Ethnographic Genre Research Articles

Disappointment

In recent years, disappointment has emerged as a prominent topic of anthropological inquiry and theorization. We explore this disciplinary interest in order to probe the conditions that have made it possible, the lines of inquiry it opens up, and the self-reflexive critiques it underscores. Running throughout the anthropological literature on disappointment is a pressing concern with the messy, unpredictable, and friction-laden dimensions of social life, dimensions that eschew easy categorization in terms of the heroic/abject, agentive/passive, macro/micro, righteous/wrong-headed, or progressive/reactionary. After exploring the conditions that underlie disappointment, we discuss comparison, poetics, and slog as three domains of its anthropological analysis, highlighting key methodological innovations, ethnographic genres, and research questions within each area. We close with reflections on disappointment within the discipline, focusing on the experience of field research, the moral optimism of the discipline, and the institutional conditions that shape knowledge production and professional life.

On Ethnographic Genre and the Experience of Communal Work with the Hutterian People

This paper takes the problem of describing Hutterite work as a point of departure to discuss several problematic aspects of ethnographic genre and writing. The analytic mode of ethnography when applied to Hutterians compounds the stereotype of a dour people so the author utilizes humour and pathos to describe Hutterites at work and moves throughout from description and dialogue to interpretation instead of from generalization to illustration as is more conventional in the format of ethnographic writing. The authoritative voice of the narrator eventually yields to the description of an experience where neither the ethnographer nor his subjects were in control of events. This final scene serves as a metaphor for fieldwork and suggests that many of the problems associated with writing as an inherently destructive analytical mode can be transcended. The nature of this transcendence is suggested by the writer who shapes a story and completed by the reader who hears what is said — if only in the mind’s eye — through a suspension of disbelief.

Possibilities of Graphic Ethnography

Claudio Sopranzetti, Sara Fabbri, and Chiara Natalucci are the team behind the new graphic ethnography The King of Bangkok (University of Toronto Press 2021). The King of Bangkok tells the story of Nok, an urban migrant from Thailand’s northeastern region as he moves back and forth from his home village and attempts to build a life in the country’s capital across periods of massive economic growth and collapse and periods of democratic expansion, state violence, and political closure. Structured around a series of flashbacks, The King of Bangkok shows how these historical events shaped Nok’s life and how Nok’s life came to shape those events. The book was originally published in Italian (Add Editore, 2019) and was subsequently translated into Thai as Taa Sawaang (Awakening, อ่านอิตาลี 2020). In this interview we ask Claudio, Sara, and Chiara about their experience creating this text, its relationship with more traditional ethnographic genres of writing, and the effects their project has had in Thailand. We are delighted to feature a small section of the book following the interview.

Persian Literature and Modernity: Production and Reception

Persian Literature and Modernity: Production and Reception

Coming to terms with the missing pieces: Toilet paper and ethnography in the neoliberal university

This article contributes to the rethinking of failure within the neoliberal university, particularly in relation to ethnography. It is grounded in the ethnographic setting of a boxing club and focuses on one unusual dynamic of which I was aware during the research, but for which I could not – and still cannot – account for in theoretical terms. One or more members of the boxing club recurrently stole the toilet roll, and I have no idea why. This, however, also reflects a broader trend within the ethnographic genre: whilst toilets are used for cover by researchers, they are a space where the ethnographer's gaze fails. In turn, this reflects the social construction of defecation as moral failure. Similarly, failure - whilst routine - is individualised within the neoliberal academy. Accounting for dead ends and unknowns within research thereby becomes risky, and this actively discourages recognition of the complexities of life within ethnography. Writing ethnography which actively incorporates failures and unknowns would promote vitalism and would resist a neoliberal articulation of success.

The contribution of ethnography to the evaluation of quality improvement in hospital settings: reflections on observing co-design in intensive care units and lung cancer pathways in the UK

Ethnography is increasingly being used in the evaluation of quality improvement and change initiatives in healthcare settings, particularly in the form of ‘focused’ and ‘rapid’ ethnographies. This new ethnographic genre is tailored to suit narrower enquiries within clinical pathways. However, the application of ethnography to the evaluation of quality improvement is not straightforward or free from reductionist bias, particularly in hospital settings where interventions take place during a limited period of time and instigate change in busy and sensitive settings. This paper discusses problems and emergent solutions involved in conducting an ethnographic process evaluation of co-design projects in lung cancer and intensive care unit services in two hospitals in England. The mixed-methods ethnographic evaluation consisted of observations of the co-design process and triangulation of findings with interviews, questionnaires, participant reflective diaries and service improvement logs. Limitations of observational time and distance from ‘the field’ were overcome by making most of the pre- and post-event observational periods, situating quality improvement within the wider context of clinical practice, achieving attunement with local clinical cultures and engaging participants in collaboratively guiding observational and interview design. This approach led to a focused ethnographic evaluation that accommodated ethnographic principles to obtain rich insights into quality improvement processes despite the limitations of short-timeframes and the hospital setting.

