A Thought Experiment in the Wild

Heywood, Paolo

Abstract

This paper aims to complicate the opposition between ‘thick description’ and ‘thin’ thought experiments by constructing a thought experiment of its own. It compares the use of examples – thick and thin – in the work of Malinowski and Ludwig Wittgenstein, who came to extremely similar conclusions about the importance of context to meaning, the former around a decade before the latter. By imagining the - by no means implausible - possibility that Wittgenstein read Malinowski, the paper asks how it might change anthropological views about thickness and thinness if it turned out that one of the major philosophical sources of our disciplinary preference for ‘thick description’ as a generalised prescription for ethnography took some inspiration for such ideas from Malinowksi’s more modest and restricted empiricism.

Citation

Heywood, P. (2023). A Thought Experiment in the Wild. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology, 67(3), 118-124. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2023.670311

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 1, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Sep 1, 2023
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2023
• Deposit Date: Feb 28, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 6, 2024
• Journal: Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology
• Print ISSN: 0155-977X
• Electronic ISSN: 1558-5727
• Publisher: Berghahn Journals
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 67
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 118-124
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2023.670311
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2288794