordial concern for a particular component of the construction process. We consistently write something along the following lines: “The components are viewed as mutually constitutive; each reflexively depends upon and incorporates the other. Consequently one can’t argue that analysis should necessarily begin or end with any particular component [Gubrium & Holstein 2009:29].” (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:345)

Quote #2 It is evident in Bourdieu’s scheme of things that the discursive is important: “words make things.” Indeed, Bourdieu (1996) goes on to suggest a reflexive relationship between categories and their realization that echoes our own position. In a kind of circle, the native [commonsensical] category, having become a scientific category for demographers, sociologists and especially social workers who, like official statisticians, are invested with the capacity to work on reality, to make reality, helps to give real existence to that category. The

The limit of the discursive   145 family discourse that ethnomethodologists refer to is a powerful, performative discourse, which has the means of creating the conditions of its own verification and therefore its own reinforcement, an institutional discourse which durably institutes itself in reality [Bourdieu 1996:25]. (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:346–347)

Quote #3 Pragmatist bearings have encouraged us to be conceptually lean in this mission, adopting a theoretical minimalism. No grand theory of social structure in this corner. (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:356) With reference to Quote #1, I can recast the Gubrium-­Holstein model into a sentence with two phrases, that is: since the two components are viewed as mutually constitutive, one cannot argue that analysis should necessarily begin or end with any particular component. The first phrase refers to their theoretical position; the second, their methodological approach. The first phrase is the cause; the second, the end. This is Gubrium and Holstein’s logic. However, one’s adoption of a “mutually constitutive” theoretical perspective does not necessarily mean that one must give up the freedom of choosing where to begin or end the analysis. Should one who claims to adopt Bourdieu’s theory of practice (a reflexive theory) not be able to begin his/­her analysis with historical documentation of social structures? Would it mean that the researcher who adopts a reflexive approach has no other choice but begin with ethnographic fieldwork where the two components (agency and structure) are intertwined? I am somewhat confused. Gubrium and Holstein seem to suggest that to consider the two components as mutually constitutive without laying primacy on either one would be an advantage such that it is conducive to more interactive research methods. However, I do not see why this is necessarily the case. In Quote #2, Gubrium and Holstein suggest that their model is actually in line with Bourdieu’s reflexive theory. This is undoubtedly an interesting interpretation as they turn part of Bourdieu’s manuscript-­long critique of their model into their support. To read the quote against the context of Bourdieu’s manuscript, my interpretation is that Bourdieu actually doubts whether the common actor’s construction – as studied by ethnomethodologists – can become “institutional discourse which durably institutes itself in reality.” He implies that while the realities constructed by social workers or official statisticians may endure, those constructed by common actors are usually ephemeral. The idiom of “words make things” here does not apply to all actors. Even if I take Bourdieu’s real intention out of the question, and simply take the quote as part of the Gubrium-­Holstein model; there is still an unresolved issue. For the myriad forms of “families” constructed by the common actors at the elderly homes studied by Gubrium and Holstein, have they become institutional discourses, and durably instituted themselves in society as the quote

146   Expounding experience suggests? In other words, have the constructed “realities” inherent in the form of “powerful, performative discourse” become categories that can compete and even replace the original category formed by blood-­tied family members in society? For example, if both the “family member” in the elderly home and the real family member need financial aid from an actor, will a person prioritize the constructed “family member” over their real family member? Or, has family discourse changed the way the government defines family, and thus the government changes its policy? These are empirical questions. They may happen, or they may not. My interpretation is that Bourdieu does not think that they are likely to happen, and it is his way to criticize the ethnomethodological study of family, and by association, the Gubrium-­Holstein model, not to support it. Gubrium and Holstein in Quote #3 imply that to decide whether discursive practice and its condition of production is more primordial, is against “theoretical minimalism,” and akin to what a “grand theory” does. My queries are: I do not totally understand why “pragmatist bearings” must encourage “theoretical minimalism.” Even if I take their “pragmatist bearings” as being equivalent to the grounded theory approach, I wonder why to elucidate a theory’s relative primacy placed on agent or structure involves a grand theory? I shall leave readers to judge. What I believe is that my demand is a theoretical base-­line, and has nothing to do with grand theory. Now comes to my next point to defend. Weinberg’s query of the theoretical thrust I endow to the epistemological distinction between the world of consociates and that of contemporaries can be summed up in the following quote: What evidence does Ho provide in favor of this equation of the distinction between consociates and contemporaries, on the one hand, and the distinction between commonsense and science on the other, and further, for the claim that Schutz sought to use these distinctions to draw a decisive “ontological break” between two “worlds?” Once again, his evidence is shaky. (Weinberg 2012:366–367) Weinberg’s strategy to deny the importance of the epistemological break is to suggest that it “does not appear sufficiently dichotomous” in distinguishing commonsense and science “in Schutz’s own writings” (Weinberg 2012:367). This observation is interesting. I have already stated in Chapter 2 and my original paper in 2012, that Schutz’s acknowledgment of the epistemological break was essentially the focus of contention in his well-­known debate with Parsons during 1940–1941. I do not mean that the break has been manifested decisively in every piece of Schutz’s own writings, but if Weinberg is right and “Schutz did not seek to argue … for a decisive … break between the world of consociates and the world of contemporaries” (2012:367), why has Schutz bothered to have a book-­length debate with Parsons via private correspondence? Had Schutz expressed more alignment with Parsons, given Parsons’ huge influence back at

The limit of the discursive   147 the time of debate, I guess, Schutz would have enjoyed even better academic status in the US academia during his lifetime.9 Let me circumvent the Schutz-­Parsons debate, and concentrate on the four texts that Weinberg used to support his stance. Three texts are derived from Schutz’s publications and one is from Costelloe (1996).10

Text #1 Schutz (1980:140) wrote regarding the relationship between commonsense and science that “the two spheres overlap. For in a certain sense I am a social scientist in everyday life whenever I reflect upon my fellow men and their behavior instead of merely experiencing them. (Weinberg 2012:367; my emphasis)

Text #2 Elsewhere, Schutz (1982:16) also writes of consociates not as a contrast category to contemporaries but as a subset, “[a]mong my contemporaries are some with whom I share, as long as the relation lasts, not only a community of time but also of space. We shall, for the sake of terminological convenience, call such contemporaries ‘consociates’ .” (Weinberg 2012:367; my emphasis)

Text #3 Schutz and Luckmann (1995:69) write of the distinction between consociates and contemporaries as in a certain sense one of degree, “[w]hile we may establish the differentiation between immediate and mediate experience of the Other, because it involves more than merely quantitative differences, we may not forget that it involves two poles between which there are many empirically transitional forms.” (Weinberg 2012:367; my emphases)

Text #4 Costelloe (1996:259) has persuasively argued that regardless of Schutz’s own intentions, the text Ho quotes in support of his equation of a putative consociate/­contemporary dichotomy and a commonsense/­science dichotomy cannot deliver in this regard: In “stepping outside” the immediate process of interaction the position taken by the social scientist is not directly comparable to the participant observing from beyond the face-­to-face. This is because the latter does not aim, as does the scientist, to explain the interaction in question as an episode of “social action.” Although the participant can be said to take a technical

148   Expounding experience interest in the interaction, it extends only as far as dealing with interruptions in the world taken for granted, or in those cases where an individual casts a reflective glance upon past activity. This interest does not extend to the application of a formal methodological procedure. The participant’s “explanation” is different in kind from that sought by the social scientist who is attempting to assert the primacy of a different kind of knowledge. (Weinberg 2012:367; original emphasis) For Text #1, my interpretation of Schutz’s meaning of “overlapping,” is that there is a moment of being “a social scientist” and that of being an actor “experiencing” their fellow humans. It resembles the turning on and off of a torch in the dark. By “overlapping” of two spheres, it means quick switching of one mode to another, and back again across a particular time span, rather than meaning that one sphere is blurring, merging, and blending with another as Weinberg wants to suggest. My interpretation of Text #2 is that Schutz attempts to make a clear conceptual distinction between “consociates” and “contemporaries,” and does not imply the blurring in-­between of the two categories. The term “subset” used by Weinberg does not seem Schutzian. However, even when the word “subset” is used to consider, for example, a group of sleeping people to be a subset of a group of awake people, this does not necessarily mean that the two groups differ only in degree. The two groups – sleeping and awake – can be considered belonging to two distinctive types of people. In Text #3, it is true that there exist relations other than what we immediately experience of the other, but still Schutz calls the world of consociates – on the same page from where Weinberg selects the quote – as “the most originary and genetically important social relation” (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:69). True, Schutz and Luckmann write: we have found that within the temporal and spatial immediacy of the we-­ relation, differences in the immediacy of my experience of the Other already stand out; these are determined by the perspectives of interpretation, by depth, nearness, and intensity of lived experience. (1995:69) However, Schutz also suggests on the same page that: This gradation extends … into the main sphere of … [the social world], not immediately experienced, consists of contemporaries. We wish this to characterize those other men with whom I do not actually have a we-­relation, but whose life falls in the same present span of world time as mine. (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:69) Despite the fact that there exist differences in the quality of immediacy of my experience of the other (e.g., a man’s immediacy with a woman whom he

The limit of the discursive   149 intends to marry tomorrow, is different from his immediacy with a woman whom he intends to have a one-­night stand. But both relationships necessarily involve a we-­relation.), the world of contemporaries is still distinctive from the world of consociates as the former is one “not immediately experienced,” one “not actually have a we-­relation” (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:69; my emphasis). I do not see why one is “A” and the other “not-­A” is not a decisive dichotomy. Weinberg’s use of Costelloe’s text (#4) against my interpretation of Schutz’s assertion of epistemological break puzzles me the most. The first three sentences of Costelloe’s text are explicitly in line with my position. Costelloe contrasts the world in which the actor adopts a “reflective glance upon past activity” (i.e., in the world of contemporaries) in contradiction against the other world which involves “face-­to-face” immediacy, “the world taken for granted” – i.e., the world of consociates. Afterwards, Costelloe attempts to discern two distinctive “interests”: the actor’s interest as a scientist, and the researcher’s interest as a scientist. While both interests infer to “different kind of knowledge,” both can be ascertained only in the world of contemporaries. The key point Costelloe attempts to make the quote is that the actor can explain his/­her own behavior and become him/­herself a lay-­scientist, and this actor – as actor-­as-scientist – may offer an “explanation” different from that issued by a scientist who applies “a formal methodological procedure.” To me, Costelloe has said nothing to blur the boundaries between the world of commonsense and that of science. In general, Texts #3 and #4 suggest that there may exist “many transitional forms” within the world of consociates, or there exist many different perspectives within the world of contemporaries, but the category of the world of consociates and the world of contemporaries are – as indicated unambiguously in Schutz’s wording, and also ironically quoted by Weinberg himself – “two poles” whose differentiation involves “more than merely quantitative differences” (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:69). Apart from textual evidence, Weinberg also casts doubt over whether the epistemological break “could be shown empirically” (2012:267). I hope that my illustration in Chapter 2 suffices for Weinberg to realize I am not the only one who sees the break. Even if Garfinkel is taken out of my list of allies due to my potentially misunderstanding of his work, there is still a number of scholars in the “crisis-­opposing camp.” Should Weinberg remain unconvinced (which is fair enough as he can belong to the “crisis-­provoking camp” where he is not alone either), I would suggest that he looks into the concept of “analytical bracketing” coined by Gubrium and Holstein, which basically refers to the epistemological break, though the authors endow relatively less epistemological thrust to the concept than I do to the epistemological break (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:344–345).11

“What of it?” Even if these three critics eventually acknowledge what I have been defending as reasonable, they are still likely to question what difference it makes to their

