In the Workshop: Anthropology in a Collaborative Zone of Inquiry

This book chapter by Trine Korsby, Anthony Stavrianakis and Paul Rabinow is entitled 'In the Workshop: Anthropology in a Collaborative Zone of Inquiry’. It is part of a new book on the creative process of writing anthropological texts, entitled ‘The Composition of Anthropology. How Anthropological Texts are Written’, edited by Morten Nielsen and Nigel Rapport.

The chapter is an exercise in collaborative thinking and writing. The exercise begins with Max Weber’s judgement that ‘zones of inquiry’ are formed through the conceptual interconnection of ‘problems’. The authors take up this objective relative to a series of ‘objects of inquiry’: they narrate the manner in which a zone of inquiry, focused on problems, stemming from inquiry, might be forged collaboratively. 

The chapter is written in three broad movements: First, ‘objects of inquiry’ are narrated in an initial sequence of TEXTS; second, in a sequence of COMMENTARIES, the authors seek to draw out the conceptual operations and abstractions through which ‘problems’ could be shared; third, they test the abstracted problems relative to their objects of inquiry in a further sequence of TEXTS and COMMENTARIES. The chapter thus puts into motion an assemblage of heterogeneous objects, practices and concepts, and shows the narrative forms through which conceptual interconnections could be tested. 

Trine Korsby, Anthony Stavrianakis and Paul Rabinow: 'In the Workshop: Anthropology in a Collaborative Zone of Inquiry’ in The Composition of Anthropology - How Anthropological Texts Are Written; Routledge 2018