Moments in Collaboration: Experiments in Concept Work

There is an increasing focus among anthropologists on the theme of collaboration with the people they work with and with other disciplines in the university space. Frequently justified in political terms of participation, there is often less attention paid to the conceptual work in and of collaboration. In opposition to the attention given to the processes of exchange during fieldwork, there is rarely a description of the actual forms and practices created for such collective conceptual work and thinking-processes in extra-fieldwork situations. In this article, we report on an experiment in collaborative concept work at Berkeley known as ‘the Labinar'. We address a lacuna in the literature on collaboration by providing a description of how collective conceptual work can be given form and sustained with specific practices. We argue for understanding concepts as not only discursive but also as non-discursive entities, created through and emerging as objects and practices of inquiry. The article focuses on the centrality of specific moments of conceptual creation through collaboration, understood as the temporal, material and affective qualities of thinking together.

Trine Mygind Korsby and Anthony Stavrianakis: "Moments in Collaboration: Experiments in Concept Work"; Ethnos; 2016