150   Expounding experience theoretical build up and empirical exploration, should they see what I see. To be more specific, how does it matter when one refuses to elucidate the relative primacy of agency and structure in his/­her theory, and/­or to see the distanciation between science and commonsense as a fundamental epistemological preliminary of social science research? Gubrium and Holstein have already expressed this sentiment when they state: “Perhaps the program is radical because it is reflexive and does not fit with someone’s [i.e., my] ontological preferences. So be it” (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:357). Weinberg did not state it explicitly, but the dismissive tone underlying his critique paper reminds me of Parsons’ remark eight decades ago on Schutz’s insistence in his assertion of the commonsense-­science coupture. Taking Schutz’s manuscript-­long letter exclusively as a criticism of his book, Parsons opened the debate with the remark: “ ‘what of it?’ ”; he wrote: If I accept your statement in place of my own formulations which you criticize, what difference would it make in the interpretation of any one of the empirical problems that run through the book, or in the formulation of the systematic structure of theory. I am certainly not prepared to say that in no case would they make any difference, but there is certainly not a single case in your essay where you demonstrate that it would, or what the difference would be. (Grathoff 1978:67; original emphases) To the question of “what of it?” I have thought of some answers; but, upon deeper reflection, I think that nothing will be able to convince my three critics. This final section of the rejoinder will explain why. Before I press on, I would like to point out that these three critics are not accurate when they write that I felt “impatient” (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:349) with their constructionist approach, and that I “avidly disdain discourse analysis” (Weinberg 2012:364).12 The Gubrium-­Holstein model has inspired me since the late 1990s, when I discussed my friend’s MPhil thesis, An Investigation into Widows’ Discursive Constructions of their Families: Using Jaber F. Gubrium’s Ethnomethodology (Lam 2000). Lam’s study was to explore how widows – whose husbands, the major breadwinners of their family, died of cancer – discursively constructed their “new family” in narrating how close relatives, good friends, or even enthusiastic neighbors had taken certain family roles originally played by the deceased. I had long wanted to use this idea of “family,” and I was prompted to use it in collaboration with a group of social work scholars – in an empirical study which resulted in the publication of Ng et al. (2016). My other paper explored how Hong Kong adolescents in the focus group narrated and artfully constructed the “problems” of the low-­income community where they were living, and how their discursive portrayals were different from those by their adult counterparts and society as a whole (Ho 2012). It came to my notice only recently that this idea is similar to Weinberg’s study of drug users in a rehab center. Weinberg realized that his informants constructed

The limit of the discursive   151 a very different “street drug scene” than those outside the center. He wondered why “the ethnographic literature tended overwhelmingly to portray the street drug scene as eminently socially organized and active drug users as rational actors” whereas his “own research subjects tended to describe street life and active drug users in terms of chaos, savagery and irrationality” (Weinberg 2006:106). In other words, while I appreciate the theoretical insights and methodological approach of the three critics in my above-­mentioned publications, why have we failed to convince each other regarding the differences I outlined in the previous section? Even worse, why don’t I even have the confidence in giving them a persuasive answer regarding their challenge of “What of it?” Upon further reflection, I see the reason as being – to borrow the concept from Gadamer – different research horizons. The three critics have conducted empirical – often ethnographic – investigations in what I call well institutionalized settings (e.g., elderly homes, rehab centers) within which there exists a strong alignment in terms of values, power structure, and resource distribution perceived by different stakeholders (e.g., clients, social workers, center managers, officials). Imagine that Bourdieu and Gubrium were to study the interactions among a handful of elderly home inmates who are engaged in a series of group activities managed by a social worker; and the elderly participants actively construct the discourse of “family,” and come to perceive the constructed family experience as “real.” Bourdieu would say: Look! Can’t you see the family is a common principle of vision and division, a nomos, that we have all socialized in particular socio-­historical ways in our heads (habitus)? Gubrium would probably say: No! Look! Can’t you see people are artfully constructing their family via discourse? Family, to Gubrium, is “not so much in anyone’s brain, as it was a range of discursive usages … for assembling troubles and domestic life in particular ways” (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:251). Both Bourdieu and Gubrium will fail to convince each another as in such a well institutionalized setting, what is in the “head” is almost naturally evolving with, hence, compatible with the reality being discursively constructed. It means that both the discursive usage and the context of its production are largely mutually constitutive. In this scenario, the research findings can be explained in both ways, and Gubrium and Holstein (2012) are right that the difference, if there is any, rests only with one’s “ontological preference.” Imagine that there is another scenario. The elderly center is located in a socialist country ruled by a corrupt autocratic regime, and is directly managed by the state. One of the elderly inmates is a veteran cadre whose son occupies a top position in the political hierarchy of the regime, whereas other elderly inmates only have relatively humble family backgrounds. In addition, all members in the group are aware that all their interactions will be monitored and video recorded, and should one do something which is considered as an offense to the regime, the “wrongdoing” will incur serious consequences not only to the actor in question, but also their children. In such a setting, “family” will still be discursively constructed. However, will the reflexive relation between the

152   Expounding experience discursive practice and its context of production be as “mutually constitutive” as that in the well institutionalized setting? Would the three critics still consider the conceptual balance between the discursive agency and the structural constraints a trivial, pointless matter? Perhaps, the three critics have seldom been exposed to research settings where power conflict and imbalance is highly explicit, but it is a kind of ethnographic situation which Bourdieu and myself have often faced. One summer a couple of years ago, when I was talking to number of civilian petitioners who were self-­proclaimed victims of a land dispute with the government, I was arrested by a group of plain-­clothes policemen. I was forced to get into a car, and eventually detained at a police station in southern China. During my seven hours there, I lost contact with the outside world. My phone and computer were confiscated. I was prohibited from communicating with my family or lawyer. I did not want the police to take my picture from the front and from the side, nor did I want them to take my fingerprints and palm prints; and most hesitantly of all, I did not want to give them my saliva sample that contained my DNA. I was interrogated in a room equipped with cameras and video-­recorders. I was forced to talk about private family and personal matters concerning myself and my family to a number of “policemen” who refused to tell me their names and positions. I needed to put my signature and fingerprints on the testimony, of which I could not obtain a copy. During this, I spoke at length, but I failed to see any “dialectic” and “interplay” between discourse and the structure. My discursive practice – if one still calls it “mutually constitutive” with the environment – had almost zero impact on the way the reality was constructed, at least not the way I preferred it to be. I truly felt that if I was to disappear in this world, there would be nothing but silence – not to mention discourse. I believe that it is due to having such a range of institutionalized research scenarios in mind that I have a different research horizon from the three critics. Even when I used their constructionist methods in well institutionalized settings as in some of my publications, my interpretive gaze is to view outside through the “window” of the institutional setting – i.e., to the power structure; or even to look up to the “sky” – i.e., to the ontology underneath the empirically identified constructions. As to Gubrium and Holstein, I agree that they do not ignore the structural factors. However, their interpretive gaze is to endow “an exclusive accent on discursive practice,” and to “distinguish distinctive social realms and their forms” without “overemphasiz[ing] [which means not ignoring] [the] social mechanisms” behind the discursive practice (Holstein & Gubrium 2008:378). In short, while my research horizon is telescopic, theirs is microscopic. I consider that both horizons are important in ethnographic research akin to the importance of both the telescope and the microscope. That being said, however, by no means am I suggesting that the difference between the two research horizons is small. For example, the three critics usually render their empirical studies with a peculiar element of “surprise” when, for instance, Gubrium and Holstein find that their elderly informants practice family

The limit of the discursive   153 usage regarding people unrelated to their original family; or in Weinberg’s case, the drug users’ narratives of the drug world in the rehab center are different from those portrayed by drug users in the street. To me, for the elderly who end up in an elderly home and who join a group that talks about family matters, are their resulting constructions of “family” in relation to other members in the group something highly unpredictable? Or, in Weinberg’s case, given the facts that these are drug addicts who are determined to rehabilitate, and are willing to join a therapeutic group to talk about their lives, is the fact that they speak of the street drug scene differently from other drug addicts highly surprising? Have not the “social mechanisms” embedded in the power structure of society already determined the discourse (or the direction of it) before the discursive practice and discourse-­in-practice determine the resulting discourse? Owing to different research horizons, the three critics would suggest not to “overemphasize social mechanisms” for fear that one would be distracted from identifying the distinctive discursive portrayals. I would, however, remind my critics not to under-­ emphasize the “social mechanisms” while appreciating the discursive constructions. Having the dimension of power domination more prominent than the three critics in my research horizon, I also admit that Goffman’s “sociology of accounts” has relatively less immediate relevance (cf. Gubrium & Holstein 2012:347), and that language seldom “enjoys a position of … unrivalled theoretical interest” (cf. Weinberg 2006:104–105) in my empirical studies. A number of rival concepts immediate come to my mind includes spatiality, resistance, governmentality, and so on so forth. To end this rejoinder, I would like to acknowledge that my criticism of the theoretical validity and empirical utility of the Gubrium-­Holstein model may have been somewhat heavy-­handed. Their model applies both theoretically and empirically in well-­institutionalized settings. It does, however, possess certain limitations when being applied to settings which incur explicit power imbalances or sovereign violence. However, Gubrium and Holstein have already honestly admitted that they consciously confine their fieldwork exclusively within well-­ institutionalized settings, and consider conducting fieldwork even in “households” as “a daring and difficult undertaking” (2012:351). It is therefore unfair to find fault with a model which fails to work in the areas where its founders have yet to enter.

Notes   1 This approach, to my knowledge, is rarely found among the critiques of postmodern theories. Similar endeavors may include Crotty (1996) and Kvigne et al. (2002).   2 Although Richard (1995) argues that there is much in common between (social) constructionism and (radical) constructivism, I prefer to maintain the distinction. The distinction highlights the difference between the two approaches in terms of the differential character of knowledge. While the former considers knowledge as socially based and exogenic, the latter views knowledge by nature as being individually based and endogenic. In the family studies literature, scholars tend to conflate the two terms (e.g., Pilgrim 2000:9).

154   Expounding experience   3 In fact, this problematic understanding of ethnomethodology is not uncommon in the literature. For example, I found it misleading when I saw Rogers wrote: “From the start, ethnomethodologists emphasized linguistic activities as the key to understanding the commonsense world” (1984:169).   4 This criticism is very similar to one Weinberg raises earlier in his critique paper when he states that I am “on a far weaker footing when it comes to the epistemological question of how we might objectively identify these non-­discursive social realities (a weakness he does not share with Gubrium and Holstein)” (2012:361).   5 Lui and I recently argued this point in a full paper presented at the Conference on 100th Anniversary of the Death of Emile Durkheim in Shanghai (Lui & Ho 2017). We argue that should Durkheim is totally committed to his claim that: “Once the individual is ruled out, only the society remains” (1982:128); egoistic suicide – through “which the individual ego asserts itself to excess in the face of the social ego and at its expense” – and it is a type of suicide that is due to “excessive individualism” (Durkheim 1979:209) and should not have existed.   6 My logic here follows Lannamann, who attends to the relation between social construction and materiality in therapeutic settings. He argues that “in addition to a macrostructural analytic method, the early writings of Marx and Engels [1988:62] offer the outlines of a materialist method grounded in the historically shaped, moment-­tomoment responses of people involved in social interaction” (1998:394–395; original emphasis).   7 The notion suggests that “social structures are both constituted by agency, and yet at the same time are the very medium of this constitution” (Giddens 1976:121; original emphasis).   8 One may regard Goffman’s frame analysis is more ambivalent in ascertaining relative primacy of agency and structure. True as it may be, Sharrock elsewhere guides us to learn Goffman’s remark that warns his supporters not to take the actor’s point of view while being naïve to the influence of social structure; Sharrock writes: Goffman’s remark [1974:1–2] is against the notion of “taking the actor’s point of view” and investigating society primarily in terms of “the definition of the situation.” … The faults which Goffman seeks to highlight are ones to which he himself – as an “interactionist” – might be alleged to be prone, of treating the present face-­to-face situation as autonomous and hermetically sealed and therefore, of being naïve with respect to the “broader” or “larger” realities of “social structure.” (1999:123) It is true that Goffman’s remark is yet to fully address the issue of agency-­structure relative primacy here. But, at least, Goffman, and also Sharrock, seem not to, and would not, treat this issue with despise.   9 The same case, to a certain extent, applies here in the debate between me and the three critics. 10 Weinberg’s strategy to challenge my position is not to return to the texts I used in my paper. This strategy is particularly effective when one wants to point out that one’s opponent’s invocation of a third party’s work has been unjustifiably biased. But, this strategy always has a disadvantage. For example, back to the present context, even Weinberg is right and substantially establishes from Schutz’s own writings that his assertion of the epistemological break is not decisive, the dispute is not really settled. I would then comfortably duck the criticism by arguing that there are two thoughts in Schutz’s work: one is Schutz 1.0, and the other, Schutz 2.0; and I support the former whereas Weinberg supports the latter. Actually, in the case where Gubrium and Holstein sidestep my extensive quotations of their texts that explicitly infer a radical constructionism, and move on to respond to my misunderstanding of their model by using other texts; I can always have an easy way out. I can simply claim that

The limit of the discursive   155 I was criticizing Gubrium-­Holstein 1.0, not their 2.0 version. Then, I do not even need to write this rejoinder. 11 “Analytic bracketing” is a methodological guideline that a researcher upholds throughout the analytic process. In the process, [a]t one moment, the researcher may be relatively indifferent to the interpretive contexts of everyday life in order to document their production through discursive practice. In the next analytic move, he or she brackets discursive practice in order to assess the local availability, distribution, and/­or regulation of resources for reality construction. (Gubrium & Holstein 2012:344–345) 12 This is absolutely fair as they did not have to go through my full CV (which is not publicly available anyway) before writing their critique on my paper.

