*Post-viva reflections 0

The viva was successful. I am both relieved and very happy about the outcome (no corrections). If my examiners ever come across this blog, I would like to again extend my deepest gratitude for their engagement with my thesis and for a very helpful, incisive, and critical discussion which was tremendously constructive. They made me think about issues that did not occur to me and I find this to be one of the greater gifts a senior scholar could give a junior. I'm still thinking about their questions. 

Over the next couple posts, I'll try to revisit some of their questions and hopefully provide some better answers than what I have, perhaps not quite satisfactorily, articulated in person. I will be unlikely to remember all of them, such is the limitation of memory, but try to address the ones that have pinned a place in my thoughts:

• To provide a general overview of the thesis in one or two sentences
• Compatability between anthropological and philosophical methods
• The belief and acceptance distinction, and their characteristics, is somewhat arbitrary and also falls into the criticism about Christianity and the English language 
• Why continue to use the term 'belief' as opposed to another term such as disposition or discourse
• Why use 'truth' as opposed to 'meaning', and how might they be related.
• Why these particular three case studies
• The case studies are quite old (50s & 90s), does that take anything away from my analysis of them
• belief within the context, "archaeology of knowledge", in each of these disciplines (anthropology, psychology, sociology)
• The relationship between memory, belief, and change over time
• further engagement with Bourdieu - how is my project any different
• The scholars, used in the thesis, were selected to suit my own purposes
• Reflexivity; where am I in this thesis (i.e. how has my own views colored the analysis and proposal for belief) 

I'm sure there were more questions than this. But these are the ones I remember at the moment. 'Satisfactoriness', in this case, has much more to do with a sense of dissonance in my own performance: (remembered) experience versus expectation; 'I did not answer the questions as well as I would like to have answered them' versus 'I could have answered them better.' Both of which are personal reflections and assessments of self. In this sense, the discrepancy between how I think I did and how I would like to have done (in answering questions) and the dissonance involved with this discrepancy is, and will be, resolved in terms of self-betterment and the pursuit of developing my thinking about these issues. It is an opportunity to think through them more carefully in relation to the thesis and now that three new letters are, technically, attached to my name, I can focus on the substance of the viva and the questions rather than the concern of obtaining a formal title.