Ethnographic experimentation: shifting from the modest observer to the epistemic companion

Below you will find more information and a link to register for the workshop.

The lecture

Ethnographic experimentation is becoming increasingly common in anthropology and other social sciences. Although this experimental drive is neither generalisable nor representative, it points to a significant effort to reorient the empirical modes of ethnographic inquiry in the contemporary. In contrast to the naturalistic tradition based on observational activities, ethnographic experimentation in fieldwork involves an interventionist practice dedicated to devising conditions for the empirical encounter. For the case of anthropology, a discipline that has historically founded its knowledge production on the idea that ethnographers are modest observers, the shift to experimentation has relevant effects on its epistemic foundations since each experiment involves a situated arrangement designed to produce problematizations in a shared effort with our companions (those previously called informants). This lecture introduces some illuminating examples to reflect on the epistemic implications of ethnographic experimentation, I will argue that an experimental take on our inquiries demands to get rid of the idea of methods and liberate the inner inventive nature of our ethnographic practices.

Reading: Estalella, Adolfo (n/d). Ethnographic experimentation and the disappearing field of ethnography. 

The workshop: Styles of ethnographic experimentation

Ethnographic experiments have many different expressions, sometimes anthropologists design infrastructures for collaborative analysis with their counterparts, on other occasions they explore ways to collectively attune their sensorial experiences, and in others, they try non-textual modes of representation. Ethnographic experimentation takes place in different instances (analysis, fieldwork, representation…) and entails different transformations in the epistemic practice of ethnography. In the same manner that it is possible to distinguish between various styles of experimentation in natural sciences, this workshop session proposes to identify different styles of ethnographic experimentation. Thinking through salient examples, the workshop invites us to explore how these experiments are carried out in practice and then identify: (1) the central practices of these experiments and (2) the specific aspects of ethnography that are problematised in these experiments.

Workshop material: Tomás Sánchez Criado y Adolfo Estalella(eds.). (2023). An Ethnographic Inventory. Field Devices for Anthropological Inquiry. London: Routledge. 

The reading/workshop material will be sent out to everyone registered one week ahead of the workshop.

Biography

Adolfo Estalella is an Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain. His research pays attention to the practices of activists, grassroots organisations, and artists and how they intervene in politics through knowledge production activities. In a second research line, he has carried out a prolonged exploration of the transformations of the epistemic practices of anthropology, an endeavour expressed in the ‘xcol – An Ethnographic Inventory’ platform (https://xcol.org/).

• Register here no later than 14 November

Organisers

Prof. Mia Liinason, research responsible at the Department of Gender Studies
Sunny Gurumayum, doctoral student at the Department of Gender Studies

Practicalities

Coffee with vegetarian roll will be served in the morning.

We look forward to seeing you November 19th!

Mia Liinason and Sunny Gurumayum

Arranged by: Lund Social Science Methods Centre