7 The experience–power interface

Chapter 5 established the non-­discursivity and transcendence as the key features of lived experience, which imply that the lifeworld is by nature conditioned and constrained by certain impersonal, external forces. This was followed in Chapter 6 by a critique of radical constructionism as the conceptual framework to study experience mainly based on the discursive. Approaching the end of my rejoinder in the Further illustration of Chapter 6, I point to the importance of taking into account the power dimension and its relation to the larger societal structures – including the concepts of domination and resistance – in conceptualizing experience in ethnographic inquiries. In fact, any general theory of experience cannot be considered complete without serious concern with power and the complex systems behind it, and it is exactly what Schutz’s lifeworld theory strikingly misses out (Sallach 1973; Perinbanayagam 1975; Giddens 1992:163; Harrington 2001:95; Endress 2005:5). Lengermann and Niebrugge even suggest that it is due to the lack of “any extended consideration of power” that the support for Schutz’s sociology and his work “has diminished since the mid-­ 1970s” (1995:25). It is exactly the conceptual lacuna pointed out by Lengermann and Niebrugge that this chapter endeavors to fill as it aims to extend Schutz’s theory of everyday life to Foucault’s theory of power relations. Such a direction of theoretical pursuit is unique, and hopefully, will be important, at least, on two fronts. First, I concur with Dreher and Lopez (2015) that Schutz’s theory has laid down important clues to discuss the experience of power in everyday life; however, I disagree with them that such an extension can be successful solely based on Schutz’s own writings. I contend that Schutz’s theory does not possess sufficient intellectual resources to theorize the experience of power to an extent that the pertinent lived experience can be made as an appropriate ethnographic object for today’s ethnographic inquiries. Rather, I suggest that Foucault’s typology of power relations – sovereignty, discipline, and governmentality – be deployed to complete the task. Second, while a theoretical extension from everyday life experience to power has been seldom attempted in relation to ethnographic inquiries, the reverse has been a well-­trodden path. Foucault himself was a mastermind at conceptualizing how different power relations are imbued in the rubrics of the everyday life.

The experience–power interface   157 Specifically, one of Foucault’s key concerns is how knowledge and its attendant technologies have mediated between power and subjectivity in neo-­liberal contexts, which result in ways that power – in terms of the concepts of “governmentality,” “biopower,” and “self-­regulation” – can be exercised clandestinely but productively on subjects who feel that they are free.1 Several ethnographers have picked up this cue in their empirical investigation; for example, Gunn points that the most important feature of “governmentality” is perhaps its thesis that “power relations are located in the fabric of everyday life and are not confined to ‘politics’ in the narrow understanding of the term” (2006:716). Cleaver observes that the “self-­disciplining” of agents and their conscious or unconscious acceptance of unequal relations “ensure the reproduction of power through everyday acts and relationships” (2007:230). Shoshana ventures even deeper along this line and looks into how self-­reflexive subjects “translate governmental rationality and the discursive order into specific awareness of subjectivity in everyday life” (2011:772). While acknowledging the general thesis of power put forward by Foucault and his supporters, I disagree that the thesis itself is organically compatible with the epistemological gaze of ethnographers who almost always begin with observing and interacting with actors living in the mundane world, rather than analyzing the power-­knowledge nexus that regulates or disciplines actors. A general theory of experience that encompasses the experience of power is thus more apposite than the Foucauldian theory, which extends power relations into the realm of everyday life in alignment with the goal of this book – i.e., to explore a scientific epistemological foundation for the production of ethnographic knowledge. Examined in this chapter are two experiential modes, – “consociates” and “contemporaries,” – and their pertinent actor types – namely, actors-­in-the-­ natural-attitude as “consociates,” and a number of dissident and resistor types as “contemporaries” – which the ethnographer can commonly observe and interact with during fieldwork. Central to the discussion is to show how the two modes of experience in Schutzian terms correspond with the modes of power relations in Foucauldian terms (sovereignty, discipline, and governmentality), and further, with the modes of agency suggested by Emirbayer and Mische (1998) (habitual, practical-­evaluative, and projective; see Chapter 1). At the end, I suggest how these conceptual relations constitute what I call the experience–power interface whose contents are to be empirically identified in special ethnographic contexts.

Consociates The tenets of Schutz rest on the notion of the lifeworld – a world which we were born into, and which we have no freedom to select or reject. In our everyday life, we are unable to pay attention to every affair or to question everything; or, life becomes unliveable. Most of the time we are living naïvely in the life-­world of natural attitude where there is a commonsense expectation: the world will continue to be much as it has been to me and to others. We – actors

158   Expounding experience with such a natural attitude (i.e., “consociates”) – can therefore “within the natural attitude experience the Other’s self in its unbroken totality …” (Schutz 1982:254; my emphasis). As consociates, it is self-­evident to me that we know (or learn) that not only I can act upon my fellow humans, but also that they can act upon me, and I realize that I am able to enter into manifold social relations with them in which the other’s body is a perceivable and explicable field of expression, and the other’s conscious life is open to me, i.e., the stream of consciousness of mine and others flow together in simultaneity. It is in the world of consociates, or the “We-­relation” (Schutz 1982:252) that we take for granted myriad fundamental issues, including: (a) the corporeal existence of other men; (b) that these bodies are endowed with consciousness essentially similar to my own; (c) that the things in the outer world included in my environs and that of my fellow-­men are the same for us and have fundamentally the same meaning; (d) that I can enter into interrelations and reciprocal actions with my fellow men; (e) that I can make myself understood to them … (f ) that a stratified social and cultural world is historically pre-­given as a frame of reference for me and my fellow-­ men, indeed in a manner as taken for granted as the “natural world”; (g) that therefore the situation in which I find myself at any moment is only to a small extent purely created by me. (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:5; my emphasis) It is built on the taken-­for-grantedness of the lifeworld that “forms the unquestionably given background and basis for the definition and mastery of the surrounding worlds …” (Schutz 1975:131). What makes us suspend the choice of questioning and remain in the natural attitude is a stock of pre-­constituted knowledge, which – as one should remember – consists of “a set of more or less loosely connected rules and maxims of behavior in typical situations, recipes for handling things of certain types so as to attain typical results” (Schutz 1975:120). I have briefly highlighted in Chapter 5 that this stock of knowledge is “socially derived” (1982:348), “socially distributed” (1982:350), and “socially approved” in a way that it: consists of a set of systems of relevant typifications, of typical solutions for typical practical and theoretical problems, of typical precepts for typical behavior, including the pertinent system of appresentational references. All this knowledge is taken for granted beyond question by the respective social group.… [And,] only a small fraction of man’s stock of knowledge at hand originates in his own individual experience. (Schutz 1982:348; my emphasis) Needless to say, one cannot forever immerse him/­herself in the on-­going experiences of the we-­relation in which one suspends doubt of the world, its objects, and other living beings. At any time that which seemed to be hitherto

The experience–power interface   159 unquestionable might be put into question when certain counter evidence appears and intercepts one’s flow of commonsensical thoughts. And, as mentioned in the Further illustration of Chapter 5, it is the “structure of relevances” that determines “what elements have to be made a substratum of generalizing typification, what traits of these elements have to be selected as characteristically typical, and what others as unique and individual …” (1982:9–10). In other words, “founded in … [one’s] unique biographical situation” (Schutz 1975:132; my emphasis), the structure of relevances determines how one structurizes fields of consciousness into “theme(s)” which one pays attention to and questions its(their) typicality, and “horizon” that one takes for granted.2 Stemming from this logic, any acquisition of the stock of knowledge is “conditioned by [the structure of] relevance” (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:182), which has a connotation akin to our daily understanding of “interest” and “attitude” (Schutz 1982:9),3 and functions – from the actor’s point of view – to account for “why I anticipate [and question] certain occurrences” (Schutz 1982:227; original emphasis). In outlining the experiential mode of consociates through Schutz’s concepts of “stock of knowledge,” “taken-­for-grantedness,” and “structure of relevances,” I emphasize Schutz’s quotes that underscore the pre-­determinacy of everyday life that constitutes a transcendence to the actor’s subjectivity. To recapitulate: that “only a small fraction of man’s stock of knowledge at hand originates in his own individual experience,” that I – as an actor in natural attitude – “find myself at any moment that only to a small extent [of the world] purely created by me” and that the structure of relevances are “founded in … [one’s] unique biographical situation.” So, if the actor herself does not contribute mainly to the constitution of the taken-­for-grantedness of the everyday life experience; or, simply put, if I find my everyday life within a world not of my own making; then what matters? To this important question, Schutz’s answer is unjustifiably poor. For instance, despite emphasizing that the “stock of knowledge” and its attendant experiential typicality in the lifeworld is “socially derived,” “socially distributed,” and “socially approved,” Schutz, as pointed out by Sallach, “had no love of, and little regard for, the sociology of knowledge” (Sallach 1973:31). Schutz writes that: we have a so-­called sociology of knowledge. Yet, with very few exceptions, the discipline thus misnamed has approached the problem of the social distribution of knowledge merely from the angle of the ideological foundation of truth in its dependence upon social and, especially, economic conditions …. (Schutz 1964:121; cited in Sallach 1973:31–32) As to how one’s “unique biographical situation” constitutes the “structure of relevances,” Schutz does not offer any detailed answer. Instead, he merely stresses on different occasions that “the analysis for the relevance structures is perhaps the most … difficult problem that the description of the life-­world has

160   Expounding experience to solve” (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:283); and that one’s “selectivity activity” in the everyday life represents a set of very “complicated” problems called “relevance” in which Schutz explicitly claims no interest in exploring its function and underlying structure (Schutz 1970:13; original emphasis).4 In other words, Schutz pays little attention to the political and material influences that may have an impact upon consciousness. However, what if we – as researcher – come to identify very similar dispositional patterns among the members of a special group, such that they deem certain set of things as unquestioned authority in the everyday life (e.g., the corruptness of state leaders, or the authority of Western medicine), and consistently question, or even challenge, other sets of things as problematic (e.g., the state decision to build an incinerator in the neighborhood, or the healing function of folk medicine)? Put differently, what if the ethnographer comes to identify certain typifications which are structurized by the actors’ systems of relevances into particular patterns such that these typifications become dominant in a particular time and space? Under these circumstances, the constitution of the everyday life experience can no longer be seen – like what Schutz implies – to be something simply presupposed, and immune to power and domination; and it is where the Foucauldian typology of power relations becomes apposite and to come into play. Here, I suggest to extend Schutz’s concept of “stock of knowledge” to Foucault’s concept of “regime of truth” that refers to the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true.5 Both concepts point to a set of knowledge – no matter if it is labeled “recipes” or “discourse” – which is taken for granted (or accepted rather unconsciously) by individuals of a particular society, and made function as true (or real) in (re)producing typical results. The two concepts differ mainly that while Schutz deems “stock of knowledge” as pre-­ constituted and reconfirmed via social interactions without explicit engagement with historical-­political processes, Foucault considers the “regime of truth” as an outcome of power. To Foucault, “there exists a system of power which blocks, prohibits, and invalidates this discourse and this knowledge, a power not only found in the manifest authority of censorship, but one that profoundly and subtly penetrates an entire societal network” (1977a:207). This extension thus aims to incorporate the Foucauldian historical-­political formation of the “regime of truth” into the constitution of the Schutzian “stock of knowledge.” Another theoretical move is to extend Schutz’s concept of “structure of relevance” to Foucault’s concept of “governmentality.” Unlike the older forms of power of discipline and sovereignty, governmentality does not mean to impose external constraints on human agency so as to gag individuals from saying anything, or to control their behavior by overt surveillance. In describing governmentality, Foucault explains: “What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us a force that says no; it also traverses and produces things, it induces pleasures, forms of knowledge, produces discourse” (2002:120). Governmentality thus “applies itself to the immediate everyday life, categorizing individuals and communities, imposing ‘regimes of truth’ on them” (Foucault 2002:331; my emphasis). It refers to the

