A recent news story from India, and the way many here seem to be celebrating it as a victory over stifling binaries, prompted me to comment on Facebook:
Rule of Thumb: Forget Anomalies
I’ve come up with a little rule of thumb I try to keep in mind when coming across a piece of data that, prima facie, might appear anomalous. Instead of thinking “weird; how do I explain this?,” I force myself to ask, “what set of assumptions or grid of classification makes this anomalous?” Continue reading “Rule of Thumb: Forget Anomalies”
Blurred Boundaries
In preparation for the first meeting of Culture on the Edge, at the University of Alabama, the group looked at some resources that purport to study identity in a more dynamic, theoretically-engaged way–e.g., works devoted to studies of diaspora, hybridity, syncretism, etc.–in hopes of finding models for how to study the production and movement of identity but without (unintentionally, perhaps) reproducing the very thing one means to study. Continue reading “Blurred Boundaries”