Anthropology of Truths Project

Collective Projects

Part I : Common Knowledge

I would like by email a commentary suitable for showing the world, what you know about the one that you choose, as well as info on one or two other people (friends, teachers, doctors, family, someone on the street). Ask them and yourself, what do you know about these? Where do you know it from? What don't you know? And where might you find out?

Part II : Sources of Truths

Pick four sites or sources of information about your topic.

Each one can itself be multiple depending on its depth:

e.g.: a web site (not just one page); a set of medical encyclopedias; one long investigative news TV show (or a set of short segments); a set of newspaper articles (located through NEXIS); one or a set of medical journal articles (located through MEDLINE); interviews (one or more)

Only two can be web sites.

For each site/source:

1. Sources for it: Where is the information? Who has access to it? How easy is the access (who doesn’t have access to it)? Who writes about it? What can/could you find out about these questions, and how?

2. Actors: What kinds of actors are narrated in this site/source?

Are people described individually, or in groups? What kinds of groups? Scale of groups: communities or nations, activists or social movements, whole companies or managers at companies, government or executive branch or president’s men. Are these groups pre-existing, grouped by the narrative, made by external forces (GWS); do they have spokespeople or representatives? What are the limits of these groupings?

Fictive persons: Are corporations, institutions, governments, non-profits given agency? How, at what scale, why not specific persons or groups of persons?

Non-humans: What agency is attributed to laws, patents, accounts, studies, things, animals, commodities, money, and so on? What about culture, traditions, ethnicity, gender, race, age, religion, etc.?

3. Evaluate the site/source: What is being said? What isn’t being said? How is it narrated? Whom is it narrated to (someone who is presumed not to know anything, someone who doesn’t care about certain things but does care about others)? Which actors are key actors? Which actors aren’t included? What kind of story is being told? Is it a romance, comedy, tragedy, irony, conspiracy?

In your opinion, what are the strengths and weaknesses of this source? Do you believe it? Do you not believe it? How do you situate it? Would you see it differently if you had a different kind of involvement with your topic (if you had ADD for instance)?

Part III : Cultures of Truth

"The purpose of models or norms is not to explain the world but to perpetuate it." -Levi-Strauss

Since facts do not just appear in the world, but instead are produced in particular places as narratives and then often travel, changing along the way, it is important to reflect on how things that we "know" via narratives are circulated and reproduced. This final part of the Anthropology of Truths project asks you to evaluate the culture of facts and truths as documented by yourself and your peers.

1. First a quick evaluation of the sources you have available: is this a representative sample? Who has managed to get their narratives and facts heard? Why? Is there enough to make a judgment on what your object is? What other sources do you imagine are out there?

2. Gaps and differences, using the sources that you do have: Where are there huge differences between different sources? Can you characterize them (complementary, antagonistic, expert/lay, state/corporate and so on)? How do you explain the differences? Are these differences necessary? Might they be changed (can you imagine consensus, either ideally or actually)?

Use the readings to highlight these issues: Some articles, for instance, locate differences as based in interests (of governments, institutions, companies, activist groups). Others locate differences as based on positions in the world (hierarchical, cultural, gendered). Others posit differences as the result of incomplete information, misinformation, and ignorance. Use some readings to speculate on what might be going on. Feel free to offer more than one explanation, even contradictory ones.

Is there information that does not seem to be available? Why not? Use some readings to speculate on why this might be so. Why hasn’t something been studied? Why aren’t some facts readily available?

3. Thinking about the sources you have in terms of cultural reproduction (the Levi-Strauss quote above), imagine how they are functioning to perpetuate the world, and especially the status of your topic.

Does the situation appear to be stable or is it changing? Are the actors involved well-defined or still under construction? Are groups being maintained via the accounts or are they being constituted? Do you notice things that might be changing the relationships among the various groups and actors? Is credibility relatively stable, even if oppositional? Or are there shifts in alliances among groups and actors going on? Are there clear stakes for each group involved? If it all appears stable, what could you imagine that would destabilize it? What would it take for such a thing to happen?

What other things are being perpetuated as "side-effects" of these sources? Is expertise being undermined or reinforced? Which experts? What about larger cultural formations such as "the state", "government", "science", "medicine", "big business", "religion", "feminism", "popular opinion": are these at issue? Are they changing? Are they being differently related to each other?

Are there specific "cultures" involved? How and how are they being changed? Think of the various readings in Conceiving the New World Order.

For these issues, use a few examples from the readings to illustrate what might be happening. Given that we have limited information at our disposal, feel free to speculate on what you don’t have.

4. Finally, briefly, situate yourself in the field: where are you, with your readings and your positions? Do you have an opinion on the truth or falsity of aspects of your topic? Do you want to see more information? Are you waiting for more info to be generated? Remember that each of these positions, as well as the cynical "One can’t know the truth," are positions held by various groups.

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