The experience–power interface   161 power of self-­regulation – i.e., the technologies of the self – by which a de-­ centered form of power is exercised through processes of subjectivization that shape the behaviors, attitudes, and desires of the individual, bind him/­herself to his/­her own identity and consciousness, and ultimately, promote self-­regulation in accordance with a governmental rationality. Coined as “conduct of conduct,” governmentality involves a regime of practices in the everyday life that can be deconstructed into specific uses of language, classifications, and interventions (Rose & Miller 1992:185).6 Such that the “art of government” can be called effective when it is imbued in the fabric of everyday life, and the ordinary people take on the regime of practices non-­discursively, or even unconsciously, with compliance rather than with improvisation or resistance (Foucault 1991). While both Schutz’s concept of “structure of relevance” and Foucault’s concept of “governmentality” refer to a structuring frame of what action is considered typical or acceptable – no matter that such a frame is labeled selectivity of one’s mind, or “conduct of conduct,” the two concepts differ concerning its nature of existence. For Schutz, the structure of relevances is a pre-­given from the outset7 without laying emphasis on the way it is constituted and modified – as any governmental rationality is – through the historical process of power relations. To Foucault, the practices which are made “acceptable at a given moment” in accordance with a specific governmental rationality are “not just governed by institutions, prescribed by ideologies, guided by pragmatic circumstances” but “possess their own specific regularities, logic, strategy, self-­ evidence, and ‘reason’ ” (Foucault 2002:225). To argue that Schutz’s theory of the world of everyday life can be extended to Foucault’s concept of governmentality seems to, as one may contend, resemble a handful of previous conceptual formulations that explain how power exerts its domination in a way unconscious to or even taken-­for-granted by the actor. For example, Lukes has extended the concept of power from explicit political processes to the “socially structured and culturally patterned behavior of groups and practices of institutions” (Lukes 1974:22). Gramsci also conceptualizes power in terms of rule by consent which involves the construction of a lived reality such that the existing political, economic, and social structures would be taken for granted by the mass of the people who deem the authorities as “commonsense” (Gramsci 1971:419). As for Bourdieu, his formulation of power rests on his distinction between a “personal strategic mode of domination,” which he coins “habitus,” and an “objective institutionalized mode of domination” which he calls “field” (Bourdieu 1977:182–184). Being embodied structures in the individual, habitus accounts for how power-­laden, taken-­forgranted substructures of knowledge in society come to shape people’s “commonsense” in the everyday life. Also known as “doxa,” Bourdieu’s conception of “commonsense” contributes to “an adherence [on the part of the actor] to relations of order which … are accepted as self-­evident” (Bourdieu 1984:471). Then, in which way is my proposed theoretical extension distinctive from Lukes’ ideological dimension of power, Gramsci’s hegemony, and Bourdieu’s habitus?

162   Expounding experience I argue that there are, at least, two distinctive aspects inherent in my formulation.8 First, the portrayal of power featured by the “consociates-­ governmentality” relation represents a form of impersonal domination. This feature is unique to the time-­honored Weberian view on power which is fundamentally interpersonal. In Weber’s terms, power (Macht) is “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance” (1978:53). As to Lukes, Gramsci, and Bourdieu, no matter how their theories of power represent a non-­physical domination, which is mainly to sanction, normalize, empower or even nurture rather than coercive, the power contours can be always traceable in one way or another to an interest­based “ruling class.” However, the conception of power in Foucault’s productive perspective is interlaced with knowledge, and the domination generated from this power-­knowledge nexus is impersonal in a sense that even the experts who invented or activated that knowledge in the first place are unable to manipulate it as they wish. This view has been lucidly stated by Foucault when he writes that power “is never localised here or there, never in anybody’s hands, never appropriated as a commodity or piece of wealth” (1980:98). Thus, power in the form of governmentality is a much more de-­centered and ubiquitous force acting everywhere because it comes from everywhere (1977b:194; 1979:92–102). Stemming from this logic, the modern state is neither the center of power nor an institution or apparatus filled with experts and political elites whose primary mission is to exploit the subordinates. Rather, the state “is constituted by the set of practices by which the state actually became a way of governing, a way of doing things, and a way too of relating to government” (2007:277).9 The impersonality of domination is a theoretical key to understanding that power is exercised on the consociates at a distance through seemingly innocuous, and taken-­for-granted forms of expertise and knowledge in the everyday life.10 The second distinctive feature is its emphasis on technologies of the self through which power can penetrate into the actors’ bodies/­lives, shaping their forms of action, structures of preference, and interpretive schemas in conformance in the lifeworld with specific governmental rationalities; but at the same time, the actors – i.e., the consociates – maintain an outlook of a free and autonomous agent “capable of monitoring and regulating various aspects of their own conduct” (Dean 1999:12). It is exactly the emphasis on the self-­regulation, or “technologies of the self ” that explains how power in form of political government recourses to “processes by which the individual acts upon himself ” (Foucault 1993:203), in the natural attitude that Schutz suggests. This theoretical formation echoes Natanson’s exegesis of the actor’s experience in the lifeworld, through which the actor experience the “transcendences, that of Nature and that of society,” but at the same time, I – as the actor-­in-the-­naturalattitude – “have the freedom of my potentialities,” in other words, these “transcendences” have prescribed “the scope of all possibilities for defining my  situation” (Natanson 1986:124–125). Based on this line of inquiry, I further  suggest that the “consociates-­governmentality” relation represents the

The experience–power interface   163 iterational, habitual component of agency suggested by Emirbayer and Mische through which the actors reactivate with a sense of their own selectivity of past patterns of thought and action, and incorporate them into the practical activities of the everyday life, thereby “giving stability and order to social universes and helping to sustain identities, interactions, and institutions over time” (1998:971; original emphasis).

Contemporaries Normal actors cannot stay as consociates forever because all recipes and typifications are good only “until further notice.” When the world presents to actors beyond what their recipes at hand can master, or becomes sufficiently matched by their typificatory schemes; they need to step out of the world of consociates and become “contemporaries” who take the “atypicality” as an object of conscious attention. When such an “atypicality,” or something out of “automatic expectation” arises (Schutz & Luckmann 1995:9); Schutz suggests that our stock of knowledge and its attendant typificatory schemes will be modified (1964:23–36), which leads to a quick restoration of intersubjectivity. Schutz emphasizes that “[i]t is an intersubjective world within reach of our common experience, the intersubjective character of the world in general both originates and its continuously confirmed” (1964:31). Throughout Schutz’s texts, the most meticulously described type of “contemporaries” is what he calls the “stranger.” To Schutz, the concept of “stranger” mainly refers to a migrant situated in a new culture.11 A stranger then possesses an “oscillating” attitude “between remoteness and intimacy” toward the culture that he/­she approaches (Schutz 1964:103). Inevitably, a stranger harbors hesitation, uncertainty, and distrust “in every matter which seems to be so simple and uncomplicated to those who rely on the efficiency of unquestioned recipes which have just to be followed but not understood” (Schutz 1964:103–104). However, Schutz’s descriptions of the “stranger” were criticized of being too ideal and simplistic to explain the real situation.12 Meisenhelder has rightly criticized that Schutz truly believes that “the naïve life-­world is always accepted as real and is never truly doubted. Within the life-­world, … one can even typify the atypical” (1979:23).13 Undoubtedly, the Schutzian “stranger” is a type of actor (as contemporaries) who can be identified in ethnographic settings. However, there exist other actor types who face the “atypicality” in such a way that they may consider it more seriously, think of improvising it, resist it, or even pursue a re-­arrangement of the existing social structures, rather presuming a quick return to intersubjectivity and then back again and so forth (i.e., an “oscillating” attitude). The typology of contemporaries in Schutz’s texts thus becomes conceptually insufficient for the researcher who investigates many common topics in anthropology on the atypical experiences faced by actors, including forced migration, petition, protest, strike, collective violence, uprising, and revolution. And, I contend that Foucault’s seminal concept of resistance can fruitfully enrich the actor typology of contemporaries.

164   Expounding experience One should be reminded that throughout Foucault’s work, resistance is a concept irreducibly opposite to power, i.e., a natural consequence of power practices; he writes that “where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (1998:95). His notion of resistance opens up a spectrum of human agency in response to the constituted power, and becomes a fountain of vastly multifarious courses of actions ranging from the possibility of “committing suicide, of jumping out of window or of killing the other”; to that of “violent resistance, of escape, of ruse, of strategies”; to that of “a revolution” (Foucault 1994:18; 1998:96). And, depending on the specific contexts of constituted power, the actors who feature different resistor roles are subject to different power relations, ranging from the “subtle coercion” of disciplinary power which involves the ensemble of practices for controlling, surveilling, and disciplinary human behaviors (Foucault 1994), to the more violent sovereign power being characterized by “the right to take life and let live” (Foucault 1994:136). In comparison with sovereign power, disciplinary power is less coercive and aims to manipulate, shape, and train the body of the subject in order to make it obey, respond, become skilful, and increase its productive forces, such as speed and efficiency, desired in the modern industrial age (1977b:136–138). To Foucault, both discipline and governmentality are two different technologies of power, which have been “superimposed” on one another since the eighteenth century (2004:249). In doing so, Foucault theoretically distinguishes governmentality and discipline from the sovereign exercise of power, which was traditionally centered in feudal states and was considered a more “costly and violent” form of power to coerce the subjects (1977b:137). However, in reality, Foucault cautions against viewing the three different faces of power – sovereignty, discipline, and governmentality – as distinctive concepts; rather, they coexist as the hybrid of powers, i.e., a sovereignty-­discipline-governmentality triangle; he writes: we should not see things as the replacement of a society of sovereignty by a society of discipline, and then of a society of discipline by a society, say, of government. In fact we have a triangle: sovereignty, discipline, and governmental management, which has population as its main target and apparatuses of security as its essential mechanism. (Foucault 2004:108) Regarding the actor types in the experiential mode of contemporaries so far covered in Schutz’s and Foucault’s texts – i.e., namely, “stranger,” “ruse-­user,” “escaper,” “killer,” “violent resistor,” “suicide,” “strategist,” and “revolutionary,” they can be said to feature the practical-­evaluative and projective components of human agency according to Emirbayer and Mische (1998). While the “stranger,” “ruse-­user,” “escaper,” “killer,” and “violent resistor” are likely to entail practical-­evaluative agency which allows actors to “make practical and normative judgments among alternative possible trajectories of action, in response

The experience–power interface   165 to the emerging demands, dilemmas, and ambiguities of presently evolving situations” (1998:971; original emphasis); the “suicide,” “strategist,” and “revolutionary” are likely to feature a projectivity that encompasses “the imaginative generation by actors of possible future trajectories of action, in which received structures of thought and action may be creatively reconfigured in relation to actors’ hopes, fears, and desires for the future” (1998:971; original emphasis).

The experience–power interface What has been discussed in this chapter so far points to the concept of the “experience–power interface” through which actors are traversing between the experiential modes of consociates and contemporaries in the process of living in the world. In the former mode, the actors are subjected to a form of domination in the everyday life, which is by nature impersonal and unconscious; and which is mainly recognized in the form of self-­governance. In the latter mode, the actors are subjected to more conscious, and explicit forms of power: the discipline and sovereignty. These features are summarized in Table 7.1. However, how does the experience–power interface, which supposedly consists of the co-­presence of power and freedom, inform the ethnographer who needs to pay dual-­attention to the unspoken authority that shapes actors’ desires, intent, and action in the everyday life? And how does the experience– power interface inform the ethnographer on the role of agency which allows actors to question and challenge the constituted power in the stages of data collection and analysis? Here, I propose that the two experiential modes of consociates and contemporaries are viewed as two separate, distinct “moments” in the actor’s experience, such that the actor may experience one moment at one time, and experience the other rather swiftly at another time. To further illustrate the utility of the experience–power interface in ethnographic inquiries, I find that the time-­honored “carrot-­and-stick” metaphor is particularly helpful.14 The metaphor portrays how a man wants to get his donkey moving forward by dangling a carrot in front of the donkey, just out of reach of its mouth. If the Table 7.1 A schematic illustration of the experience–power interface comprising modes of experience, power relation, and agency Mode of experience (Type of actor)

Consociates* (actor-in-the-naturalattitude*)

Contemporaries* (stranger*, ruse-user#, escaper#, killer#, violent resistor#, suicide#, strategist#, revolutionary#, etc.)

