AO: Cerwonka and Malkki use an interpretive approach to think about questions of hermeneutics and epistemology especially with regards to ethnographic fieldwork. (page 2)
AO: Ethics (see page 4).
AO: Theory and Practice (“the interpretation of empirical details in fieldwork is always a way of reading and dwelling in the world through theory. This correspondence between student and mentor illustrates how theory is challenged and also reshaped by the complexity and richness of everyday social practices and processes. Ethnographic research requires a movement similar to what Ricoeur has called “the dialectic of guessing and validation.” The correspondence captures this interpretive process of tacking between theory and empirical detail to show how this hermeneutic process yields claims to knowledge.” page 4).
AO: postcoloniality and modernity (15)
AO: “Rabinow, following Ricoeur, calls the “dialectic of guessing and validation” (1979, 11)” (19)
AO: The two authors appear to work in the field of global health (based at UK university) and focus on economic inequalities of research funding (“Research and devel- opment expenditure is concentrated in the North, with only 10% of health research money spent in the South, although 90% of the global burden of disease resides here– the familiar 10/90 health research gap (Edejer, 1999; Ramsay, 2001).”) (page 1957).
AO: They draw on development research literature.
AO: They critique ideas of the global North partners coming in to build “capacity” (“assumption of Northern superiority, especially related to capacity building. It has been observed that ‘much of the discourse on capacity-building is tinged with a ‘subtle paternalism’ which assumes a comparative advantage of NNGOs [Northern NGOs] in the South.’” (1958)
AO: Southern scientists in interviews argued that the science should be “for it is the community which should benefit or its members can be regarded as deprived, and the researchers’ mission unfulfilled: ‘Scientists often forget about this, and are carried away by scientific rigour, but neglect implementation.’ The importance of implementation was also noted by a senior researcher who regretted that Northern agencies often selected issues which had no immediate implica- tions for action.” (1964)