hinterland

Today I've managed to avoid the one thing i needed to do - work on that paper.

But procrastination can lead to somewhere. Today it lead to many places including 'the hinterland'. Since reading John Law's contemplation of the hinterland (in social science), I've been wondering how I can incorporate this. It's a great metaphor, suggesting that all things (concepts and/or objects) come into existence through a hinterland, a backdrop, that which provides a stabilising force to give shape and weight to that particular thing.

So 'the sexual health of young people' or 'STI risk of young people' is embedded in a hinterland of science, methodology, research paradigm, etc. For me to say, as I've been trying, that we need to shift the margins of this discussion is quite futile. Well, particularly if I'm ignoring the hinterland. Perhaps the iceberg (and its tip) is another apt metaphor. To argue against something, without recognising that that something exists in a force field - a swamp of many things - is naive. So I need to point toward the hinterland, the swamp in which I'm trying to make ripples.

This seems like chapter one. A situating of this research, acknowledgement of the hinterland in a pseudo lit-review. Well since one of my datasets is recent Australian research papers, this could be used specifically to ruminate on the hinterland of my field of study. This also suits me as this notion of the hinterland allows a certain vagueness to creep in and take residence in this part of the thesis. I keep hitting the walls of needing to say everything (ie. outline the field, the arguments, the disciplines, the parameters) but maybe this affords me a certain liberty. Because "the hinterland ramifies out for ever" (Law; 40).