Download Symposium: Ethnography of everyday life

Symposium: Ethnography of everyday life
When: 2 July 2015, 9.30 – 14.30
Where: Muziekzaal, CREA, Nieuwe Achtergracht 170, 1018 WV Amsterdam
We anthropologists often claim that we examine and discuss what is taken for granted, but is
that true? Often, we rather seem to focus our attention on very dramatic and distressing issues
– and understandably so, because we want to be relevant to contemporary society. But this
shift towards grim actuality – which begins already in teaching and in the topics that students
choose for their master theses such as child soldiers, war trauma, prostitution, drug use,
HIV/AIDS, prisoners and domestic violence – leads us away from the original source of
anthropological inspiration. Does ordinary life not deserve more attention: sadness or
contentment, frustration or joy about little things? Anthropology’s primary fascination lies
with ‘culture’, our second nature, things that we normally do not think about. In the past,
when we only went to study in exotic places, everyday life was exciting; but since we
increasingly practise ethnography at home, everyday issues seem to have lost their charm.
This is the reason why during the last few years, I have returned to more ordinary phenomena
such as growing old, greeting one another, respect, sleeping and defecation, essential human
experiences and needs that remain unnoticed as long as they go well, but cause consternation
and confusion when they become ‘defective’.
A second reason for making the mundane a subject of research is that such a choice will bring
us closer to philosophical anthropology, a sister discipline with which we have much in
common but little contact. Long before us, phenomenologists such as Heidegger and MerleauPonty reflected on the body as a subject and as source of our thoughts and actions. Heidegger
writes that our knowledge imperceptibly arises from our familiarity with the world, our being
in the world. I believe that the (cultural) anthropologist can inform us even better about that
familiarity with the world than the philosopher. So, why don’t we do it?
A third reason for a symposium on everyday ethnography is that it also aims to be a plea for
understandable writing. We run the risk, both within and outside academia, of becoming an
isolated community because of our sometimes hermetic, incomprehensible and tedious jargon.
Of course, what is nearest may be more difficult to describe and explain than what is further
away, but that very complexity of primary experiences calls for clearer language, as Max
Weber pointed out (quoted by my teacher André Köbben): “Scharfe Scheidung ist in der
Realität oft nicht möglich, klare Begriffe sind aber dann deshalb um so nötiger” [Sharp
distinction is in reality often not possible; clear concepts are therefore all the more necessary].
We do not render a service to our readers by alienating our ‘common good’ and hiding
ordinary experience behind extra-ordinary language.
Through this symposium – on the occasion of my farewell to the university – I would like to
invite students and colleagues and others to discuss together everyday life as the subject of
ethnography. There will be eight brief presentations by invited speakers (Anna Aalten, Anita
Hardon, André Köbben, Robert Pool, Ria Reis, Janneke Verheijen, Susan Whyte, and
Shahaduz Zaman) and ample opportunity for discussion with the audience. After that, I will
give my farewell lecture, entitled Hoe bestaat het!? Etnografie als magisch realisme en de
ontdekking van het alledaagse (How can it be!? Ethnography as magical realism and the
discovery of the ordinary). Although my chair was Medical Anthropology, I prefer to speak
about Cultural Anthropology in general. Why this is, I hope to make clear during my lecture.
Sjaak van der Geest