Embodying Difference: Introducing ‘Contact Movement’ as an Ethnographic Method

Harshadha Balasubramanian

doi:10.22582/ta.v10i1.590

Abstract

This contribution to the special issue advances an ethnographic method which directs the critical project of re-imagining diversity towards studies of how difference emerges in fieldwork encounters. Drawing on my experiences of researching without eyesight, I urge students and teachers of anthropology to acknowledge the value of embodied research methods for examining social and corporeal differences in researcher-participant relationships. Firstly, I call attention to moments when embodied fieldwork may be resisted and how these are expressed as naturalised differences between researchers and participants. To deconstruct such naturalisations, I devise contact movement as a method which allows researchers to embody how these ethnographic tensions, or indeed differences, are negotiated between researchers and their participants. Ultimately, contact movement eagerly re-imagines diversity through a methodological rethink that permits ethnographers to embody and explore the collaborative production of difference in their intersubjective relationships, within the field and beyond.

Highlights

We walked the Richard II set at Shakespeare’s Globe, threading our course between drooping curtains, around a silent throne, and out onto the flat tongue of the stage which jutted into the audience seating
I will argue that sighted guide has paved the way for a new embodied research method, that is, another approach where the researcher’s body is not a discrete object but entangled in the experiences coproduced with participants
Introducing Contact Movement A key tension had arisen during my pursuit of embodied research in theatre, my disembodied experiences of visual phenomenon which marked the lack of eyesight as a naturalised difference

Summary

Introduction

We walked the Richard II set at Shakespeare’s Globe, threading our course between drooping curtains, around a silent throne, and out onto the flat tongue of the stage which jutted into the audience seating. I will argue that sighted guide has paved the way for a new embodied research method, that is, another approach where the researcher’s body is not a discrete object but entangled in the experiences coproduced with participants. I call readers’ attention to moments of resistance in embodied fieldwork, where the ethnographer is restricted from mobilising their experiencing body due to tensions in the researcher-participant relationship.

Results

Conclusion