Mode of power relation (Type of power)

Governmentality# (impersonal domination)

Discipline#/Sovereignty# (surveillance#/violence#)

Mode of agency

Iteration^ or habitual^

Practical-evaluative^/Projective^

Key ---- epistemological break; * Schutz’s terminology; # Foucault’s terminology; ^ Emirbayer and Mische’s terminology.

166   Expounding experience donkey does not move in the way the man wants it to, he will hit it with a stick from behind. From the perspective of the man, the external powerholder, it is apposite to describe his control on the donkey as using both “carrot and stick.” However, from the perspective of the donkey, when it stares at and moves toward the carrot, it experiences what I call the “moment of consociates,” or the “carrot moment,” in which it has learnt the knowledge that the carrot is sweet, juicy, and healthy. In the “moment of consociates,” its master, (i.e., the man) is not within its attention, and it just feels the liberty to self-­regulate its speed and angle when moving toward the carrot. In fact, when the donkey is moving in accordance with the will of the man, the man can even fall asleep. When it happens, it is the moment when power is no longer inherent within powerful subjects. Power becomes an impersonal force that acts and comes from everywhere because it is dispersed and decentered. The man-­who-falls-­asleep thus echoes what Foucault states repeatedly and with exceptional clarity: that the power relation is neither “a binary [i.e., dyadic] structure with ‘dominators’ on the one side and ‘dominated’ on the other” (1980:142), nor “a political structure, a government, a dominant social class, the master facing the slave” (1994:11); nor “a general system of domination exerted by one group over another” (1998:92). Power is thus produced in the most routine, mundane routine, day-­to-day, face-­to-face interactions with the ultimate effects of producing self-­policing function among actors (Crossley 1994:114). However, when the donkey is not moving in the direction that the man wants it to go, the man will wake up. He will then exercise his power by enforcing his identity as “master.” The man may use the stick to touch on, or softly pat the donkey’s body in order to signal it the “correct” way of moving forward. When such corporeal discipline via – in Foucault’s words – “meticulous control of the operations of the body” (Foucault 1977b:137) is being enforced, the donkey can no longer remain in the “moment of consociates” and take things for granted. It realizes that its pre-­constituted stock of knowledge at hands is no longer sufficient to deal with the emerging situation; and it enters the “moment of contemporaries,” or simply, the “stick moment.” It means that if the donkey continues to question or even resist the man’s order, the man may shout and berate the donkey in order to let it know that he is now watching how it behaves. And, when it comes to a point that the donkey realizes that the carrot is arranged in a way that the donkey can never reach it, the donkey slows its pace; or it attempts to improvise the rules of the game by pouncing, or jumping on the carrot which makes the man feel that the donkey has failed to govern itself. Fearing a loss of control over it, the man will hit it with the stick. The use of the stick means that the donkey notices that the former rules it has taken for granted – i.e., if it moves faster enough, it will eat the carrot – are now deeply questioned. The suspension of the former typificatory scheme triggers not only the donkey to enter the “moment of contemporaries,” but also the external powerholder to potentially exercise power in a more violent way. The beatings serve to punish, discipline, and above all, to remind the donkey who is his master, and who has “the right to take life and let live.” With various power

The experience–power interface   167 forms exerted by the man in the “moment of contemporaries,” ranging from corporal (disciplinary) to violent (sovereign), the donkey may respond in different ways, ranging from compromising with the man’s order to openly challenging his authority; and exhibiting either the practical-­evaluative, or projective component of human agency. Therefore, rather than describing the donkey’s experience–power interface as “carrot and stick,” it is more suggestive to describe it as “carrot or stick.”

Concluding remarks The experience–power interface leads to series of important empirical questions for the researcher to explore in specific ethnographic settings, e.g., under what social, political, economic, and cultural conditions does the actor suspend his natural attitude in the everyday life and question the originally unquestioned constituted power and subject himself/­herself to (the danger of ) coercion; and under what conditions does the actor stop questioning and return to taken-­forgrantedness according to a particular governmental rationality. Guided by such a framework, I come to a stipulation in writing ethnography that any endeavor to perspectivize (theorize) experience in relation to power must eventually point to both the unspoken and often unconscious authority which shapes the structure of relevances of individuals in the everyday life; and how, and under what conditions, these individuals come to terms with the constituted power that normally deploys less coercive technologies of the self, and is likely to exercise more overt surveillance control and corporeal disciplines on those individuals who are deemed as incapable of self-­government.

Notes   1 Flynn (1999) has astutely pinpointed that Foucault is concerned with the link between power and subjectivity throughout his work from Madness and Civilization to The History of Sexuality.   2 Theme, or sometimes referred to as the “thematic” by Schutz is used to contrast against the “horizon,” or more exactly the “outer horizon.” To Schutz, “[t]hematic structure … is essential to consciousness; that is, there is always a theme within the field of consciousness” (1970:34); and “everything that is linked with the theme in passive syntheses of identity, similarity, etc., belongs to the outer horizon” (1982:193).   3 Schutz is particularly suspicious about the term “attitude.” He writes that “there is no attitude at all involved, except in the metaphorical sense” (Schutz 1982:284).   4 To be exact, Schutz writes that “the theory concerning the mind’s selectivity activity is simply the title for a set of problems more complicated even than those of field, theme, and horizon – namely, a title for the basic phenomenon we suggest calling relevance” (1970:13; original emphasis). He then concludes that “it is not at the center of our [Schutz’s] interests in investigating the relationship between theme and horizon, the selective function of the mind, and the underlying structure of relevance” (1970:23).   5 Foucault writes: Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms

168   Expounding experience and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true. (1980:131)   6 These power-­laden discourses, classificatory schemes, and political programs were traceable back to certain powerful institutions through which experts (e.g., officials or scientists) and disciplines (e.g., statistics and medicine) invented them, and set them into operation, either intentionally or unintentionally, as the control “at a distance” (Dean 2002:131).   7 To Schutz, the structure of relevance is by nature similar to the intersubjectivity of everyday life in which “[o]ur everyday world is, from the outset, an intersubjective world of culture” (1982:10, 133).   8 A preliminary version which explicates the importance of extending Schutzian lifeworld to the Foucauldian power relation was presented in Ho (2017:30–31).   9 Such a view echoes with Foucault’s suggestion that power “must be analyzed as something which circulates” (1980:98); and therefore, governmentality studies, as astutely summarized by Gordon, is to unravel the government rationality by identifying the ways in which a particular set of practices become “thinkable and practicable both to its practitioners and to those upon which it [is] practiced” (1991:3). 10 I first proposed to consider Foucauldian conception of power in terms of impersonal domination in Ho (2011). 11 Schutz proposes to expand his concept of “stranger” as to apply it to understand actors other than migrants, including [t]he applicant for membership in a closed club, the prospective bridegroom who wants to be admitted to their girl’s family, the farmer’s son who enters college, the city-­dweller who settles in a rural environment, the “selectee” who joins the Army, the family of the war worker who moves into a boom town, [etc.]. (1964:91) One should note that social scientist is a kind of “stranger” in the world of contemporaries (Chapter 2) as, to follow C. Wright Mills’ famous dictum in his classic text Sociological Imagination, sociologists are to make familiar strange. 12 One quintessential critique was from Schutz’s good friend Aron Gurwitsch who, in his letter to Schutz dated 16 July 1944, reacted violently to the concept of “stranger” as a generalized form of actor. He argued that Schutz could not cover the kind of strangers that Schutz and Gurwitsch himself had experienced during their American exile (Grathoff 1989:69–72; see also Kassab 1990). 13 One should note that Perinbanayagam’s remark on Schutz’s portrayal of an over-­ stabilized intersubjective world has been are sharp and vivid. He concurs that consociates grow old together, but questions: “do they say anything of significance to each, do they agree, disagree, struggle, flirt, seduce, insult, cajole, bully, console, comfort each other as they grow older?” … [D]o they themselves know it [that they are growing older] and talk about it with each other, and do they get frightened about it? There is no indication that they do anything of this sort: they are merely present [to] each other” (1975:507). 14 A preliminary version of the experience–power interface as illustrated by the “carrot-­ and-stick” metaphor was presented in Ho (2017:34–35).

8 Conclusion Anti anti-­ethnographic authority

My epistemological excursion into ethnographic research with the goal to produce scientific knowledge has identified four epistemological postulates regarding the role of researcher in relation to the actor and the scientific community. First, writing by the researcher is epistemological prior to experiencing during fieldwork in producing ethnographic accounts with the acknowledgment of the reflection-­vs-experience epistemological break (Chapters 1 and 2). Second, both the existence of the researcher (vis-­a-vis the actor) and the involvement of his/­her conceptual narrativization are epistemological prerequisites for the constitution of ethnographic data (Chapter 3). Third, the researcher perspectivizes his/­her data at hand. And, based on my proposed general theory of experience, one of the researcher’s main tasks in ethnographic analysis is to identify the socially, politically, and historically plausible conditions by virtue of which meanings of certain phenomena come to be taken for granted by specific actors in the everyday life experience; and under what conditions the actors come to question, challenge, or even resist the pre-­predicative meanings of the everyday life (Chapters 5 and 7). Lastly, the researcher – together with his/­her contemporaries and predecessors – constitutes part of the scientific community in validating ethnographic knowledge of the other (consisting of myriad theory– data pairs) through debates, and producing realist knowledge that leads one to know more about the ontological foundation of the social world (Chapter 4). These postulates are potentially controversial as they are easily taken part and parcel of the long-­assaulted “ethnographic authority” that claims to produce nothing but knowledge that misrepresents others. This final chapter is to highlight the nature of these epistemological postulates by extending the discussion to the broader scholarly discussion pertinent to what many ethnographic practitioners nowadays may hastily perceive, and sometimes unreasonably attack, as “ethnographic authority.”

Writing Since Geertz’s Works and Lives, it seems that it has been the sense of “being there” – rather than the facts of the case, or theories – that makes us convinced what we have understood about social life is real (Geertz 1988; see also Reed

170   Anti anti-ethnographic authority 2008:189) Writing becomes the researcher’s rhetorical device to persuade readers that other people exist, that the researcher has met them, and that the researcher’s account is credible. Undoubtedly, writing does possess a rhetorical dimension and its consequence to misrepresent (or even oppress) others must be guarded. However, writing is also an epistemological prerequisite for the actor’s voice not only to be heard, but also to become shareable knowledge subjected for scientific reasoning. In order to write about the other, one must exert an epistemological break with the intersubjectivity, and enter a reflective mode in which the researcher no longer grows old together with the actor. To underscore the role of the epistemological break here, however, does not mean, as Gadamer does, that the “temporal distance” makes understanding “better than … [the author] understood himself ” akin to “superior understanding” (1976:121); or, what he means by constituting “a positive and productive possibility of [i.e., different ways of] understanding” (1988:297), that one can claim his or her knowledge “authoritative and universal” (1976:123). My appropriation of the break suggests that it is not something the ethnographer can overcome. To follow Ricoeur, writing is “not merely an extension of the speaking-­hearing situation constitutive of dialogue [during fieldwork]” (1973:104). The break functions to allow one to raise a different way of understanding in a realm that is divorced from the fleeting moment of actuality; and this difference is the prerequisite for debate and new knowledge. To problematically place emphasis on writing as a means of oppressing others (due to the break) and still consider ethnographic accounts as “scientific,”1 as Fabian does, the most honest response would be that there is no answer to the dilemma,2 and the most logical consequence would be to “give up writing about the Other and drop out, if not out of anthropology, then out of ethnography” (Fabian 1990:767).

