Abstract
This paper explores “how ethnographic collaboration configures its data” via examination of three relations: between ethnography as method and writing, between leaky empirical and conceptual sets, and between ethnographic and rhetorical effects. I suggest that writing entails keeping the research imagination alive to two simultaneous processes of scaling—of the empirical within the text, and of diverse sets of literature in mutual relation—always with a specific focus and orientation. What emerges is an image of both ‘ethnographer’ and ‘data’ as hybrid and transformable companions.
 I illustrate with reference to two quite different texts about emerging Mekong realities. Both are elicited as experimental additions to worlds. In that capacity, they are capable of generating reality effects but those effects cannot be preordained. I conclude that ethnographic collaborations find no other grounds than dic cur hic—why, here, now—or as Isabelle Stengers has formulated it “say why you say it.”
Highlights
A central question motivating this special issue is “how ethnographic collaboration configures its data” (Lippert and Mewes, 2021:)
The focus is on how potentially interesting problems are given shape and scale in movements between them. From this vantage point, is specificity about the partial connections (Jensen and Lauritsen, 2005) that make up the problem space
If the actor-network theory premise of generalized symmetry between human and nonhuman actors is recursively applied to the scene of inquiry, both ethnographer and ‘data’ appear as hybrid actors. This facilitates an image of nonhuman companionship, which I specify, via Marilyn Strathern’s (1999) discussion of the ethnographic effect, as heterogeneous sets established ‘in the field,’ ‘at the desk,’ and in movements between the two
Summary
2021; see Lippert and Douglas-Jones, 2019). The emphasis of the present contribution, in contrast, is on the porous relations between field and writing (see Grommé and Ruppert, this issue). If the actor-network theory premise of generalized symmetry between human and nonhuman actors is recursively applied to the scene of inquiry, both ethnographer and ‘data’ appear as hybrid actors This facilitates an image of nonhuman companionship, which I specify, via Marilyn Strathern’s (1999) discussion of the ethnographic effect, as heterogeneous sets established ‘in the field,’ ‘at the desk,’ and in movements between the two. Along this route, I am led to suggest that writing entails keeping the research imagination alive to two processes of scaling: of the empirical within the text, and of diverse sets of literature in relation to each other. I reach the endpoint that ethnographic configurations find no better grounds than dic cur hic— why, here, —or as Isabelle Stengers (2008: 29) has formulated it “say why you say it,” just in this way, on just this occasion
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