Experimental Collaborations: Ethnography through Fieldwork Devices

Published by Berghahn Books 2018

Experimental Collaborations

Ethnography through Fieldwork Devices

Edited by: Adolfo Estalella and Tomás Sánchez Criado

Volume 34 in the series EASA Series

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781785338540

Overview
Contents

About this book

In the accounts compiled in this book, ethnography occurs through processes of material and social interventions that turn the field into a site for epistemic collaboration. Through creative interventions that unfold what we term as “fieldwork devices”—such as coproduced books, the circulation of repurposed data, co-organized events, authorization protocols, relational frictions, and social rhythms—anthropologists engage with their counterparts in the field in the construction of joint anthropological problematizations. In these situations, the traditional tropes of the fieldwork encounter (i.e. immersion and distance) give way to a narrative of intervention, where the aesthetics of collaboration in the production of knowledge substitutes or intermingles with participant observation. Building on this, the book proposes the concept of “experimental collaborations” to describe and conceptualize this distinctive ethnographic modality.

Author / Editor information

Adolfo Estalella is Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology at the Department of Social Anthropology and Social Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid. His research focuses on the investigation of grassroots urbanism and digital cultures.

Tomás Sánchez Criado is Senior Researcher at the Chair of Urban Anthropology of the Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt-University of Berlin. In the last few years he has worked on urban accessibility activism, and its impact in city-making and ethnographic work.

Adolfo Estalella is Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology at the Department of Social Anthropology and Social Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid. His research focuses on the investigation of grassroots urbanism and digital cultures.

Reviews

“This volume proposes devices for attuning researchers to field sites, moving in and with them, or making sense of specific encounters after the fact…The potential shape of fieldwork devices is difficult to convey in a purely conceptual or textbook format – this volume uses powerful examples to help readers out…The humanity of ethnographic research projects emerges, with its ‘methodological anxieties’ and the often required ‘creative inventiveness emanating from fieldwork practices’.” • Science & Technology Studies

“As a pedagogical text, this volume will be useful to graduate students in anthropology, particularly for methods classes, and other disciplines that employ ethnography. On the whole, the collection insightfully and productively furthers the notion of what collaboration can be, and how it is practiced, in fieldwork.” • Anthropos

“Every tradition (re)invents itself. What is more, it’s impossible to keep tradition without reimagining and reinventing it constantly. This book is an invitation to rethink our methodological repertoires, an exercise in ethnographic (re)imagination. An inventory but not a recipe book; a contemporary inventory of the (multiple and complex) ways in which anthropology relates to the production of knowledge….At a time when politics turns into experimentation, in this work experimentation is a political moment, as politics not only traverses militant anthropology but also examines the ways we think, feel, share, and (co-) produce knowledge.” • Disparidades: Revista de antropología

“This volume… represents a very serious, worthwhile, and successful effort to bring together new works on ethnographic field methods… It will be of relevance to all practicing anthropologists, regardless of their subdiscipline, area of geographical interest, or current career position.” • David O’Kane, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany

“Experimental Collaborations provides fascinating insights into some of the muddiest disciplines premised on engaged ‘fieldwork’. The book proposes an interesting and useful theoretical framework to explicate the contemporary challenges facing ‘fieldworkers’ of various kinds.” • Matan Shapiro, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Foreword Collaboration Mode 3 A Found Condition of Anthropological Field Research Today … and What Might Be Made of It George E. Marcus Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Experimental Collaborations Tomás Sánchez Criado and Adolfo Estalella Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Experimenting with Data ‘Collaboration’ as Method and Practice in an Interdisciplinary Public Health Project Emma Garnett Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
2 The ‘Research Traineeship’ The Ups and Downs of Para-siting Ethnography Maria Schiller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
3 Finding One’s Rhythm A ‘Tour de Force’ of Fieldwork on the Road with a Band Anna Lisa Ramella Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
4 Idiotic Encounters Experimenting with Collaborations between Ethnography and Design Andrea Gaspar Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
5 Fieldwork as Interface Digital Technologies, Moral Worlds and Zones of Encounter Karen Waltorp Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
6 Thrown into Collaboration An Ethnography of Transcript Authorization Alexandra Kasatkina, Zinaida Vasilyeva and Roman Khandozhko Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	132
7 A Cultural Cyclotron Ethnography, Art Experiments and a Challenge of Moving towards the Collaborative in Rural Poland Tomasz Rakowski Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
8 Making Fieldwork Public Repurposing Ethnography as a Hosting Platform in Hackney Wick, London Isaac Marrero-Guillamón Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
Afterword Refiguring Collaboration and Experimentation Sarah Pink Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 236
Keywords: Anthropology (General); Theory and Methodology

eBook

Published: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 9781785338540