Download Embedded and Activated Ambiguities: Methodological and

Embedded and Activated Ambiguities:
Methodological and Ethnographic Approaches to Doubts and Ideas
Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
June 14th 2012
Key words: Ideology, politics, convictions, ambiguity, doubt, uncertainty, fragility.
This one day seminar proposes to explore the relationship between ideologies and ambiguities. More
precisely we invite reflections on how sets of ideas defining cultural and social truths embed and produce
doubts and ambiguities.
We wish, as such, to look at ideological formations and the central role they play in the process of exclusion
and inclusion in our globalizing world, with an eye to both the fixity, and absolute truths, conveyed by their
rhetorical form, as well as to the ambiguity and uncertainty which they produce. Precisely because of the
ambiguous aspects of e.g. populisms, nationalisms and fundamentalisms, it is essential not to take their
power for granted but to examine how convictions and ideologies have fragile and incoherent dimensions
and how they activate doubts which both make and unmake the effectiveness of these ideas (Pelkmans,
2011 in Press).
Convictions such as those mentioned above, are often easily followed and registered as they are usually
performed and articulated in conspicuous ways. However, the ambiguities and doubts that are part and
parcel of these ideas have a tendency to slip away when trying to grasp them analytically. This creates
methodological as well as ethnographic challenges for the anthropological study of changing and
transforming societies and institutions. But it equally challenges the study of seemingly ‘stable’ societies
and institutions and their reproduction and change over time.
We invite ethnographic cases which in one way or the other reflect on ideas and ideological actions, and
how they may contribute to the production, activation - or circumvention - of doubts and ambiguity.
Drawing on these lines, we hope to spark an anthropological discussion about relationships between power
and subversive practices, and to ethnographically explore how and to ethnographically explore how doubts,
fragility, uncertainty, and disorder are not simply expressions of inconsistency or contradiction but part and
parcel of the production and reproduction of ideas and social convictions.
The course will have a maximum of 6 participants and consist of a lecture and feedback on papers by guest
senior lecturer, Dr. Mathijs Pelkmans from London School of Economics and Political Sciences. The local
resource person for the course will be Dr. Henrik Vigh contributing to the discussion of participants’ papers.
A written paper on 5-10 pages will be required for all participants.
Lecturers:

Mathijs Pelkmans, Senior Lecturer, London School of Economics
Mathijs Pelkmans has conducted field research in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan and has worked on the
anthropology of borders, social and cultural boundaries, and the religious dimension of postsocialist change. He is the editor of a forthcoming volume titled “Ethnographies of Doubt: Faith and
Uncertainty in Contemporary Societies”

Henrik Vigh, Associate Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
Henrik Vigh has conducted field research in Europe and West-Africa and has worked on political
anthropology, peace and conflict, crisis and chronicity, social becoming, mobility and mobilization.
Organizers:


Tamta Khalvashi, PhD Fellow, Dept. Of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen,
[email protected]
Katrine Gotfredsen, PhD Fellow, Dept. Of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen,
[email protected]
Deadline for Registration: April 16th 2012
ECTS: 2,5