Excellent reminder of primary source/context and debate, David! Trust Terri to ask the questions that lead us back to sources:) The comparison of method in the preface for that work also contrasts Moliere's so-called flat character descriptions to more complex character sketches by Cervantes and Shakespeare. I would say though that the issues raised in Malinowski's book are still relevant - in terms of epistemology. Of *how* we acquire the information and build it up as knowledge that then feeds into world views. Two points I'd like to raise: 1] if we take away the moralizing that seems implicit in "armchair" vs "hands-on" research - what might we learn from each in relation to internet research methods? I'm not sure that these are mutually exclusive if we want a larger overall picture. 2] Going back to Malinowski's issue with what he terms "armchair theorizing" should also remind us of the policy implications of the research we do - and the reason that generalizing based on partial information and developing policy that is "generalizable" is problematic. just my 2 cents. Radhika ___ http://radhikagajjala.org ____ On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 5:56 AM, David Hakken <dhakken@indiana.edu> wrote:

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From: Terri Senft <tsenft@gmail.com> To: Ellis Godard <egodard@csun.edu>, "air-l@listserv.aoir.org" <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Three Questions (was qual/quant and all that) Message-ID: < CAMsrFiFto+tHkBNtMOe3ar-XzKQ8mSQE-PLz4dGMH2dASRPzkw@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

3. Does anyone have an actual reason to use the term, "armchair theorizing?"

Dear Terri I'll skip the hard questions and go for the easy one. "Armchair theorizing" was the term used in introductory anthropology courses for the standard 19th Century form of ethnography/ethnology, which involved collecting information on the customs of "primitive" social formations by sending letters to various government officials, missionaries, and traders requesting such information, and then assembling the answers into a general account. Sir James Frasier's _The Golden Bough_ was the usual example. This approach was critiqued, ultimately and most famously, by Malinowski in his _Argonauts of the Western Pacific_ (being republished now by Routledge) who argued for actual fieldwork among the peoples of interest. This is often referred to as the "revolution" in anthropological methods.

David Hakken Information Ethnographer Professor of Social Informatics School of Informatics and Computing 901 E. 10th Street, #318 Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47408 dhakken@indiana.edu 812-856-1869 office; 812-391-2966 cell; 812-856-1995 fax Faculty Fellow at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Trento, Italy http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/research/profiles/dhakken.asp

Trento office hours (May-mid-July) by appointment

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