Mike wrote:
> I think the concern is with cases where there is no thought out
>rationale for the linkages, not for cases where the linkages are
>not formative of a logically necessary and sufficient set.
> Do we have some sort of clear cut counter example, or constrasting
>examples, to sharpen our joint understanding of what we mean by
>eclecticism?
I haven't gotten as much as I would like to have gotten from this
discussion on eclecticism, perhaps because by being postponed
and then come back to it has lost its "grounding" in the topic of the
time.
I don't know whether what I would like to have as "grounding" is what
Mike meant by his call for counter- or contrasting examples, but the
way I am thinking of it, I would like to have a concrete example of
work that has been accused of eclecticism and the nature of the
shortcomings in that work that its eclecticism is supposed to account
for.
It seems to me that this accusation (for such it always is -- otherwise
"innovative" or "wide-ranging" or "synthetic" are the words used) only
becomes relevant when researchers doing work according to a
well-worked-out format want to discuss work that is interdisciplinary
or seeks to push the envelope, to go beyond what the well-worked-out
format can be claimed to apply to.
I'm puzzling over the relationship of "eclecticism" and "syncretism". Is
it one of timescale (eclectic being current, syncretistic being legitimation
over time) or of practitioner (eclectic being something that an individual
or individual project is, syncretistic being something that a culture or
society is)? Or is it that we use "eclectic" to make negative judgements
of colleagues, and "syncretistic" to appear not to make negative
judgements of subjects/Others/natives? It seems to me that it is
interesting to oppose these two terms since both involve appropriation
of disparate elements of belief, but they do such different work.
It seems to me that only those who have a modernist belief in knowledge's
convergence on a metanarrative would be concerned with moves to
diverge. If what you are interested in is how to respect contradictions and
disparities, rather than contributing to the construction of a metanarrative,
then surely the accusation of eclecticism loses its sting. No?
--Alena
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Dec 01 2001 - 01:00:53 PST