AO: Cerwonka and Malkki use collaboration (in analysis and write-up) as a way to make explicit assumptions (about method, interpretation, etc.) and as a way to “tack” between theory and empirical social facts (15). Their analysis focuses on the nano level and less on the techno or eco levels.
AO: Cerwonka emphasizes the value of having her assumptions documented out (in email correspondences) in part for her to be able to go back over them and analyze them (her past self?). However, their “collaboration” is more of the getting of advice from her mentor (and her perhaps the writing of the book which they do not discuss as much). Underlying Cerwonka’s introductory text is still the lone fieldworker who is working out the process of ethnography and checking in every once in a while to her mentor (not too different from Malinowski writing letters to his partner?). The two use this book to reflect on methodology and process. Malkki looks at some of the meso and macro level questions - noting that “institutional and micropolitical hierarchies were there” (165). However, they do not actually reflect extensively on what it means to “collaborate” although I would argue theirs is a collaboration, albeit a light one.
