The workshop centers on a series of interlocking questions: the usefulness and complexities of addressing counterfactual questions; the advantages and disadvantages that qualitative social sciences like sociocultural anthropology and history bring to such work; and the problems of epistemology, comparability, and unstated assumptions that the use of comparison raises in the social scientific practices of cultural anthropology and quantitative political science.
The workshop is followed by a buffet lunch; RSVP to antwi.boasiako@concordia.ca by Monday, March 4 to obtain a copy of a background paper.
Background reading: McGovern, Mike. 2011. “Popular Development Economics – An Anthropologist Among the Mandarins.” Perspectives on Politics. Volume 9(2): 345-355.