Experimenting with Ethnography collects twenty-one essays that open new paths for doing ethnographic analysis. The contributors—who come from a variety of intellectual and methodological traditions—enliven analysis by refusing to take it as an abstract, disembodied exercise. Rather, they frame it as a concrete mode of action and a creative practice. Encompassing topics ranging from language and the body to technology and modes of collaboration, the essays invite readers to focus on the imaginative work that needs to be performed prior to completing an argument. Whether exchanging objects, showing how to use drawn images as a way to analyze data, or working with smartphones, sound recordings, and social media as analytic devices, the contributors explore the deliberate processes for pursuing experimental thinking through ethnography. Practical and broad in theoretical scope, Experimenting with Ethnography is an indispensable companion for all ethnographers.
Contributors. Patricia Alvarez Astacio, Andrea Ballestero, Ivan da Costa Marques, Steffen Dalsgaard, Endre Dányi, Marisol de la Cadena, Marianne de Laet, Carolina Domínguez Guzmán, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Clément Dréano, Joseph Dumit, Melanie Ford Lemus, Elaine Gan, Oliver Human, Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Graham M. Jones, Trine Mygind Korsby, Justine Laurent, James Maguire, George E. Marcus, Annemarie Mol, Sarah Pink, Els Roding, Markus Rudolfi, Ulrike Scholtes, Anthony Stavrianakis, Lucy Suchman, Katie Ulrich, Helen Verran, Else Vogel, Antonia Walford, Karen Waltorp, Laura Watts, Brit Ross Winthereik
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Analysis as Experimental Practice / Andrea Ballestero and Brit Ross Winthereik 1
Part I. Bodily Practices and Relocations
1. Tactile Analytics: Touching as a Collective Act / Patricia Alvarez Astacio 15
2. The Ethnographic Hunch / Sarah Pink 30
3. The Para-Site in Ethnographic Research Projects / George E. Marcus 41
4. Juxtaposition: Differences That Matter / Else Vogel 53
Part II. Physical Objects
5. Relocating Innovation: Postcards from Three Edges / Endre Dányi, Lucy Suchman, and Laura Watts 69
6. Object Exchange / Trine Mygind Korsby and Anthony Stavrianakis 82
7. Drawing as Analysis: Thinking in Images, Writing in Words / Rachel Douglas-Jones 94
8. Diagrams: Making Multispecies Temporalities Visible / Elaine Gan 108
Part III. Infrastructural Play
9. Ethnographic Drafts and Wild Archives / Alberto Corsín Jiménez 123
10. Multimodal Sorting: The Flow of Images across Social Media and Anthropological Analysis / Karen Waltorp 133
11. Categorize, Recategorize, Repeat / Graham M. Jones 151
12. Sound Recording as Analytic Technique / Brit Ross Winthereik and James Maguire 163
Part IV. Incommensurabilities
13. Substance as Method (Shaking Up Your Practice) / Joseph Dumit 175
14. Excreting Variously: On Contrasting as an Analytic Technique / Justine Laurent, Oliver Human, Carolina Domínguez Guzmán, Els Roding, Ulrike Scholtes, Marianne de Laet, and Annemarie Mol 186
15. Facilitating Breakdowns through the Exchange of Perspectives / Steffen Dalsgaard 198
16. Analogy / Antonia Walford 209
17. Decolonizing Knowledge Devices / Ivan da Costa Marques 219
18. Writing an Ethnographic Story in Working toward Responsibly Unearthing Ontological Troubles / Helen Verran 235
19. Not Knowing: In the Presence of . . . / Marisol de la Cadena 246
Afterword 1. Questions, Experiments, and Movements of Ethnographies in the Making / Melanie Ford Lemus and Katie Ulrich 257
Afterword 2. Where Would You Put This Volume? On Thinking with Unruly Companions in the Middle of Things / Clément Dréano and Markus Rudolfi 262
References 267
Contributors 287
Index 295