Doubts, Compromises, and Ideals: Attempting a Reciprocal Life Story

SUMMARYIn this article I reflect on my attempt to co‐author a reciprocal life story with my friend Liria de la Cruz, a semiliterate Gypsy/Roma street seller from Madrid—a book where we examine together our intertwined stories. Much has been made of the assumed capacity of collaborative methodologies to transform ethnography for the better. Yet as Liria and I try to find ways to work together, we struggle to reconcile our reciprocal approach with the conventions of the ethnographic genre and the expectations of our scholarly audience. I reflect on our difficulties for what they reveal about the complex encounter between the non‐hierarchical aims of collaboration and those of academic anthropology.

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Reviewed by: The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing Joshua A. Bell Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. 352 pp. Halfway through The Mushroom at the End of the World, Anna Tsing remarks that "Mushroom tracks are elusive and enigmatic; following them takes me on a wild ride—trespassing every boundary" (137). Tsing's latest exploration of what is now a trilogy on the intimate entanglements of capitalism is both a wild ride and a boundary blurring ethnography. The Mushrooms at the End of the World picks up on themes developed earlier by Tsing in her work about the Meratus Dayak's understandings of their histories of engagement with outsiders (Tsing 1993), and her examination of the messy encounters of capitalism on resource frontiers (Tsing 2005). Asking "How might capitalism look without assuming progress?" (5), Tsing dives deep into the disturbed soils of her many sites of inquiry to follow the "mosaic of open-ended assemblages of entangled ways of life" (4) of matsutake mushrooms. This Japanese delicacy, Tsing argues, is a good guide to the world we currently live in because of matsutake's "willingness to emerge in blasted landscapes [which] allows us to explore the ruin that has become our collective home" (3). The matsutake shows the "possibilities of coexistence within environmental disturbance" (4) as well as "the cracks in the global political economy" (4) and "reopen our imaginations" (5). Taking the destructive wake of the much-discussed and debated Anthropocene head on, this book on its surface is a "follow-the-thing" ethnography that follows the matsutake across various domains and through time (Mintz 1985, Appadurai 1986, Marcus 1995). In this sense it contributes to what is now an established ethnographic genre (see for example West 2012, Paxson 2012, Ferry 2013). However, in reading The [End Page 277] Mushrooms at the End of the World it quickly becomes apparent that Tsing pushes this genre by telling the "rush of stories" (37) that help constitute the matsutake's assemblages, which bind human and nonhuman together. Tsing takes her readers on what is at times a dizzying ride through time and space to tease out connections between political economy, ecology, hitory, and multispecies interactions. I have yet to read an ethnography that is as ambitious in terms of its scale and scope. The book draws on long-term fieldwork conducted during matsutake seasons between 2004 and 2011 and is multi-sited with fieldwork in Canada, China, Finland, Japan, and the United States, as well as interviews in Denmark, Sweden, and Turkey. The book emerges from a unique collaboration that needs to be mentioned as it serves as an interesting model for others to consider: the Matsutake Worlds Research Group (Choy et al. 2009).1 In this book, Tsing provides a guide to the global narrative of matsutake (Tricholoma matsutake), as well as the collectives' approach to the multispecies collaborations that these mushrooms entail. For those who feel that Tsing sacrifices too much ethnographic detail in order to tell the narratives of varying scales, two forthcoming ethnographies by Matsutake Worlds collaborators promise greater depth: Michael Hathaway on the global trade of Yunnan around matsutake and Shiho Satuska on the science of Japanese matsutake. A multi-media website (www.matsutakeworlds.org), and a film, The Last Season (2014), by Sara Dosa also add further depth to this work. The basic story of matsutake is as follows. Surfacing as a delicacy in Japanese literary culture in the 8th century, matsutake exist in a symbiotic relationship with red pine trees that are able to make use of anthropogenic transformations of the environment. While becoming a central facet of Japanese life, ecologically matsutake was also intimately linked to Japan's deforestation from the Edo period to the early 20th century. However, with the rise of fossil fuels and the decline of forest use for firewood and charcoal, the forest became dominated by broadleaf trees, and pine trees and matsutake declined. By the mid-1970s, the cultural value of matsutake as bribes and gifts...

