On Sociobiology And Anthropology

Space is fundamental in any form of communal life; space is fundamental in any exercise of power (Foucault 1984:252).

The road goes regularly through groves of nutmeg and lofty kenari-tree, the latter of which serve as protection for the former. Banda [Besar] is one single mountain ridge for the whole length, stretching from East to West with sides sloping into the sea. The aforementioned plantations spread over each side of these mountains and to a marked height, yes, until almost the peaks. Our tour is completely via the mountains and mostly always within the shade of these lovely groves, yet you see scarcely a single kind of vegetation other than the nutmeg- and kanari-tree (Olivier 1979[1827]:100–101).     

The Anthropology of Empty Spaces

We would like to tell an anthropologic story about how we see reality and how we feel about it, with no intention to generalize our reflections. Our version of anthropology is intentionally self-reflexive and self-reflective. This text is a narrative study of the feelings of anthropologists out in the field. The anthropologic frame of mind is a certain openness of the mind of the researcher/observer of social reality (Czarniawska-Joerges 1992). On the one hand, it means the openness to new realities and meanings, and on the other, a constant need to problematize, a refusal to take anything for granted, to treat things as obvious and familiar. The researcher makes use of her or his curiosity, the ability to be surprised by what she or he observes, even if it is just the everyday world. Our explorations concern an experience of space. It aims at investigating the space not belonging to anyone. While anthropologically moving around different organizations, we suddenly realized that we were part of stories of the space we were moving in. Areas of poetic emptiness can be experienced, often in the physical sense, on the boundaries and inside of organizations.