Topology as method
Résumé
Topology is a branch of mathematics that studies spaces that remain continuously invariant through distortion. In doing so, it offers tools for the study of the spatial aspects and extent of anthropological processes of identification, individuation, classification, comparison, transformation, similarity, and difference. Foregrounding space as object and analytic, this collection aims to demonstrate topology’s possibilities for methodological innovation in framing various objects of anthropological inquiry. While taking inspiration from topological methods for describing, formalizing, and classifying spaces, the essays collected here are not meant to comprise a single approach or proposal for importing mathematical forms into anthropology. Rather, they remain essentially experimental, drawing on topology as a set of techniques for abstraction in order to highlight, register, or inform specifically spatial structures encountered in the course of ethnographic investigations, employing space as an instrument and method of analysis across a wide variety of cases and themes.