Auto-borradores: la antropología y la cultura difuminándose mutuamente

What kind of account is an ethnographic account? How does ethnography provide for the intermingling of social and empirical relations? This article provides a brief overview of the history of experimental science in the seventeenth century, where the concept of ‘relation’ was first coined both as a sociological descriptor (in ‘social relations’ parlance) and an analytical descriptor (to account for empirical phenomena). This dual capacity of relations to both ‘see’ and let themselves ‘be seen’ has played a fundamental role in the history of ethnography. Today, however, we are witnessing the rise of a variety of spaces of experimentation, in particular in contexts of so-called ‘free culture’ and ‘open culture’ practices, where the descriptive and the analytic are deliberately held in suspension and are said to work as ‘drafts’. What type of account and relation is a draft? And what kind of ethnographic genre might it inaugurate?

Concordia nostra: la libertas en la Germania de Tácito

Dentro de las obras de Tácito, la Germania ocupa un puesto singular por su género etnográfico, que no es común en la historiografía antigua. Pese a ello, es posible una lectura política en el ámbito romano en el sentido de apoyo a la figura de Trajano. El concepto libertas entre los germanos tiene varios significados: independencia, escaso desarrollo político, sumisión a la mujer. En relación con el mundo romano, la libertas debe ser compatible con el Príncipe, con las leyes y con la Concordia, entendida como ideal ciudadano.

Guidance on Performing Focused Ethnographies with an Emphasis on Healthcare Research

Focused ethnographies can have meaningful and useful application in primary care, community, or hospital healthcare practice, and are often used to determine ways to improve care and care processes. They can be pragmatic and efficient ways to capture data on a specific topic of importance to individual clinicians or clinical specialties. While many examples of focused ethnographies are available in the literature, there is a limited availability of guidance documents for conducting this research. This paper defines focused ethnographies, locates them within the ethnographic genre, justifies their use in healthcare research, and outlines the methodological processes including those related to sampling, data collection and maintaining rigour. It also identifies and provides a summary of some recent focused ethnographies conducted in healthcare research. While the emphasis is placed on healthcare research, focused ethnographies can be applicable to any discipline whenever there is a desire to explore specific cultural perspectives held by sub - groups of people within a context - specific and problem - focused framework.

From Initiate to Insider: Renegotiating Workplace Roles and Relations Using Staged Humorous Events

Like anthropologists entering the field as “outsiders,” initiates to organizations need to learn new cultures as they transition to “insiders” or veterans. Organizational research has identified the role that spontaneous humor plays in this transition. However, there has been little research into “staged” humorous events. At the same time, anthropological practice has identified various ethnographic research techniques designed to expedite entree to a social group or organization. However, there has been no research on the implications of a colleague delivering an ethnography of a group back to itself. In this article, I detail a strategy that combined humor and the ethnography genre: the delivery of a workplace ethnography back to colleagues. Through a post hoc analysis, I explore the significance of this staged humorous event. In particular, I identify the impact of the ethnographic genre, inclusive narratives, and ambiguity as devices (in addition to the satirical tone). Through these devices, I was ab...

Observation, Performance and Revolution: Exploring “The Political” in Visual Art and Anthropology

Following up on Marcus's seminal article on cinema and ethnography [1995] and weaving together anthropology, film theory and the analysis of four films—from the ethnographic, commercial, art and documentary genres—I argue that cinema can open a democratic and egalitarian space of observation of and interaction with “the other” and that anthropologists should approach their subjects in ways similar to some other filmmakers. But unlike Marcus, who considers films as metaphors of ethnography and advocates a posture of modernist distance, I look for juxtapositions between film and anthropology and, extending the Surrealist notion of “the double” across the fields of politics and aesthetics, I argue for a humanist anthropology, one that celebrates the dual nature of humans and cinema.

