What can multi-sited and digital ethnography contribute to innovation studies in the global South?

Abstract

Innovation studies research is at the forefront of recent theoretical and interdisciplinary debates. However, it also faces at least three methodological challenges, namely: the need for empirical strategies to analyze inclusive innovations, the need to conduct symmetrical cutting-edge research in both theory and methods rather than giving lopsided emphasis to one or the other, and the need to adequately grasp the multiple, multi-sited and mobile character of social phenomena as well as the diverse impacts of digital culture in our lives stemming from globalization. This article aims to analyze the potentialities that ethnographical approaches have in facing these challenges, and multi-sited and digital ethnographical approaches in particular. Ethnography will be explored here not only as a flexible research strategy to grasp phenomena but also to develop theories closer to local actors and their different types of knowledge in the global South. These reflections about methods in innovation studies are also an opportunity to take part in a renewed discussion about how to conduct research in a more collaborative and inclusive way.