Data In ideal terms, ethnographic data that subsequently feeds into the researcher’s analysis is purely the actor’s, both in terms of its origin and interpretation. Implicitly or explicitly, ethnographers hold that the relatively flexible and unstructured nature of prolonged fieldwork can “avoid pre-­fixed arrangements that impose [the researcher’s] categories on what people say and do” (Brewer 2000:19); or can guide ones “to see and describe the world through other people’s eyes without mixing this perspective with one’s [i.e., the researcher’s] own lifeworld” (Oberkircher & Hornidge 2011:399). I have been arguing throughout this book that neither the researcher’s interpretive disturbance of the actor’s experience is inevitable in the constitution of ethnographic data (Maanen 1988:135), nor that the process can be vaguely explained away by describing it as the actor–researcher co-­production that features indivisible hybridity (Clarke 2001:23–24; Narayan 2001:319; Nevins 2013:82). In specific terms, ethnographic data is constituted through many rounds of logical inferences through which the actor’s explanation (object) comes into the researcher’s perspectivized

Anti anti-ethnographic authority   171 gaze (sign), and the latter derives an interpretation (interpretant), which potentially revises the researcher’s perspectivized gaze (sign) that is utilized to make sense of the actor (object), and issues another interpretation (interpretant); and the inference process repeats itself till a point the researcher accepts it, at least for the time being, as the corpus of ethnographic data for analysis. The inescapable and partial involvement of the researcher in the constitution of ethnographic data is in line with the broader phenomenological perspective, such that the pre-­predicative structures of oneself becomes essential not only to understand the other (another self ), but also to understand anything at all (including one’s own self ). This idea has been explained by Schutz’s concept of “structures of relevance” that has been discussed in previous chapters, which indeed, also echoes Gadamer’s concept of “prejudice” which refers to “a judgment that is given before all the elements that determine a situation have been finally examined” (1988:240); and Heidegger’s concepts of “fore-­conceptions” or “fore-­structures” which presuppose that in all scientific operations exists a prior “understanding of being” (1962:188). These concepts together with their logical implications effectively render the idea that ethnographic data collected through prolonged fieldwork present only and purely the meaning of the actor in the researcher’s text utterly impossible. Here I do not dispute that one should stay in the field long enough to master the language, learn the things that one sets out to explore, understand the natives’ categories and meaning, and encounter the unexpected that one finds interesting during the course of fieldwork. What I endeavor to debunk, however, is the misconception that prolonged fieldwork possesses more privilege than other methods to allow the researcher to understand the actor, so that the researcher can speak for the actor as if the actor speaks for him/­herself. In social lives nowadays, it is not uncommon to see that a person considers his/­her spouse a “stranger,” or blames his/­ her parents with anguish: “You never understand me!” after decades of “participant observation” living with and trying to understand each other. To acknowledge the researcher’s role in the constitution of ethnographic data indeed reflects a more serious recognition of the alterity of the other – that the other always presents to another self as an enigma (Lévinas 1969) – than the so-­called “anti-­hegemonial” moves that claim to be able let “the ‘native’s’ voice be heard” in the researcher’s illusory dialogic or poetic texts (Johannsen 2001:339).

Theory Since we cannot directly grasp the other and at the same time present it in a reflective manner, what we can do in ethnographic analysis is to present the other indirectly through perspectivization with the use of theory. Wacquant has rightly remarked that the “naïve acceptance of ordinary categories of perception as categories of [ethnographic] analysis” (2002:1470) is nothing but “an epistemological fairy-­tale” (2002:1481). However, the explicit theorization of ethnographic data proposed by Wacquant is usually given the notorious label of being

172   Anti anti-ethnographic authority “top-­down” which, as put by Anderson, would lead the ethnographer to “subordinate the cultural complexity he or she finds in the field to that theory” (2002:1534). My previous discussions have repeatedly suggested that the presentation of the actor’s meaning without the researcher’s input is an impossibility, and that the theoretical approach which emphasizes the actor’s discursive practice without giving due attention to the researcher’s theorization of the larger structures is problematic (Chapter 6). Ethnographic knowledge would be superfluous if it was merely a reiteration of the informants’ meaning and categories based on discourse. Rather, it should make every effort to “find deeper explanations, identifying processes and phenomena not noticed in everyday life” (Sayer 2007:241).3 In Chapter 3, I have suggested that ethnographic analysis essentially involves many rounds of application of the researcher’s theoretical categories (sign) to the ethnographic data (object), and make sense of it in terms of an interpretation (interpretant). The main objective of ethnographic analysis is to achieve the best theory–data fit as to account for the actor’s meaning in terms of the most relevant intellectual resources that the researcher can derive from the scientific community. It is probably fair to describe this approach as “top-­down,” as the researcher does possess a certain degree of freedom – technically known as a weak form of relativism (Chapter 4) – to theorize the ethnographic data in certain coherent forms as he/­she pleases. For those who oppose this approach and believe that “coherent presentation [which] presupposes a controlling mode of authority” should be replaced by more open-­ended and uncertain polyphonic genres (Clifford 1983:142), the researcher will face another epistemological hazard, that is: the shrugging off of the intellectual responsibility for the claims the researcher makes. On this point, Hammersley sharply criticizes: That responsibility requires them [i.e., researchers] to seek, as far as possible, to ensure the validity of their conclusions and to participate in rational debate about those conclusions. This responsibility cannot be off-­loaded on to others [including the readers, the audience etc.]. Any attempt to do so seems likely to impair the quality of studies, and to undermine further public recognition of the intellectual authority of social research. (Hammersley 2001:333) Therefore, for being “top-­down,” as the researcher endeavors to makes sense of the other in terms of an explicit conceptual narrativization, he/­she bears the risk of representing the other wrongly. But, off-­loading the researcher’s intellectual responsibility for what he/­she claims to the readers and/­or his/­her informants, no validity judgment can be made about his/­her knowledge claims, as they are not even wrong. This would, using the words of Herzfeld, “ultimately entail rejection of the very possibility of knowing anything at all” (2018:132).

Anti anti-ethnographic authority   173

Validation Will the potentiality of ethnographic explanation to misrepresent others be unchecked? My answer is a loud-­and-clear negative as any explanation will become a reference point that can engage in debates with other existing reference points in the scientific community. This validation process is exactly how the “ethnographic authority” is ultimately checked, and how “paradigms” and key concepts in the fields of anthropology and sociology establish their validity. The recognition of the scientific community as part of the epistemological foundation of ethnographic accounts represents a step forward; maintaining self­reflexivity in ethnographic research such that “the importance of maintaining a sense of the investigator’s history, subjectivity, and theoretical positioning as a vital resources for the understanding of and respect for, those under study” is underscored (Willis 2000:113; see also Goodall 2000:196). While self-­reflexivity refers to individual efforts to unravel possible epistemological biases that may stealthily shape ethnographic accounts, the scientific community is an open platform where ethnographic knowledge can be validated. Its openness, however, is not without qualification. It is open to all and sustains dialogues among the participants (in terms of debate) only to those who (i) have a theory–data pair to defend; and (ii) (care to) seek validation through engaging debates with others in pursuit of the best explanation. It does not matter whether the person who wages the debate is another researcher, foreign, or native (Narayan 2001); or a common informant who feeds the information the researcher asks for (Lincoln & Guba 1985); or a special informant who actively mediates the information obtained by the researcher, such as the assistant to the researcher during fieldwork (Cons 2014); or an activist whom the researcher studies in an ethnographic study of social movement (Urla & Helepololei 2014). As long as one possesses the characteristics (i) and (ii), he/­she is a member of the scientific community which offers a level playing field for both the researcher and his/­her subject. The actor thus can become the “researcher.” He/­she can potentially lead one to know more about the ontological myth of the social world through engaging in debates with others in the scientific community. This idea supports, to a certain extent, some postmodernists’ call for effective communication between ethnographer and reader (Marcus & Cushman 1982:52), and more recent scholarly claims that internet or digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Wikis have opened up new possibilities of dialogue with the subjects of research (Fabian 2008; Jackson 2012:492; Glowczewski et al. 2013:120; Chua 2015:656–657). However, the idea of the scientific community I have put forward is contradistinctive to that of promoting, in general, the actor–researcher dialogue, at least, in three fundamental ways. First, the basis for distilling scientific knowledge (or scientific truths) from ethnographic explanations is not opinion polling or a democratic process that entails one-­person-one-­vote in politics. As mentioned above, members engaged in debates in the scientific community must possess certain characteristics that

174   Anti anti-ethnographic authority bolster logical arguments to reason for or against the validity of a specific theory–data pair. It is fundamentally different from online discussion platforms, which allow “indigenous” people to write comments to (dis)agree or (dis)like a specific ethnographic text. Some scholars have already recognized that such a phenomenon has “ushered in new concerns, relational entanglements, methodological dilemmas, and modes of accountability,” which possess serious implications in the ethnographer’s epistemological landscape (Chua 2015:657; see also Fabian 2008; Khan 2014:249). I propose that only when the conditions for rigorous logical reasoning (e.g., the characteristics (i) and (ii) mentioned above) among the interlocutors of an ethnographic text are in place, that these online platform discussions can be deemed as real dialogues between the ethnographer and his/­her audience. And, only then, these discussions can become genuine venues (real feedback loops) that the researcher requires to draw serious attention to elucidate, recast, or even revise his/­her original explanation in face of emerging validation challenges. Second, debates in the scientific community represent the will to obtain the best explanation with the ultimate goal to get closer to the universal truth rather than debating for the sake of reconfirming nothing but the plurality of knowledge. This characteristic is in line with the ontological realist stance proposed in Chapter 4, that there is theoretically one reality and one comprehensive explanation to be identified, though to find that explanation is a continual chase. However, it is also essential that different members of the scientific community have a different view on how this ultimate explanation is and how it can be identified. It is because only real difference can sustain real debate, and only real debate can ensure continuous engagement of members in the scientific community, lead the discussion forward, and get closer to the ontological myth of our social world. This formulation draws heavily from Ricoeur who sees that all interpretations are not equally valid (1971:549–550; 1976:78–79), and that the human’s desire for a single, correct (or best) interpretation of the social world is to be defended (Geanellos 2000:117). Lastly, engaging in debates in the scientific community does not claim to equalize the power between the researcher and his/­her subjects, as this claim has been implied by those who triumph the vibrancy of the actor–researcher’s online dialogue and deem it as an effective way to dispel the “ethnographic authority.” Here, I concur with Mosse that it is “obviously false” that “power inequalities between the interpreter and the interpreted can be dialogued away” even if one claims that the production mode of ethnographic knowledge is shifted from dialogue to collaboration (2006:937). Having said that, I do agree that all pursuits of knowledge – scientific or not – that potentially change the way people understand human conditions is inherently political, and that the power inherent in the knowledge production should not be ignored. In principle, Fox is right that “[w]riting ethnography is always … an assertion of power” (1991:6). In anthropology, some approaches entail explicit political engagement with scholarship, such as engaged anthropology (Low & Merry

Anti anti-ethnographic authority   175 2010) and public anthropology (Vine 2011), which have attracted considerable attention. To me, debates engaged by the members of the scientific community are susceptible to power and influence due to the social, economic and cultural capitals different members possess. Does it contradict my claims that the scientific community offers a level playing field for both the researcher and his/­her subject; and that it can function to validate ethnographic knowledge, and check against the misrepresentation of others? I would argue that my answer to this question is a “no” with a two-­fold argument. First, it is true that all knowledge claims are political, but some forms of knowledge politicization, e.g., the knowledge of claims on aboriginals that leads to imperialism, is worth being guarded against than some other forms, e.g., the political agenda behind the Sahlins-­ Obeyesekere debate. We are destined to give up debates, and by association, science if, as put by Thomas, the “politicization of social scientific and cultural knowledge” become “unproductively exaggerated” in every ethnographic inquiry (1997:334). In fact, to give up debate is itself not an apolitical move either as many regimes want their people to give up debating what the state has already interpreted. Second, the power dynamics inherent in a scientific community is not a wild beast without a harness. Instead, it can always be made a topic of investigation with its subsequent knowledge claims being validated by the same or other pertinent scientific communities. The concept of scientific community is, thus, in this sense, akin to Olivier de Sardan’s notion of “reference reality” which can become “the object of shareable intelligibilities and is subject to scientific [scrutiny and] debates” (2015:2).

