The Politics of Evidence in an Uncertain World: Experience, Knowledge, Social Facts and Factual Truth

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/dra.2021.002

Keywords:

Evidence, Experience, Knowledge, Social Facts, Factual Truth, Recession, Austerity, Political Mobilization

Abstract


Knowledge is never self-evident and is always a struggle about evidence: what counts and what does not count. Knowledge is part of the politics of evidence. We need to unravel the processes that create truth values in a field of power. Here I wish to address the tension between experience, vernacular knowledge, and evidence as they constitute the foundations of political mobilization during the economic recession in Spain. How is experience valued, and what kind of knowledge about society does it produce? How might we engage with this knowledge as anthropologists trying to understand what social facts are, and the value they have as evidence in political argument and struggle?

 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Arendt, Hannah. 1967. "Truth and Politics". The New Yorker, Feb. 25, 1967: 49-88.

Asad, Talal. 1994. "Ethnographic Representation, Statistics, and Modern Power". Social Research 61(1): 55-88.

Benjamin, Walter. 2002 [1936]. "The Storyteller. Observations on the Works of Nikolai Leskov", in Michael W. Jennings and Howard Eiland (eds.), Selected Writings. Vol. 3, 1935-1938: 143-166. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Benjamin, Walter. 2005 [1933]. "Experience and Poverty", in Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith (eds.), Selected Writings Vol. 2, Part 2, 1931-1934: 731-736. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Borneman, John and Abdellah Hammoudi. 2009. "The Fieldwork Encounter, Experience, and the Making of Truth: An Introduction", in John Borneman and Abdellah Hammoudi (eds.), Being There. The Fieldwork Encounter and the Making of Truth: 1-24. Berkeley: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520257757.003.0001

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. Le sens pratique. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 2003. Méditations pascaliennes. Édition revue et corrigée. Paris: Seuil.

Braudel, Fernand. 1958. "Histoire et Sciences Sociales. La longue durée". Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 13(4): 725-753. https://doi.org/10.3406/ahess.1958.2781

Brenneis, Donald. 1988. "Telling Troubles: Narrative, Conflict and Experience". Anthropological Linguistics 30(3/4): 279-291.

Briggs, Charles L. 2004. "Theorizing Modernity Conspiratorially: Science, Scale, and the Political Economy of Public Discourse in Explanations of a Cholera Epidemic". American Ethnologist 31(2): 164-187. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.2004.31.2.164

Cassin, Barbara. 2014. "Enough of the Truth For…: On the Truth and Reconciliation Commission", in Sophistical Practice. Toward a Consistent Relativism: 261-273. New York: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzzx6.18

Couce, Beatriz. 2013. "Una manifestación multitudinaria corona la huelga en Ferrol". La Voz de Galicia, June 13, 2013. Available at: <https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/ferrol/2013/06/12/manifestacion-multitudinaria-corona-jornada-huelga-ferrol/00031371040198822914688.htm>. Accessed 3 March 2020.

Desrosières, Alain. 1993. La politique des grands nombres histoire de la raison statistique. Paris: Éditions de la Découverte.

Durkheim, Émile. 1967 [1894]. Les règles de la méthode sociologique. Version numérique par Jean-Marie Tremblay pour Les classiques des sciences sociales, à partir du livre d'Émile Durkheim (1894), Les règles de la méthode sociologique. Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 16e édition, 1967. Available at : <http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/Durkheim_emile/regles_methode/regles_methode.html>. Accessed 3 March 2020.

Engelke, Matthew. 2008. "The Objects of Evidence". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 14(S1): S1-S21. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2008.00489.x

Hall, Stuart. 1981. "In Defence of Theory", in Raphael Samuel (ed.), People's History and Socialist Theory: 378-385. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

Hastrup, Kirsten. 2004. "Getting It Right. Knowledge and Evidence in Anthropology". Anthropological Theory 4(4): 455-472. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499604047921

Kentikelenis, Alexander E., Thomas H. Stubbs and Lawrence P. King. 2016. "IMF Conditionality and Development Policy Space". Review of International Political Economy 23(4): 543-582. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2016.1174953

Koselleck, Reinhart. 2018a. "Sediments of Time", in Reinhart Koselleck (transl.) and Sean Franzel and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (eds.) Sediments of Time. On Possible Histories: 3-9 Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press.

Koselleck, Reinhart. 2018b. "Fiction and Historical Reality", in Reinhart Koselleck (transl.) and Sean Franzel and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (eds.) Sediments of Time. On Possible Histories: 10-23 Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press.

Koselleck, Reinhart. 2018c. "Sluices of Memory and Sediments of Experience: The Influence of Two World Wars on Social Consciousness", Reinhart Koselleck (transl.) and Sean Franzel and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (eds.) Sediments of Time. On Possible Histories: 207-224 Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press.

Kruks, Sonia. 2001. "Going Beyond Discourse: Feminism, Phenomenology, and 'Women's Experience'", in Retrieving Experience. Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics: 131-152. Cornell, NY.: Cornell University Press.

Liebow, Edward, Virginia R. Dominguez, Peter Neal Peregrine, Teresa L. McCarty, Mark Nichter, Bonnie Nardi, and Jennifer Leeman. 2013. "Vital Topics Forum. On Evidence and the Public Interest". American Anthropologist 115(4): 642-655. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12053

Narotzky, Susana and Antonio Maria Pusceddu. 2020. "The Challenge of Social Reproduction in Times of Crisis: Intergenerational Tensions in Southern Europe", in Susana Narotzky (ed.). Grassroots Economies: Living with Austerity in Southern Europe. London: Pluto Press. Forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv17ppccg

Narotzky, Susana. 2016. "Between Inequality and Injustice: Dignity as Motive for Mobilization During the Crisis". History and Anthropology 27(1): 74-92. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2015.1111209

Narotzky, Susana. 2014. "Structures Without Soul and Immediate Struggles: Rethinking Militant Particularism in Contemporary Spain", in Sharryn Kasmir and August Carbonella (eds.), Blood and Fire: Toward a New Anthropology of Labour: 167-202. New York: Berghahn Books.

Pickering, Michael. 1997. History, Experience, and Cultural Studies. New York: St. Martin's Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25951-9

Samuel, Raphael (ed.). 1981. People's History and Socialist Theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

Sangster, Joan. 2011. "Invoking Experience as Evidence". The Canadian Historical Review 92(1): 135-161. https://doi.org/10.3138/chr.92.1.135

Scott, Joan. 1991. "The Evidence of Experience". Critical Inquiry 17(4): 773-797. https://doi.org/10.1086/448612

Thompson, Edward P. 1978. The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays. New York/ London: Monthly Review Press.

Thompson, Edward P. 1981. "The Politics of Theory", in Raphael Samuel (eds.), People's History and Socialist Theory: 396-408. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

Turner, Victor W. 1986. "Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An Essay in the Anthropology of Experience", in Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner (eds.), The Anthropology of Experience. Urbana, ILL.: University of Illinois Press.

Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press.

Williams, Raymond. 1985. Keywords. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Revised edition. Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press.

Published

2021-07-27

How to Cite

Narotzky, S. . (2021). The Politics of Evidence in an Uncertain World: Experience, Knowledge, Social Facts and Factual Truth. Disparidades. Revista De Antropología, 76(1), e002. https://doi.org/10.3989/dra.2021.002

Issue

Section

Articles

Funding data

European Research Council
Grant numbers 323743