Being in fieldwork : collaboration, digital media, and ethnographic practice

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

Abstract

This chapter explores the negotiations inherent in knowledge production and forms of “knowing” in collaborative, distributed, and interdisciplinary projects that privilege ethnography as an epistemological and methodological approach to knowing. More specifically, it explores the relationships between “traditional” forms of knowing and knowledge production and the processes of “being in fieldwork” in contemporary anthropology’s complex and dynamic research environment, which is increasingly mediated through digital technologies, spaces, places, and artifacts (Horst and Miller 2012). Drawing from my participation on three ethnographic collaborations over the last decade, I reflect upon a shift from personalized, private experiences of fieldwork, wherein the individual self is the primary instrument of knowing, to a decentered self by which knowledge is constructed through different forms of interaction and mediated in and through digital interfaces and technology. I conclude with a brief discussion of the challenges of each mode of mediation and collaboration.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationeFieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology in the Digital World
EditorsRoger Sanjek, Susan W. Tratner
Place of PublicationU.S.
PublisherUniversity of Pennsylvania Press
Pages153-168
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9780812292213
ISBN (Print)9780812247787
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

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