Before Picking Up the Camera: My Process to Ethnographic Film (2014) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Practices of Writing in Ethnographic Work
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2020
Although the practice of writing is key to the production of ethnographic knowledge, the topic remains understudied. Using material from our own ethnographic research in the fields of air travel and cultural heritage as data, we develop a reflexive account of ethnographic writing. We examine in detail the practices of jotting down observations, writing field notes, analytic annotating, ordering and rearranging, and drafting and revising papers. The article takes a praxeological stance, conceptualizing writing as a practice that is simultaneously cognitive, embodied, and material. Our analysis finds that writing influences and shapes all stages of ethnographic work, from orienting perception by setting an appropriate mode of attention to organizing the work itself, e.g., by keeping to-do lists. Writing does not simply communicate ethnographic insights, but—as a result of the activity of texts—it also generates them.
Practices of Writing in Ethnographic Work (2021)
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2021
Although the practice of writing is key to the production of ethnographic knowledge, the topic remains understudied. Using material from our own ethnographic research in the fields of air travel and cultural heritage as data, we develop a reflexive account of ethnographic writing. We examine in detail the practices of jotting down observations, writing field notes, analytic annotating, ordering and rearranging, and drafting and revising papers. The article takes a praxeological stance, conceptualizing writing as a practice that is simultaneously cognitive, embodied, and material. Our analysis finds that writing influences and shapes all stages of ethnographic work, from orienting perception by setting an appropriate mode of attention to organizing the work itself, e.g., by keeping to-do lists. Writing does not simply communicate ethnographic insights, but – as a result of the activity of texts – it also generates them.
Filming, Researching, Annotating
2021
We felt-and still feel-that this is an important issue, as certain forms of knowledge and knowledge generation appear to be disadvantaged in the current text-based system for publications. To get a direct impression of the tool and how it works, please visit our website: For more than 100 years film and video have been a crucial part of research in various fields like ethnography, sport science, and behavioral sciences, and now increasingly in the field of artistic and design research. With the rise of digitalization and video platforms, they start to unfold their potential as ways to generate new knowledge, share results, and challenge traditional, text-based forms of publication. Videos are present in every step of research, from video abstracts to data collection, data analysis, interpretation, publication, and the presentation of research. How will this scenario change the way we generate new knowledge? Can a video (or an annotated video) be the sole output of an academic investigation? How will it change the way we share and challenge new knowledge with other researchers and with the public? How can we build up trustworthiness within video-based research and how can we validate it? Research in fields such as art and design might be at the beginning of a long-term transformation from text-based to enhanced, multimedia practices of publication. The interplay of audiovisual material and language/text has already generated new formats such as video essays or annotated videos and will presumably lead to more formats that will reshape our thinking. Among others they will enable new forms of looking and reflecting on performative practices like theater, dance, and performance art, fostering particular modes of understanding tacit, embodied, and performative knowledges that may help research ers arrive at fresh insights. This calls for new ways of publishing that remix video and text, possibly altering hierarchies, turning video into the primary media and text into the secondary. Our intention was not only to develop a digital tool, but also to describe the entire research process under the premise that at the end an annotated video would be published. We hypothe-Research Video This model displays the research process as a sequence of transformed data (→ fig. 01). The original event (e.g. a performance) is transformed into a document (e.g., a video), which is transformed into a corpus of enriched data. Through analysis this big corpus is transformed into a selected corpus of reduced data, which then is the basis for the last transformation into a format of publication. Looking at the research process this way allowed us to be agnostic as to specific traditions of research: no matter what kind of data the research is dealing with, the underlying process stays the same. It also allowed us to trace back the impact of the anticipated output on every step of the transformation process. There are (at least) four transformations to be made (T1, T2, T3, T4) and we identified the according practices (→ fig. 02). We later added a fifth practice as it proved to be important in the use cases. Getting access to the field can be a crucial first step of research and requires a lot of sensibility and time. This book will roughly follow this sequence of practices in the model. Chapter 3 addresses with field access, Chapter 4 describes basic practices of video capture, and Chapter 5 covers important aspects of video editing. In Chapter 6 we present and discuss the practices of analyzing and reducing data and finally in Chapters 7, 8, and 9 we take a look at practices that lead to publication. In each of these chapters, we describe our solutions as found in applying the Research Video tool in the use cases. From Reader to Viewer? How will a person consume a Research Video? Of course, they will not be in the traditional role of a reader. On the other hand, they will not simply play the video as in a film performance. In fact the misunderstanding we most often encountered with the Research Video is the idea that the additional written information would display synchronously with the video, similar to subtitles. However, the amount of information necessary for scientific depth makes this impossible in principle, in our opinion. Reading or viewing the Research Video must therefore be thought of as a constant alternation between watching the video and reading the annotations.
Personalising Ethnography: On Memory, Evidence, and Subjectivity: The Writing & Learning Journey
By extending the notion of ‘academic’ writing to include heuristic, figurative, reflexive, and ‘messy’ textualities, I hope to escape the restrictions associated with essay, article, and thesis writing. Few students, it seems, ever attempt to make their ‘academic’ pieces creative or evocative in the same way they do their poems or stories; in fact, they usually ‘play dead’ when it comes to formal writing. Such is the tyranny of the conventional essay on artistic thinking and creative practice. Creative writers, too, seldom venture beyond the formal elements of genre or genre itself. By extending the notion of ‘writing’ to include oxymoronic genres and pictorial, stylistic, and hypertextual elements, I hope to extend the possibilities of text production beyond those usually afforded to students; that is, beyond essays and prose on the one hand, and poems and stories on the other. Various textual theories and practices have helped me in this process: picto-ideo-phonographic writing, autoethnography, messy texts, narrative inquiry, and poststructuralism. Such practices disrupt the ‘formalities’ of the essay and the ‘orthodoxies’ of the book. As Derrida (1976: 87) suggests, ‘What is thought today cannot be written according to the line and the book. . .’ No, but it can inspire us to think differently about how we construct texts and how we write prose (including how we arrange texts on the page).