Concluding remarks This book pioneers the argument that a particular form of actor–researcher relationship constitutes an epistemological prerequisite for the constitution of ethnographic data and analysis; at the same time, it bolsters an epistemological foundation that sustains the major tenets of realism for scientific reasoning. It may be true as Smith remarks that the “subjects of ethnographies … are always more interesting than their authors” (1990:369). However, same as in biological science, the virus is more interesting than the electronic microscope; but, the electronic microscope is something that without it, the virus cannot be seen. Is the virus we see through the electronic microscope a re-­presentation, and can possibly be misrepresented without being noticed? Yes. Should we give up using electronic microscope to look at virus before other devices are in place? No. It sounds very outdated to many, but I still find Jarvie’s words, issued nearly half a century ago, highly commanding in what he wrote about the pursuit of scientificity underlying ethnographic inquiries: Should science be abandoned? Should we give up the search for cognitively powerful, hopefully true views of the world? Should we substitute “deep subjectivity” for not being judges in our own cause? My answer is no; we

176   Anti anti-ethnographic authority cannot give up, and we should not give up (ought implies can). We cannot give up because we must strive continually to come to terms with the world we inhabit, and this is all science is. We should not give up because to try and fail is better than not to try at all. (Jarvie 1975:263) There is nothing particularly futile about trying to write authoritative accounts of others. It would be, however, a futile endeavor if we spent our precious lifetime just meeting people without having the will to transform what we know into some insights about the myth of our social world, and ultimately, humanity. Yes, we may be wrong as what we know is always tentative, perspectival, never synoptic, not to mention universal. But, there is a more humble goal an ethnographic inquiry needs to achieve, which is to offer an interpretation that is ready to compete with others’ with an ambition to understand the ontological foundation of human interactions. If to do so is to be labeled “top down,” so be it. Between the fate of a scientist who feels anxious that his/­her knowledge may be proved wrong, but possesses the tiny chance to tumble on the truth; or that of a poet who is playful with different genres and sees things as so open-­ ended and uncertain that virtually no one can judge his/­her knowledge wrong; I – without a seconds hesitation – choose the fate of a scientist.

Notes 1 In Fabian’s own words: For those of us who continued to work as ethnographers because, not in spite, of our intellectual and political commitments, the struggle for liberation from positivism and scientism never meant that empirical accountability and claims to the scientific status of our findings were to be abandoned. (Fabian 2012:441; my emphasis) 2 All along, Fabian suggests that “anthropology’s [ultimate] task is to give presence to those who, if at all, are spoken of only in absentia.” However, his own answer is that: I am now nowhere near to understanding all the implications of this, nor do I know how to resolve the quandary that such an ambition puts us into: If we were to succeed in making others present, would that not put us out of business as their representers/­representatives? (2006:145; first emphasis original; second, mine) 3 Having said that, I do not mean that that ethnography possesses a particular advantage than other social research methods (e.g., statistical or historiographic methods) in identifying this “deeper explanation” of human interactions. In particular, I feel more hesitant than Decoteau who believes that ethnography is “a depth method” that fares better than other methods “in [the] search of hidden causal mechanism” (2016:59).

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Index

Page numbers in bold denote tables, those in italics denote figures. abduction, rule of 57–58, 65n9, 66n14; outcome of 60; theory–data fitting 60–61; theory–data pair 60 abstraction, process of 55 actor–observer epistemic continuum 30–33, 36, 40 actor–researcher relationship 44; individual subjectivities of 50; interaction during fieldwork 51; intersubjective 47, 50; logical inferences behind 51, 52; online dialogue 174; reflective meaningmaking process 50; that leads to fieldnotes and ethnographic data 52; worlds of consociates and contemporaries 48 actor’s-account-counts 73 ad infinitum, principle of 98 affordances of objects 53 agency-structure relation 144 Alexander, J.C. 61, 68–69; scientific continuum and its components 69 alterity of the other 72–75; actor’saccount-counts 73; approaches to tackle epistemological impasse of 73; back-tothe-intersubjectivity 73; ethnographic data on 73; intersubjective validity of 73; Lévinas’ philosophy of 54, 88n7; re-achieving-the-experiential 73; recognition of 72; Schutz’s exegesis of understanding 72; second-person explanation 74 analytic bracketing, process of 155n11 an-ontological-answerable-to-epistemology in mind, thesis of 78 answer-aire 15, 105, 108–110, 116, 120–121, 140 answer-space 110, 121

anthropology 1–7, 10–13, 15, 28, 31, 45, 58, 72, 78, 81, 83, 91, 103, 126, 170, 173, 175 appresentation, notion of 15, 65, 91–93, 95, 97, 99, 122n5, 158 assemblage of haecceities 101 author-evacuated texts 31 author-saturated texts 31 background, concept of 104–105 back-to-the-intersubjectivity 73 Bakhtinian heteroglossia 29 Benjamin, W. 33 Bhaskar, R. 1, 68, 70, 79; assertion of “epistemic fallacy” 75–76; intransitive objects 71 biopower, concept of 157 black communities: everyday life and social exchanges in 129; support networks of black elders 129; womencentered support networks for child care 129 black-hole 76, 78 Bloch, M.E.F. 31, 45, 104 Boas, F. 64n1 Borofsky, R. 83–85 Bourdieu, P. 24, 38, 43n22, 69–70, 105, 137; alliance with Schutz 39; experimental ethnographies 25; Logic of Practice, The 25; participant objectivation, concept of 59–60; practice, theory of 144–145; reflexive sociology 37 Brave New Families 128 breaching experiments, purpose of 106–108, 121 Bryman, A. 6, 17n13

Index   199 “carrot-and-stick” metaphor 165–166, 168n14 Cartesian Meditations (1988) 95, 122n8 child care, women-centered support networks for 129 Clifford, J. 50, 52 cognitive operation of man 75–76 commonsense 18n22, 36, 38, 46, 98, 134–135, 137, 142, 146–147, 149–150, 157, 161; actions “from within” 100; relation with scientific assertions 25–26, 147 communication breakdown 82 community of inquiry 62–64, 71, 140; characteristic of 82; goal of 66n13; notion of 70, 81; roles of 80 conduct of conduct, notion of 161 confidentiality, ethics of 16n7, 115 consensual knowledge, growth of 80, 83, 84–85 consociates: moment of 166–167; relation with governmentality 162–163; world of 157–163 Constructing Social Problems 103 contemporaries, world of 163–165 Cook, Captain 10, 15, 18n23, 83–85 correspondence with reality 79 Costelloe, T.M. 28, 147, 149 crisis of representation 23–25; epistemological break 26–28, 33, 36; Fardon view of 33; solutions to survive 28–36 “cultural map” difference, between native and ethnographer 36 data interpretation 170–171 data loss 55 data reduction 54, 55 data regression 55 decentered ethnography 29 deduction, rule of 57 Denzin, N. 5, 16n8, 23 diagnostic ethnography 49 discourse-in-practice 127, 131, 135, 153 discursive accomplishments: epistemological limits of 139; idea of 130, 133 discursive practice, idea of 126–127, 152–153, 172 discursive reasoning: idea of 105; schematic representation of the relationships with non-discursive takenfor-grantedness 114 distance, relativism of 65n10

division of labor 64, 66n14, 79 Division of Labour in Society, The 100 duality of structure, notion of 144 ego-alter ego, notion of 94 ego, notion of 95 empirical investigation 15, 69, 71–72, 76, 78, 86, 91, 136, 142, 157 Emirbayer, M. 19n34, 157, 163, 164 engaging realism 73, 78, 83, 86; Bhaskar’s definition of 63; and critical realism 79; ethnographic knowledge based on 79; main theses of 67; notion of 44, 62–64 epistemic continuum, from actor to observer 30, 31 epistemic fallacy 7, 17n16, 75–76 epistemic realms 66n14 epistemic relativism 62, 67, 71, 82; forms of 61, 82; principle of 79; validated by judgmental rationality 78–80; yardstick reality 79–80 epistemological break: caveats regarding nature of 36–37; crisis of representation 26–28, 33, 36; formation of two opposing camps 37–39; notion of 26–28, 32–33; Schutz’s theory of 25, 26–28, 33, 36, 38 epistemological continuum 68, 134, 137 epistemological dichotomies 44 epistemological distanciation 3, 5, 10, 28, 39, 135 epistemological hypochondria 1 epistemological risks 59–60; of foreclosure of meaning 62 epistemological silence 14, 20n35, 104 Erfahrung, view of 12, 121, 121n1 Erlebnis, concept of 12, 19n33, 28, 91, 121n1 ethnographic analysis 55–62; issue of causality in 66n11; key elements of 61 ethnographic authority 40, 169, 173; “writing culture” critique of 45 ethnographic data 7–10, 45–55; coeval and co-contextual production of 82; components of 52; definition of 54; of fieldnotes 51; formation of 52, 65n7; meaning-making process 53; native point of view 52; nature of 56–57, 63; objectivity of 63; process of analyzing 57; Schutz’s formulation of 46; specificity of 66n12; theorized accounts of 82; types of information 45; witness-cum-recording of human events 47

200   Index ethnographic inquiries 63, 103, 175; abduction rule 57; community of 62, 71, 80–82, 140; conceptual method of 57; deduction rule 57; experience– power interface in 165; foreclosure of meaning 59; induction case 57; key features of 54; maximal interpretation, notion of 56; into non-discursive 106–108; patterns of motives and actions 56; process of 54; sign-object inferences 60; strong relativism 60; theory–data fit 56–61; theory-fact pairs 56, 62; weak relativism 60, 61 ethnographic knowledge 173; accumulation for scientific reasoning 67; based on engaging realism 79; constitution of 78; growth of 83; natural-scientific epistemologies and 37; production process of 37; truthfulness of 74; universal truth value 86–87 ethnographic objectivity 141 ethnographic reflection, idea of 49 ethnographic representation 25, 29 ethnographic truth, nature of 71 ethnography: as actor–observer epistemic continuum 30–33; as dialogic and multi-vocal 29; engaging realism through 10–12; features of 6; lived experience as 12–14; as multi-sited endeavor 34–36; as a text 6–7; as work of translation or strategic positivism 33–34 Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working out Durkheim’s Aphorism 100 Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 55 everyday life: governmentality and 160; non-discursivity of 103–105; notion of 13–14; pre-determinacy of 159; process of typification 50; Schutz’s portrayal of 14, 156; and social exchanges in black communities 129; in social science 103–105; taken-forgrantedness of 107 “experience-distant” concepts 30, 31 “experience-near” concepts 30, 31, 42n18 experience–power interface 15, 156–167; “carrot-and-stick” metaphor 166–167, 168n14; concept of 156, 165–167; consociates of 157–163; contemporaries of 163–165; donkey’s 166–167; ethnographic contexts of 157; in ethnographic inquiries 165; modes of experience, power relation, and agency 165

experiencing-of-other, idea of 36 experimental ethnographies 5, 24, 25 extramarital affairs 106, 108, 110, 114, 117, 119–120 Fabian, J. 28, 40, 176n1; criticism of treating people as objects 38 family, as a topic of radical constructionism 127–130 family experience 137; constructionist approach to 128; discursive construction of 136; empirical utility in understanding 138; Gubrium–Holstein approach to understand 15, 125, 136; individualistic view of 129; in postmodern era 128; relation to everyday life 130 family-like small groups, formation of 129 Fardon, R.: metaphor of “translation” 34; on representational crisis 33; on Schutz’s epistemological break 33; “translation” of sociality 33 female-interviewer-interviews-wives, principle of 114 fictive kin relationship 136, 138; formation and social function of 128, 129 fieldnotes: contents and meaning of 51; ethnographic data 51, 54; logical inferences behind the actor–researcher interaction leading to 52; process of producing 50; textualizing of the information as 50 folklore 45, 72 foreclosure of meaning 59, 62 fore-conceptions, concept of 171 fore-structures, concept of 171 Foucault, M. 70; governmentality, concept of 13, 160; power relations, theory of 156; regime of truth 160 Gadamer, G. 6, 12, 17n10, 46, 58, 91, 110, 151; prejudice, concept of 171 Garfinkel, H. 134; ethnomethodology 99–103; immortality, concept of 101; phenomenal field 100; on Schutz’s social phenomenology 99; social order, theory of 99–103; studies of inverted lenses 139 Geertz, C. 1, 3, 5, 16n4, 19n29, 30–31, 38, 45; distinction between “writers” and “authors” 11; Works and Lives 169 Gellner, E. 31–33, 38 Giddens, A. 144; duality of structure, notion of 144

