How can social science research do justice to polysemy, ambiguity, dynamism, recursivity, indeterminacy, and contingency while making substantive, coherent truth-claims? In this talk, Edward Schatz reflects on the entirely messy processes that helped to produce his recent book Slow Anti-Americanism: Symbolic Politics and Social Movements in Central Asia (Stanford, 2021). He will argue for a qualified methodological eclecticism that privileges constructivist ontologies and interpretivist epistemologies, while selectively and partially relaxing these same ontologies and epistemologies to strengthen the credibility of interpretations offered.

Edward Schatz is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His books include Slow Anti-Americanism (2021), Modern Clan Politics (2004), as well as the edited volume Political Ethnography (2009) and co-edited volume Paradox of Power (2017). He is currently working on the entirely messy, downstream effects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative across Eurasian contexts.

You can join this talk via zoom by following this link: https://anu.zoom.us/j/3364169330?pwd=ZStOdm4vTWpwS1RMbmFYUisxWVB2UT09

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For more information on the talks or the IMC, write to the convenors: April Biccum and Nick Cheesman