Digital Video Cameras for Brainstorming and Outlining: The Process and Potential
Journal of language and literacy education, 2013
This Voices from the Field paper presents methods and participant-exemplar data for integrating digital video cameras into the writing process across postsecondary literacy contexts. The methods and participant data are part of an ongoing action-based research project systematically designed to bring research and theory into practice for adult, non-native speakers of English in pre-college writing courses. However, as can be seen in the participant video data, transcripts, and essay-writing data, the methods and theories can be applied beyond the current research and teaching context. Relatively recent concepts in learning, development, and semiotics, specifically our species-unique ability to read the intentions of others, which forms the basis for imitation, guide this approach. We intentionally provide online links to participant video and raw text data to take advantage of 21st Century digital data-sharing options, in order to facilitate transparency and public ownership of data...
Supporting Fieldwork Learning by Visual Documentation and Reflection
2018
Photos can be used as supplements to written fieldnotes and as sources for mediating reflection during fieldwork and analysis. As part of a field diary, photos can support the recall of experiences and a reflective distance to the events. Photography, as visual representation, can also lead to reflection on learning and knowledge production in the process of learning how to conduct fieldwork. Pictures can open the way for abstractions and hidden knowledge, which might otherwise be difficult to formulate in words. However, writing and written field notes cannot be fully replaced by photos and visual images. Techno-anthropology students at Aalborg University, in their course titled “Portfolio in Anthropological Work,” use photography and visual abstractions for different purposes during fieldwork. This article analyzes certain excerpts from students’ portfolio works in order to show the role played by photos in their learning process. For students, photography is an everyday documenta...
Replaying Our Process: Video/Art Making and Research
Qualitative Inquiry, 2018
This article charts a collaborative and multimodal inquiry practice between a professor and a doctoral student who met during a visual methods course, Doing Visual Research With Children and Youth. Our collaboration focused on blurring the border between art making and research as a means to analyze and re-represent photographs taken by children. In stepping outside our comfort zones as researchers, we shared the same preoccupation: How much creative/artistic license would we exert regarding our use of the children’s photographs? This article explores the making of a video montage in ways that created new ways of seeing and knowing that took us by surprise and helped us rethink the interplay between methodological and ethical imperatives. We hope the article invites other professors and students to fashion collaborations that support such creative experimentation and reflection.
From Field Notes, to Transcripts, to Tape Recordings: Evolution or Combination?
For researchers doing qualitative research, interviews are a commonly used method. Data collected through interviews can be recorded through field notes, transcripts, or tape recordings. In the literature, there is a debate regarding which of these recording methods should be used. There are issues of reliability, cost (time and money), loss of data, among others. Technology plays a pivotal role in this debate. Indeed, new technologies (e.g., direct coding) are often seen as potential replacements for older technologies (e.g., transcripts), which leads to a debate that is based on an evolution narrative (from field notes, to transcripts, to working from tape recordings). This article argues that a combination narrative should be considered where combination is better than substitution. Moreover, combining the advantages of field notes, transcripts, and working from tape recordings without accumulating each method’s disadvantages is possible because of new technology. To support this argument, two technological tools (OneNote and Smartpen) are presented as a way to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and economy of qualitative data management.
Teaching Linguistic Anthropology, 2022
Can you plan your research? Should you even try? The anthropological literature bursts with tales of events that were unexpected, conversations overheard, and accidents narrowly averted. A first-time ethnographer can be left with the impression that research is something that happens to you, and not something that you prepare for. Add to that linguistic anthropologists’ fondness for “naturally occurring speech,” and planning can seem like the enemy of good data collection. We argue that thoughtful preparation is actually the key to being “in the right place at the right time.” We first discuss identifying and gaining access to people who can help you with your project. Second, we address how to manage your time and energy. Lastly, we suggest ways to stay safe while leaving room for spontaneity. Exercises and case studies will help you identify effective methodologies for your research and explore if they are the best ones for your aims.
2023
Recent scholarship has proposed to approach written artefacts as ‘evolving entities’ (Friedrich and Schwarke 2016) and suggested frameworks for the analysis of their development over the course of time (Gumbert 2004). Such a stratigraphic analysis, aiming to identify the multiple ‘layers’ of written artefacts, has been successfully applied to artefacts produced in the course of a more or less clearly identifiable and planned ‘project’. However, the potential of the strat-igraphic approach remains largely untapped for written artefacts that are designed or ex-pected to accumulate notes over a given period of time such as diaries, notebooks, or logs and in which their production and development does not follow a predefined plan or necessarily proceed in an orderly fashion. Focusing on the multifarious manifestations of notes as material tools for the visualization, organization, and transmission of knowledge, the present workshop invites scholars working on written artefacts involved in practices of note-taking to address them as multilayered ob-jects. Taking into account not only the development of collections of notes over time, but also the different origins and (possibly) further uses of notes, it aims to uncover patterns in the practice(s) of note-taking and the artefacts resulting from such practices.