Work

Will you teach me? From seriousness to sincerity with apprentice phenomenography

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: By pushing for adequate modes of conceptualisation, ontological turn theorists have made significant headway in the attempt to take seriously ontological worlds that are typically considered irreconcilable to those of the Western intellectual project. Rather than taking ontological alterity seriously, in this paper I ask instead what it would mean to take ontological alterity sincerely. Seriousness involves a commendable commitment to bracketing out all pre‐formulated metaphysical assumptions such that the conceptualising project of the anthropologist is unvarnished by the taint of standard Western habitual thought. Sincerity, on the other hand, means bracketing out nothing. The sincere anthropologist instead assumes that their habitual commitments to the world are amenable to alteration through submission to the teaching of their fieldwork companions. I describe this method as ‘apprentice phenomenography’, that is, the inscription of that which appears in concrete situations of learning.

Source: The Australian Journal of Anthropology

DOI: 10.1111/taja.70068

Author: Daniel Tranter‐Santoso

Institution: Macquarie University

Language: English

Topic: Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,010