Making Sense of Change: Methodological Approaches to Societies in Transformation—An Introduction

Abstract

In this introductory chapter the authors discuss ways of studying change that go beyond a chronology of events and sweeping laws of evolution and that take into account the ways in which people live through, experience, desire, create, and challenge change. How can we‚ at the same time‚ gain a longue durée perspective on societal transformations and give a truthful account of the ways our different interlocutors describe, name, and understand the changes they are living and the kinds of future they expect? The authors first situate this question within broader disciplinary debates, focusing particularly on debates in anthropology and its focus on studying history and change through ethnography. Ethnography is a crucial instrument for uncovering and analyzing the relationship between emic and etic perspectives of change, as well as the complex and often contradictory interplay of continuity and change beyond linear periodization and teleological presuppositions. The authors argue for a combination of multiple methods of investigation that borrow from both ethnography and other methods of data collection and analysis, and for an analytical framework that articulates three levels of analysis: the unit of analysis, the empirical data and the metanarratives of change.