Juxtaposition Differences that matter

As ethnographers we continually make differences, relations between a ‘here’ and a ‘there’, a ‘this’ and ‘that’. But as we compare and contrast, we also decide to keep some things stable rather than others. How do we decide which differences matter? In this chapter I discuss an analytic technique for engaging with this question, which I have coined “juxtaposition”. This technique was my strategy for dealing with a challenge all anthropologists face: how to relate to the dominant stories in our field? How to avoid strengthening them while still recognizing their power? In my attempt to ‘reverse-engineer’ the craft of this technique, I draw on my PhD research on eating and health as they get problematized in the context of the reported ‘obesity epidemic’ in the Netherlands. In my analysis, contrasting logics about healthy eating and living, in which different things were at stake, came to the fore. Juxtaposition was part of each step of my research: in relating to the literature, when making a field, in articulating worlds enacted and when writing an argument. Note the active verbs: the elements I contrasted are not out there for us to ‘find’ or ‘recognize’; they are products of the analysis. Working through juxtaposition is thus not only about doing justice to the material. It is about offering a description that is also a rescription, that changes how we can see, engage with and care for the practices we study. Describing always means intervening. This is, after all, ethnography’s critical potential.