A second birth? Cosmopolitan media ethnography and Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology

Abstract

What does it take to carry out media ethnography in times and spaces of cosmopolitanization? How can ethnography reach beyond nationally or otherwise territorially bounded theories and methodologies, towards a new set of cosmopolitan approaches that manage to account for globalized logics of symbolic power? This article explores whether and how cosmopolitan media ethnography could be built around the epistemology of Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology. This would imply the methodological commitment to Bourdieu’s ideal of conversion of the scientific gaze, as well as the incorporation of his intermediary concepts of habitus and field. It is also argued that cosmopolitan media ethnography should be based on a non-media centric view revolving around the concept of texture – a concept through which it is possible to grasp the socially structured relationship between fields and spaces of flow and the various locations where symbolic power is ultimately played out. The theoretical points are brought into dialogue with recent experiences from media ethnographic fieldwork carried out among expatriate development workers in Nicaragua.