From land to sea: unsettling subjectivities
Journal Title: Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology - Year 2013, Vol 4, Issue 1
Abstract
In this paper I trace an important conceptual shift which emerged during my fieldwork with fishermen in the South West of Ireland. I begin by describing how my role as a social researcher was interpreted as a valuable 'bridge' between different (epistemological) positions, namely the fishermen and scientists. This approach rests on the belief that individual actors occupy discrete subject-positions capable of being articulated and understood within consensus-making processes. Going to sea marked, for me, a literal and metaphorical departure from this understanding. Rather than thinking of fishermen as bounded, individual subjects acting on and in a 'dumb' external world, and thus having a 'position' from which to make themselves understood, I began to attend to experiences which extended across and between people, places and things. In part two I analyze how the concept of 'continuous experience' helps us to think about experience as relational and contingent, unsettling the (governing) call to identify one's position. Attending to the ways in which experience unfolds through the immediate mattering of relations between people, places and things also allows us to move beyond explanatory modes which seek to identify how subjects are produced through particular structuring relations. In the final part of the paper I describe how the excess of sociability can suspend normal roles and relations, including those which exist between 'researcher' and 'subject'.
Authors and Affiliations
Patrick Bresnihan
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP40974
- DOI -
- Views 229
- Downloads 0
The impending collapse of the European urban middle class: the European Union's de-naturing of space and place
The authors argue that the various middle classes of Europe, especially Western Europe, are being fragilised as a result of globalization, certain political tendencies and especially by the standardization of space and...
Fat, fire and fluids: a research note on the objects in the everyday life of a beauty salon
This research note brings together two “lost and found” items in social theory: “the body” and the “the object”. The goal is to explain how body objectification is being produced in the hybrid social space of a beauty...
Success IS a choice! Explaining success in Academic Preparation Programs in Israel
Operating within universities and colleges, Academic Preparation Programs in Israel (APPs) allow students in their twenties a second chance to pass their matriculation examinations, a requirement for acceptance by acad...
Cryonics suspension - debating life finitude, extending time capital and cancelling death
The study discusses the anti-death movement inside the life extension paradigm and its social implications in terms of enhanced permeability of life-death boundaries, by reconciling mysticism, theology, technology and...
Processing of personal and medical data by judicial institutions in the context of the enforcement of Regulation EU 2016/679 - General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The protection of patients' personal and medical data has always been an important subject for medical practice, with explicit regulations being implemented. Whether we are talking about civil and criminal codes or law...