Index   201 governmentality, concept of 13, 157, 160, 162 Goffman, E. 2, 142, 144, 153, 154n8 Grand Theory 38, 144–146 Gubrium-Holstein model 125, 127, 130–132; empirical utility of 153; grounds to yield 141–143; points to defend 143–149; theoretical validity of 153 Gubrium, J.F. 15, 104, 125–127, 129–138, 141–146, 149–153 Gunn, S. 157 Gurwitsch, A. 92, 99, 122n4, 168n12 habitus, concept of 69, 105, 123n14, 137, 151, 161 Hacking, I. 65n10 Hammersley, M. 2, 172 Hawaiian history, Western studies of 85 Harrington, A. 3, 10, 12, 18n25, 18n26, 18n27, 46, 121n1 Heidegger, M. 17n15, 17n19, 171 hermeneutics, theories of 1–3, 6–7, 37, 46 Herzfeld, M. 31, 39, 64n2, 66n12, 172 heteroglossia 5, 29, 42n15 Holstein, J.A. 104, 127, 129–138, 141–146, 149–153 human experience 28, 47, 91, 96; Husserl’s lifeworld and 93; nondiscursive stratum of 103; scientific interpretation of 25; structure of relevance 108 human otherness, notion of 54 Husserl, E.: Cartesian Meditations 95; lifeworld, theory of 93–94; notion of appresentation 95 immortal, concept of 100–102 impersonal domination 14, 16, 162, 168n10 impersonal domination, notion of 14, 16, 162, 168n10 incommensurability, thesis of 82, 88n7 “indigenous” people 174 induction, rule of 57, 61, 63, 65n8, 76 inductive inference 57 inmate families 129 “in-order-to” versus “because” motives 92 intraspousal interference 114 Jackson, M. 45 James, William 55 judgmental relativism, doctrine of 79–80

knowledge: ethnographic see ethnographic knowledge; non-linguistic 104; politicization of 175; production of 71; scientific see scientific knowledge; sociology of 159; theory of 71 Kuhnian sense 67, 81, 86 Kuhn, T. 81; apprehension of “communication breakdown” 82; concept of scientific community 82; incommensurability thesis 82; Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The 81–82 labor strike in China, ethnographic study of 81–82 Laclau, E. 126–127, 143–144 learning, concept of 107 Lebenswelt discourse 103 lifeworld experience 13, 105, 159; answeraire of 108–110, 111–114; Husserl’s theory of 93–94; intersubjectivity of 93; methods to describe the unsaid 108–110; non-discursivity of 107, 110; participants in study of 110–114; procedures for study of 114–115; Schutz’s theory of 91–92; sex-related matters 110; surface interview 108–110 linguistic fallacy 7, 17n16 lived experience 91, 156; concept of 12; as ethnographic object 12–14; phenomena of 73; taken-for-grantedness of 108 living present, experience of 92 Logic of Practice, The 25 low-income communities 129, 150 Lui, P.K. 154n5 Lukes, S. 161–162 Maanen, V. 16n6, 17n14, 17n19, 29n35, 80 Mische, A. 19n34, 157, 163, 164 male-interviewer-interviews-husbands, principle of 114 Malinowski, B. 1, 4, 7–8, 31–33, 64n1 Manen, M. 4, 14, 28, 37, 42n12, 73, 104, 106 Marcus, G. 34–35, 27, 38, 41n3, 43n20 Martin, J.L. 56, 66n12, 73–74, 87n3 Marxist materialism 60–61 maximal interpretation, notion of 56 meaning-making, process of 48–51, 53, 65n5, 87n6 mental structures 137, 139 moment of consociates 166 moment of inscription 50 Mosse, D. 4, 31, 37, 43n19, 174

202   Index multi-sited ethnography 5, 34–36, 39 multi-vocal ethnography 29 Musgrave, A.E. 82, 88n11 naïve ethnography 14, 25, 40 natural-scientific epistemologies 37 necessarily anti-social 4 nomos 137–138, 151 non-realist writing 40 Obeyesekere, G. 15, 59, 83–85, 175 objectivity of social order 101 object-sign-interpretant nexus 78 Olivier de Sardan, J-P. 5, 16n7, 18n21, 38, 175 ontological break 41n6, 73, 142, 146 ontological causality 77 ontological hypotheses 79 ontological myth, of social world 78, 173–174 ontological realism 14, 67, 75–78; epistemic fallacy 75–76 ontological tension 75 paradigms, concept of 34, 37, 61–62, 67, 81–83, 85–86, 173 Parsonsian functionalism 99 Parsons, T. 25, 26, 32, 38, 146, 150; debate with Alfred Schutz 25–26 participant objectivation, concept of 18n22, 39, 59–60 Peirce, C. 8–9, 48–50, 56, 62, 65n4, 87n5; community of inquiry 62 Perinbanayagam, R.S. 72, 156 perspective reciprocity, idea of 26, 95–96 phenomenography 107–109 phenomenological investigation 108 Phenomenology of Social World, The 91, 94 Piercy, C. 129 plausibility, concept of 62, 64, 66, 74, 79, 83, 86, 141 play families 129 “play” relatives, idea of 129 plural authority, utopia of 29 “polyphonic” novel, Bakhtin’s analysis of 29, 42n15 Popper, K. 81 post-modernist ethnographies 29 postmodernist ethnography 24, 43n21 potentialities-turned-historical reality 69 power inequalities 174 power–knowledge nexus 157, 162 power practices, natural consequence of 164

power relations, theory of 23, 35, 70, 156–157, 160–161, 164, 166, 168n8 practical rationality, concept of 84 prejudice, concept of 171 prison families 129 production of phenomena in nature 70–71, 76 pseudo-kinship 129 psychologism, quagmires of 72 quality of life 60–61 quasi-familial arrangements 129 radical constructionism 127, 138, 156; family as a topic of 127–130; GubriumHolstein model 138; idea of 126; problem of 138 raison d’etre 60, 63, 71 rational persuasion, notion of 79, 83 Rawls, A.W. 100, 102, 134 realism: engaging see engaging realism; epistemological aspects of 68–72; ontological 67, 75–78; theory of knowledge 71 reality-making constructions 142 realness, notion of 95 real, notion of 42n10 Reed, I. 57, 61, 68–69 re-enactment, process of 55 reflective writing 73 reflexive sociology 37 regime of truth, concept of 160 relevance, notion of 16, 45, 66n13, 70, 83, 102, 108, 120–121, 153, 159–161 resistance, concept of 53, 57, 60, 74, 77–78, 86, 153, 156, 163–164 resistive-DNA, genesis of 77 Ricoeur, P. 4, 6, 12, 17n11, 49, 80, 170, 174 Rorty, R. 67, 78 Royaumont conference (1957) 94 Rules of Sociological Method, The 144 Sahlins, M. 15, 83–85, 175 Sahlins-Obeyesekere debate 83–84, 88n13, 175 Schutz, A.: alliance with Bourdieu 39; appropriation of Husserl’s notions of appresentation 95; debate with Talcott Parsons 25–26; on difference between “in-order-to” and “because” motives 92; on distinction between experiential and the scientific realms 28; on epistemological break 25, 26–28, 33,

Index   203 36, 38, 40; everyday life, theory of 156; exegesis of understanding the other 72; formulation of social science data 46; lifeworld experience, theory of 13, 91–92, 95–99; “On Multiple Realities” paper (1945) 92; overlapping, meaning of 148; Phenomenology of Social World, The 91, 94; process of sedimentation of stock of knowledge 123n14; realness, notion of 95; on relation between commonsense and scientific assertions 25–26; social phenomenology 122n6; stock of knowledge 50, 160; structure of relevance 160; Structures of the Lifeworld: Volume One, The 92; thematic kernel 105; Theory of Intersubjectivity and the General Thesis of the Alter Ego (1942) 94; Thou-orientation 95; vantage point 91–93; views on social science 28; on Weber’s concept of social action 91–92; world of predecessors 41n9; world of successors 41n9 Schutz–Parsons debate 26, 147 scientific community 1, 3, 10–11, 15, 61–62, 67, 70–71, 74, 78–82, 84, 139–140, 169, 173, 175; concept of 81–82, 169, 173; successors of 86 scientific continuum 68–69 scientific knowledge 67; development of 69; growth of 80–86; production of 70 scientific reasoning 4, 9, 15–16, 44, 67, 71, 80, 83, 87, 170, 175 Searle, J. 67, 104–105 selective relativism, idea of 103 “self-disciplining” of agents 157 self-governance 165 selfless giving, value of 120 self-reflexivity 173 self-regulation: concept of 157; power of 161 sharedness, characteristic of 82 signed enterprises 102, 133 sign-object inferences 60 social action, Weber’s theory of 27, 91–92 social discourse, flow of 30, 50 socially instituted potentialities 69, 71 social movements 86, 173 social order 99; formation and maintenance of 138; Garfinkel’s theory of 99–103; phenomenal field of 101–102; procedures of producing 102 social science 28, 70; concept of 46; everyday life in 103–105 social scientific constructs 46

social scientific gaze, nature of 38 social scientists 25, 27–28, 37–38, 45–46, 64, 67, 69, 73–74, 94, 97–98, 126, 135, 140, 147, 148 society, power structure of 153 Sociological Quarterly 15, 138 sovereignty-discipline-governmentality triangle 164 Spivak, G.C. 38; “strategic essentialism” metaphor 34; “subaltern cannot speak” paradigm 34 spousal-sexual world: answer-aire 108–110, 111–114; Chinese cultural values of 117; data analysis of 115–117; empirical structures of 105–106; ethics of confidentiality 115; femaleinterviewer-interviews-wives 114; ideology for sex and love 120; intraspousal interference 114; maleinterviewer-interviews-husbands 114; marriage and spousal relationship 120; methods to describe the unsaid 108–110; participants in study of 110; past empirical inquiries into the nondiscursive 106–108; procedures for study of 114–115; relationship-centered view of 121; results of analysis of 117–121; selected profiles of the respondents 115; self-centered view of 121; spousal sexuality, notion of 110; statements in dialogue 115–116; surface interview 108–110; unclassified theme of 116; unclear theme of 116; Western ideologies of 117 statements in dialogue: with local debates 115, 116; with the self 115–116; with the text 115 stock of knowledge, concept of 50, 97–98, 108–109, 133, 158–160, 166 Stoller, P. 54 stranger, concept of 163, 168n11 strategic essentialism, metaphor of 34 Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The 81–82 Structure of Social Action, The 26 Stubbs, M. 54 Studies in Ethnomethodology 100 “subaltern cannot speak” paradigm 34 surface interview 15, 105, 108–110, 115, 121, 140 tabula rasa 86 Tavory, I. 53, 58, 60–63, 65n5, 66n11, 66n14, 70, 74, 87n5

204   Index technologies of the self 161, 162, 167 text: author-evacuated 31; notion of 24 thematic kernel, idea of 105 theoretical minimalism 145, 146 theory–data fitting (abduction) 56–62, 80; issue of causality in 66n11; process of 64, 77 theory–data pairs 74, 79–80, 83, 173; plausibility of 81; though the witchcraft 82; validity of 174 theory-fact pairs 56, 62 thinking hearing, idea of 105 Thomas, N. 7–8, 31 Thomas, W.I. 42n10, 81, 95, 175 Thou-orientation, notion of 95 Throop, C.J. 28, 55 Timmermans, S. 53, 58, 60–63, 65n5, 66n11, 66n14, 70, 74, 87n5 transcendence, of social order 101, 125, 156, 159, 162 transience, notion of 101, 102 translation, metaphor of 34 Turner, V. 12, 19n31, 28 typification, process of 50, 98, 158–160, 163 unclassified theme, idea of 116–117

unclear theme, idea of 116–117 understanding of being 171 universal truth value 86–87 utterances, people’s understanding of 32, 45, 49, 105, 109, 115–116 validation, process of 9, 11, 15, 62, 79–81, 173–175 verbal reasoning, practical-evaluative 105 vocational ethic 30 “voice” of the subaltern 34 voice recovery, practices of 34 Watson, G. 9, 58–59 Weber, M. 64; concept of social action 27, 91–92 Weinberg, D. 15, 138–143, 146–151, 153, 154n10 Wieder, D.L. 59; criticism of ethnomethodological studies 59 Williams, B. 65n10 witchcraft magic 60, 81–82 women-centered support networks, for child care 129 writing, aspects of 169–170 Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography 23–24, 68