Secrecy and Insurgency: Socialities and Knowledge Practices in Guatemala

1. The Problem of Context

1 The Problem of Context Interpretation and contextualization involve the making of connections . What context does is to define where and which connections are made, and where disconnections, ruptures and discontinuities begin. —Roy Dilley, The Problem of Context, 1999, 37 Introduction This chapter explores traditions of social and cultural analy­sis in and about Guatemala,1 and key knowledge practices related to this field. The aim is to examine a range of trajectories in social, cultural, and his­ tori­ cal research and highlight the influential and rich reservoir of ideas for the production and figuring of the Guatemalan context his­ tori­ cally, both nationally and transnationally. The emphasis is on the processes through which the object of study may be said to emerge in and through specific epistemological propositions and methodological operations. Many traditions of social and cultural enquiry that developed in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century are epistemologically grounded in the contextualization of knowledge (Strathern 1995a; 1995b) and have provided interpretations of local cultures through contextualization . In turn, disciplinary and interdisciplinary interpretative efforts have become context-­ dependent (Dilley 1999, 1–2), to the extent that a strictly a-­ contextual social and cultural analy­ sis now appears improbable (see, for example, Moore 2004). Analytical strategies of contextualization are, however , inextricably tied to systems of representation. In representation, “context ” is produced as an object of scrutiny through specific ana­lyti­cal operations (Dilley 1999, 3; 2002; Strathern 1987, 276; 1995d, 160). Furthermore, context-­making practices can be considered in relation to other ana­ lyti­ cal operations and associated key concept-­ metaphors (Moore 2004). “Culture,” for instance, may be amenable to multiple genealogies (Knauft 1996; Kuper 1999). His­ tori­ cally it has been premised on contextualization understood through cultures imagined as local, integrated, and coherent wholes (Dilley 1999, 3; Moore 1999). Through a multiple and multiplier effect, contextualization has highlighted the local quality of West­ The Problem of Context / 25 ern presuppositions and produced, in this relational dimension, knowledge of, and about, ethnocentrism (Dilley 1999; Strathern 1987; 1995b).2 For example , Dilley argues that “[e]ver since Malinowski, anthropologists have chanted the mantra of ‘placing social and cultural phenomena in context,’ an ana­ lyti­ cal strategy adopted to throw light on . . . and make some sort of authentic sense of, ethnographic material” (Dilley 1999, 1). The question of contextualization is clearly not discipline-­ specific. Rather, it reflects a transdisciplinary problem (Dilley 1999, 5–6), insofar as invoking and producing “context” is an ana­ lyti­ cal strategy to make sense of data generally (Castree 2005; Dilley 1999). Castree (2005) views a range of approaches to contextualization as part of a specific “epistemology of particulars,” which, in the field of human geography he is concerned with, has sought to engage and negotiate two distinct and contrasting approaches, namely: “On the one side, a nomothetic perspective presumes an ontological regularity in both pattern and process between different contexts. On the other side, an idio­graphic worldview accents the contingent and enduring differences that make ‘context’ no mere ‘modifier’ of ostensibly general processes” (Castree 2005, 541). In this account, contextualization emerges as a knowledge practice located at the epistemological fault line where claims to particularity and generality are made, and where a number of questions concerning the possibility and feasibility of abstraction emerge. An “epistemology of the particular” (Castree 2005), then, does not dispel, but rather, forcefully recenters “philosophical-­cum-­theoretical” issues (Castree 2005, 544) concern­ing how “context” is produced as an object of enquiry, and what ontological, epistemological, and methodological implications might follow from such framings. Thus, although context-­ making as process and practice has been assumed to be a transparent and unproblematic source of authenticity of phenomena and/or interpretations, assumptions about the “positivity” of context ­(Fabian 1999) and the transparent quality of “culture” have been the subject of increased criti­cal scrutiny in recent years, through, inter alia, epistemological and methodological criti­cal reflection (Castree 2005; Dilley 1999; Strathern 1988), critiques of representational practices (Clifford 1988; Clifford and Marcus 1986), and analyses informed by feminist (Haraway 1989; Strathern 1988) and postcolonial (Asad 1973; Huggan 1994; Mignolo 2000; Prakash 1992; 1994) theory. Such interventions of­ten link representational strategies to power, but the exercise is by no means exhausted. Neither is it exhaustible , when one considers that context-­and culture-­ making have not been the exclusive prerogatives of social scientists. Rather, “context” and “culture ,” whether allied or discrete, are items of knowledge generated locally, [18.218.184.214] Project MUSE (2024...