AO: Arguing against, “big science” model, Tsing notes that since good fieldwork is supposed to change the fieldworker’s research questions, standardized questions, goals, and methods block this kind of ethnographic learning, in which goals and methods change in the research process. Therefore, such an approach loses the point of ethnographic analysis (381).
AO: The editors believe that the task of academia is to question the silences that technoscientific politics engender - to parse the values, interests and purposes that so often remain hiddne when objectivity is the criterion of legitimacy.
AO: Editors believe that foregrounding assumptions, frameworks, and terms of reference is important so that readerscan participate in the multiple registers of questioning that are important for strategizing “counter-expertise.
AO: Reflexive critique denatures the counter-experts own descriptions and supports the development of modes of expression through which claims to validity can be made without dependence on the prerogatives of “objectivity.”
Gorman advocates sustained interaction between actors with diverse expertise can lead to a greater capacity to establish a common understanding of a goal.
Bouka is calling for scholars to broaden their understanding of what counts as an “analytical” contribution in the research process. She is also calling scholars to be more fastidious in recognizing these contributions coming from scholars living and working in the “global south.” Secondly, we should be more vocal about instances of appropriation and theft of other’s intellectual labor/contributions. And, as Mark Kramer points out, this critique could be extended to research relations between established scholars and junior scholars/students in the “West” and elsewhere.
AO: Strategically engaging the “double binds” within which we operate. The analysts note that “double bind situations create a persistent mismatch between explanation and everyday life, throwing the ethical agent into modes of subjectivity marked by sensibilities of constraint rather than freedom. Constraint can be engaged strategically, working within, rather than in denial of contradictions.” (151)
AO: The analysts argue that understanding how double-binds emerge, frustrate and at times dramatically transform relationships can move our understanding and communication to new levels. (152) These can lead to a desire for explanation and solution and avoid grand theorization.
AO: Analysts argue that “formation of new social alliances, often across divides that once seemed rigid, is as important, and tricky, as formation of new modes of representation” (156).
“In analyzing our case study, we see two major factors contributing to the success of the museum: methods standardization and the development of boundary objects. … His [Grinnell’s] elaborate collection and curation guidelines established a management system in which diverse allies could participate concurrently in the heterogeneous work of building a research museum. … There was an intimate connection between the management of scientific work as exemplified by these precise standards of collection, duration and description, and the content of the scientific claims made by Grinnell and others at the museum.” (Star and Griesemer 1989, 392-393).
“The second important concept used to explain how museum workers managed both diversity and cooperation is that of boundary objects. This is an analytic concept of those scientific objects which both inhabit several intersecting social worlds (see the list of examples in the previous section) and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them. 15 Boundary objects are objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites. They are weakly structured in common use, and become strongly structured in individual-site use. These objects may be abstract or concrete. They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation. The creation and management of boundary objects is a key process in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting social worlds” (Star and Griesemer 1989, 393).
AO: “Many psychologists in this subfield are now realizing that in order for their theories to have an impact outside psychology, in areas such as economics, law, and politics, they need to come up with theories that are actually robust and feasible in the field. (Because one of the problems economists often have with psychological theorizing is that it remains too vague and situation specific.) This remains a great challenge for psychologists.” (389)
AO: shared language. “This not only results in cross-fertilization and cooperation between the two groups, it also leads to the emergence of a common language. We consider this latter development to be a crucial one, since in order to be able to share a perspective, one needs to share a language (and the ideas that are attached to it).” (390)
AO: organization of meetings. “organization of meetings specifically aiming at participation by research- ers from both economics and psychology” (390)
AO: Participation as users. “Our engagement with CTVC is allowing us to discover “local protocols” of collaboration and discussion. After joining these channels, we can adapt them to conduct PD activities with community members.”
AO: Making explicit those things that “go without saying.” (page 3). This is an example of how/why cross-disciplinary collaborations can be productive because they help to make the underlying known things explicit.
AO: Document and write down throughout the process of collaboration. “a central contribution of the e-mail correspondence is that it provides insight into what interdisciplinary research might look like as a “sensibility” or “disposition,” to borrow from Bourdieu. The correspondence helps explicate, then, how interdisciplinary scholars might use ethnography in a way that diverges from the way that anthropologists work, but that nevertheless pro- duces defensible and worthwhile scholarship. In fact, the utilization of ethno- graphic methods by non-anthropologists can enrich what ethnography might be, even allowing for new forms of research.” (13)