Introduction: Claude LĂ©vi-Strauss and the Anthropologistâs Predicament
Scholars who are engaged in research and critical commentary on video games are referred to as âludologistsâ (Keogh 2014), an academic specialism dedicated to the analysis of video games as digital artefact, as a source of experience, and as a cultural object. My concern is that I am not a gamer (even though I grew up in the 1980s as the first generation that could play video games on so-called âhome computersâ such as Commodore Vic-20 or Commodore ViC-64, and occasionally did so), nor am I particularly engaged in the intra-disciplinary debates that, for example, Keogh (2014) accounts for. Neither am I an activist that promotes, say, transgender interests (which I do not oppose either, if anyone care to know), nor pursue any other politically charged topic pertaining to video game production, promotion, or use. Instead, I am the schoolbook case of the uneventful and by any means ânormalâ cisgender-man, being, with Marguerite Durasâ (2011: 27) memorable phrase (after recognizing her inability to attract any attention from people on the street, or otherwise having limited âcelebrity capitalâ), âthe triumph of banality.â For me, as a business school scholar, trained and experienced from field studies in a variety of industries and sectors of the economy, video games are part of a highly innovative and expansive industry and is therefore a business that deserves attention regardless of the absence of personal or even private objectives. This means that I share with Keogh (2014) and other ludologists the ambition to shed light on video game production and consumption, but my angle on the business may be somewhat different than theirs. Yet the question remains, what could this outsider figure do with a set of first-hand empirical data in the absence of more detailed understandings and commitment to the video game as such? I will here consume some of my stipulated or imagined scholarly liberties to discuss this concern not so much as some epistemological afterthought, but as being an issue worthy of some detailed analysis and precise justification.
In many cases, methodological issues are the residual of scholarly work, the residual components of theoretical grandeur or explorative projects in a field of practice, an obligatory passage point that remains to be accounted for when all is said and done. Yet, the question of methodology is a core issue in scholarly work, being the anchoring point between theoretical ambitions and practical research work, the field and the scholarâs desk. Methodology is present everywhere on the scholarâs written pages, yet it remains curiously marginal to the overarching pursuit: to accumulate academic credibility and the various benefits that derive therefrom (e.g., salaried positions, received research grants, seats in prestigious editorial boards and decision-making communities). As this volume deals with a specific social and professional community with whom its author is not particularly familiar (at least not when the study was initiated), this book will open with a reflection regarding how to learn about a specific tribe or community with whom the researcher shares few beliefs, traditions, skills, and social norms, but without misrepresenting these people. The proposition is that this is no easy matter: the scholarâs ambition is under the constant threat of being corrupted by misunderstanding, beliefs (inherited or learned), preferences, and a variety of other cognitive and behavioural conditions that the scholar cannot reasonably be assumed to command.
Philip Roth (2017: 381), the American author and one of the notable contemporary writers that in fact never received a Nobel Prize in literature, despite being rumoured to have been on the shortlist for decades, and being an accurate observer of the human condition, remarks that âEverybody has a hard work. All real work is hard.â This statement serves at the same time as an observation regarding factual conditions and as a credo, a normative statement portraying âreal work,â that is, work that is conducted de rigueur, as what in fact demands the full commitment of the writer or anyone else doing what they do for a living. This is a proposition that applies also to the ethnographerâs work. Claude LĂ©vi-Straussâ Tristes Tropiques, first published in 1955, is an exemplary case of an anthropologistâs sincere and confessional account of the ordeal of field work. The volume opens with LĂ©vi-Strauss pithily remarking that âI hate travelling and explorers,â before he account for his explorative travels into the Amazonas and elsewhere. In Tristes Tropiques, the anthropologistâs work is far from glamorous but is beset by practical issues and concerns to be handled to be able to proceed at all. For instance, LĂ©vi-Strauss recalls how his career as an anthropologist started in 1934 when Celestin BouglĂ©, the head of Ăcole Normale SupĂ©rieur, offered him a teaching position in SĂŁo Paolo, a place that according to BouglĂ© was a fine choice for an aspiring anthropologist as the âsuburbs are full of Indians, whom you can study at the weekendsâ (LĂ©vi-Strauss 1955 [1973]: 47). Such a thinly veiled pragmatic view of the research pursuit is rarely disclosed in the writing that is eventually produced in the scholarâs study. Indians should be studied in situ, in their ânatural habitat,â the anthropological imagination stipulates, and not serve as some object of casual observations during some lecturerâs spare-time and weekends. Nevertheless, LĂ©vi-Strauss (1955 [1973]) accounts for what John Law (1994: 43â44) would four decades later refer to as âthe ethnographerâs anxiety,â the lingering concern that the anthropologist or ethnographer misses out much of the action as he or she unfortunately fails to be at the right place at the right time. âWhere the ethnographer is, the Action is not,â Law (1994: 45) deduces.
