28 Mar Staying Motivated!

Just read this quote and it helped motivate me as I work on what must be the 8th rewrite of a particularly challenging chapter in my thesis. Maybe some of you will also find comfort in it.

“Those of us who are committed to sorting through concrete matters so as to develop circumstantial comparisons – specific inquiries into specific differences –may seem naïve, quixotic, dissimulating or behind the times. But if guidelines for navigating in a splintered, disassembled world are to be found, they will have to come from such patient, modest, close-in work… We need to find out how, rather exactly, the land lies” (Geertz 2000:223).

Geertz, Clifford (2000). ‘The World in Pieces: Culture and Politics at the End of the Century.’ In Geertz, ed. Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.