Your Hands. Extended: Performing Embodied Knowledge in Eastern Martial Arts

Your Hands. Extended: Performing Embodied Knowledge in Eastern Martial Arts

Exploring ethnographic genres and developing validity appraisal tools

The current paper discusses the historical evolvement of ethnography, identifies the various genres that have developed and argues that the development of ethnographic genres has been informed by a variety of epistemologies that have different aims, methods of data collection and analysis, and styles of presentation. The different genres of ethnography are systematised and categorised into three broad categories, namely classical ethnography, critical ethnography and interpretive ethnography. Each one of these genres are analysed and linked to the unique aims, methods of data collection and analysis, and styles of presentation that are congruent with the epistemology that informs it. Furthermore, it is asserted that different ethnographic genres require different criteria for judging their validity and these criteria should be contextualised and related to the epistemology that informed the specific genre, rather than using a set of unifying criteria for judging all ethnographic studies. Finally, this paper develops a series of steps that coherently link the epistemology, the aims, the data collection, the data analysis, the researcher’s representation in the study, and the presentation of the study for each genre so as to enable researchers and readers of ethnographic studies to accordingly assess the validity of each ethnographic genre.

Review: Exploring ethnographic genres and developing validity appraisal tools

Review: Exploring ethnographic genres and developing validity appraisal tools

Commentary: Reflections on Field Research and Professional Practice

Borrowing from the ethnographic genre that Van Maanen (1988) called the confessional tale, this commentary reflects on the political, ethical, and professional concerns that arise when critical intellectuals work in a government installation that maintains the nation’s nuclear stockpile. The authors suggest that the future is, as Haraway (1997) argued, ineluctably technological and that the best way to engage this cultural formation is from within, eschewing the easy politics of the science wars and articulating critical projects with the hard work of science. The modernist ideal of unconflicted ideological positions and research—stories of good guys and bad guys—is a disabling illusion. Practicing rhetoricians face a kind of “worldliness” that Hall (1989) described as a necessary counterpart to the “clean air” of theory. The authors invite their colleagues to join them in grappling with political and ethical analyses in a world of impure identity in which knowledge and power circulate promiscuously.

How does Monsanto do it? An ethnographic case study of an advertising campaign

The article is an ethnographic genre analysis of a British advertising campaign by the transnational corporation Monsanto in the summer of 1998, which attempted to assuage consumer concerns about genetically modified foods that were current at the time. Generically the campaign is an example of 'Greenwash' (Greer and Bruno 1996). The article describes the ethnographic process of gathering information on the ads from the company itself, from the advertising agency that produced the ads, the Advertising Standards Agency, which adjudicated on a number of complaints received about the campaign and, finally, from a selected sample of readers of the ads. The ads are analyzed in terms of their texture, by means of a textural mode analysis, which is described and illustrated in the article. Two key features of the campaign are the repeated thematic material, and the use of presupposition in expressing the ideological messages that the company is trying to inculcate. From readers' reactions it may be seen that the campaign was only very partially successful in its intentions.

Writing culture and writing fieldwork: The proliferation of experimental and experiential ethnographies

In this paper it is argued that the proliferation of ethnographic genres is the result of deliberate textual inventions by postmodernists, on the one hand, and a natural consequence of the method of participant‐observation by experiential ethnographers, on the other. This implies that experimental and experiential ethnographies are distinct approaches to doing and writing fieldwork and culture. Consequently, experiential ethnographies have to be reclaimed from the textualist lock‐in to which some experimental ethnographers have led the discipline. Distinguishing between the two types of ethnographies invites us also to puzzle about the role of rhetoric, empathy, and the dangers and uses of experimental and experiential ethnographies.

Realism and Reification in the Ethnographic Genre

This essay considers, from the vantage point of critical theory, some of the implications of an ethnographic genre of realism. Following Raymond Williams's discussion of the contemporary meanings of 'realism' in terms of attitudes towards the world and toward representations of it, I suggest that the current predicament of ethnography is to have purveyed a particular form of realism without awareness of the representational conventions with which it has done this, and foresee some reactions to any new awareness. To pursue this, I interpret Williams's discussion of the meanings of realism in the light of Benjamin's and Lukács's critiques of ideology in literary discourse. Then I discuss two recent analyses of ethnography as a genre, and suggest that ethnographic realism has developed in the specific sense of a reifying and critically impotent naturalism, and that as a scientific discourse this has paralleled literary realism rather as an inversion or a negation of it. The implicit concern of the two recent analyses with the historical development of the genre is pursued to suggest contradictions within and external to the formation of the ethnographic tradition, which further outline the general cultural hegemony of which it is a part.