In addition to portraying patienceâalmost super-human patienceâas the principal virtue of the anthropologist, Tristes Tropiques also addresses the issue of how to represent a social community and the social world this community creates and maintains when the observer cannot fully apprehend the life world of these people being subject to scholarly inquiries. Werner von Herzogâs movie Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) portrays a conflict between an Australian mining company and the Aboriginal community whose land the mining company in their view desecrates through its business operations. In one scene, one of the spokesmen of the Aboriginal community, following a considerably long explanation of the significance of the land for the tribe, exclaims that the mining company representative âdoes not understand!â The mining company interlocutor is the first to admit that this is undoubtedly true as he has no possibilities given his cultural background and, indeed, inherited cosmology, to fully understand the worldview of the Aboriginal community. At this point, Herzog suggests that there are things that are simply impossible to âunderstandâ in the conventional sense of the term. The scene shows, as Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked, that in order to have a dispute, many norms and beliefs need to be shared (perhaps this is why disputes in the realm of marriage can be both animated and prolonged, at times lasting for decades), or else the dispute dissolves into sheer misunderstanding as there is no shared common ground wherein the dispute can be staged and fuelled. In the end, this predicament instructs the anthropologist or ethnographer to be concerned with the representation of the other.
Perceived realities are indeed social (a truism, for sure), and to be able to account for the constitutive elements of such realities, the observer needs to be familiar with the norms and beliefs that render social realities meaningful and intelligible. This means that the ethnographer needs to maintain an open-ended attitude towards the object of study and abandon any misconceptions when there is limited empirical support for propositions stipulated ex ante. To better illustrate the virtue of critically assessing assumptions, the laboratory studies literature, being part of the wider science and technology studies scholarship, can be referenced. From afar, scientific research work may appear authoritative, conclusive, and credible: The end result is what it is, and there are few other outcomes that appear plausible for the reader of the final article that, say, convey the laboratory research data and theoretical implications derived therefrom. At the same time, to assume that the laboratory research work that precedes this contribution is equally well ordered is mistaken. Instead, for example, laboratory studies reveal that the day-to-day work in the laboratory is more open-ended, messier, more confusing, and more difficult to overlook for the outside observer than a common sense view would assume. Knorr Cetina (1983: 123) accounts for such experiences on the basis of her fieldwork:
Also Jordan and Lynch (1992: 84) testify to such insights: â[W]e are alerted to the conditions of instability and fragmentation in routine laboratory practice.â Does this struggle against âdisorderâ and the âinstabilityâ of the laboratory work in any way compromise the authority of the research community? If the messiness of things per se is regarded as an evidence of poor practices, that may be the case, but such lay beliefs do not contain the detailed expertise needed to pass such judgement with credibility. A more reasonable assumption is that the perceived messiness of the procedures and day-to-day routine is either derived from the external observersâ inability to detect and account for the intricate order of the laboratory work, or, alternatively and plausibly, that the complexity or the empirical issues at hand demand the work procedures to operate outside of the pedantâs preference for order and structure. Under all conditions, the laboratory researcherâs capacity to navigate within complex experimental systems and theoretical frameworks is admirable and is arguably not everybodyâs business. In the end, the example of laboratory research studies indicates that it is very easy for the external observer to project beliefs and/or preferences onto the object of study and to inscribe qualities, norms, preferences, and so on into equally humans and the machines and tools they use in their day-to-day work. Common sense thinking is one component to consider when seeking to avoid such projections. Preference is another issue, being more difficult to handle as individuals are not always aware of their preferences, and because preferences shift over time as novel conditions and opportunities emerge (March 1978). Consequently, what scholars may learn from LĂ©vi-Strauss and others who are concerned with the challenge to portray specific communities is that this is a lingering concern, with few ready-made off-the-shelf solutions.If ethnographers of science had hoped to come up with a set of parameters which neatly specify this process they were quickly disappointed. A day in the laboratory will usually suffice to impress upon the observer a sense of the disorder within which scientists operate, and a month in the lab with confirm that most laboratory work is concerned with counteracting and remedying this disorder. (Knorr Cetina 1983: 123)
A considerable scholarly literature calls for reflexivity as a remedy to this predicament (Holmes 2010; Mauthner and Doucet 2003; Cunliffe 2003; Pels 2000; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), but for most part, reflexivity is conceived in voluntarism terms, that is, it is assumed that individual scholars can choose to be reflexive whenever it suits their interests (Lynch 2000). An alternative view portrays reflexivity in determinist terms, being a âgiftââor, perhaps better, a âcurseââthat cannot be escaped or simply ignored at will. Reflexivity may also be considered in more fatalist terms, being something that surfaces during episodes of clear-sighted revelations and epiphanies, which make the scholar capable of suddenly overseeing their entire field of inquiry in a broad daylight. In the end, to refer to reflexivity is little more than a threadbare argument that renders interpretative skills to both the cause and effect of scholarly inquiry, simply reassertin...