The Rhizophage ate my homework

rhizophagous a., feeding on roots. (OED Online)

Life is apparently filled with connections. Metaphors and accounts of 'networks', 'complexity' and 'chaos' abound, and no matter how skeptical one is about the hyped utopian potential of this state of affairs, one gets the uncanny sense that there's something to it. But is it all really so?

I am a PhD student in Social Anthropology who has spent much of the past six years studying the different ways we use 'networks' to think with. That is, instead of looking at how you use social networks, I want to know how you use networks to describe and get along in the world in the first place. What has emerged from this research is a picture of how we as human beings make possible the worlds we inhabit through our social interactions with other humans and non-humans (think: cats, coat racks, mussels, mountains, cell phones, etc.). Much of this picture also calls into question whether our world is really more complex or not. In fact, it might all be in how you put the questions.

I'm starting this blog for three reasons. First, I wanted to share some of my insights and see what you think. Switching audiences helps switch frames of mind, and that's enough sometimes to either unstick a stuck idea, or spark a new one that never occurred to you. It's not about being creative or smart, but having good conversations, something that is sometimes forgotten in academia.

Second, I want to use it as a way to discipline my writing beyond the dry prose of the dissertation style. For whatever reason, when it comes to writing, the only pressure I seem to respond to is stage-fright. Knowing there's an audience out there to embarrass myself in front of tends to sharpen my thinking and motivation. So I hope you don't mind if I use you as carrot and stick.

Finally, this isn't all about my dissertation. I have other interests and other projects that I don't normally get to write about. Here at least I can play with those too. I am currently working on an auto-ethnography of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD or ADHD), I have a curiosity about the performance of rationality and modernity in stage and street magic (using 'irrational' magical effects to underscore an inherent rationality of the world), and I have long been thinking about what anthropology and ethnography might look like if our main medium was graphic storytelling (e.g. comics and graphic novels).

Sometimes these posts will be about my own research, sometimes they will be about others'. I expect to write reviews of books, movies, games and articles I'm reading/watching/playing. It won't be the most frquent blog, but I hope to have at least one significant post every week, and I promise not to post 'stuff I think is cool' posts. They tend to have the effect of making me feel like I'm contributing while I'm actually saying nothing at all.

All the same, I hope you enjoy what comes next and please, comment, contribute and participate! See you soon.

-David