Narrating research

15th December 2022 0 By Nandini

anthropology articles in Ethnofoor

 

On a cold grey day, I got lost in my office chair

December here, December there…

Desks and Duties at a District Council in Malawi

Extract

 

To be able to take up a topic like the office and describe cars, walls, roofs, furniture, windows, doors, missing sockets and broken-down computers and place all of this in the context of the impact this makes on the people who still get work done; to do this in a way so that images appear in your mind’s eye, complete with sounds, emotions and  associations – this combined with a clear sense of what one is arguing or trying to prove…. this is why I look forward to losing myself in black letters on a page on a grey winter day, in my office chair. When the narrative voice and the argumentative one merge seamlessly, I am a happy reader.

 

(Inspired by the article by Tanja D. Hendriks ‘How Civil Servants Make the Office Work’ in Enthnofoor, The Office, Volume 34, Issue 1).