STS Methods Lab: On documents, soy beans and how to engage with them in understanding social and political struggles

We are very glad to announce that Kregg Hetherington is coming to TIK’s method lab and to lecture at our PhD-course on the use of documents in research. Kregg is associate professor of political anthropology at Concordia University, Montreal. Kregg’s most recent book, The Government of Beans: Regulating Life if the Age of Monocrops (Duke 2020) has already been awarded a series of quite prestigious prizes, among which is this year’s (2022) Rachel Carson Prize awarded by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). The Rachel Carson Prize goes to an outstanding book in the area of Science and Technology Studies and Kregg’s book is described as an inspiration for ways to unpack and respond to the damaged planet in the Anthropocene: “We beautifully learn about why and how it matters not only to maintain biological diversity, but also cultural and analytical diversity for meaningful possibilities of societal change”. Kregg’s earlier work has also made a huge impact and impression. His book, Guerrilla Auditors: The Politics of Transparency in Neoliberal Paraguay (Duke 2011), is particularly interesting and relevant in our context of document studies for the ways in which he analyzes the significance of documents and access to documents in political and social struggles and how that of holding on to a document and a piece of land are intimately intertwined. As part of the STS Method’s Lab, we are looking forward to hear more about Kregg’s ways of both drawing upon documents and analyzing documents as a method integral to the ethnographic fieldwork and also his methodological choices in analyzing nature-struggles.