Collaborative Ethnography Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Collaborative methodological approaches, increasingly popular within anthropology, emphasize the need to build meaningful engagements with participants that include them more deeply as partners in the process of research, from inception... more

Collaborative methodological approaches, increasingly popular within anthropology, emphasize the need to build meaningful engagements with participants that include them more deeply as partners in the process of research, from inception to textual representation. In this article I engage with methodological debates about collaboration to argue for greater disciplinary and narrative openness about the modes of relational detachment and disconnection that emerge within fieldwork collaborations. Through a series of reflective fieldwork vignettes, I consider three types of collaborative detachment. These include how the diverse and competing relational obligations within fieldwork can shift collaboration into the terrain of collusion and complicity, how participants may demand a detached stance as a preferred mode of engagement, and how the conflicting effects of anthropological engagements on participants’ life projects may demand of us ethical modes of detachment. Through these examples, I argue for a more nuanced debate about the politics and ethics of detachment within collaborative anthropology.

This is the appendix to the book that I have written with my collaborator Liria Hernández. Our book, Writing Friendship: a Reciprocal Ethnography, is written in a very accessible style, with no references or academic quotations. In this... more

This is the appendix to the book that I have written with my collaborator Liria Hernández. Our book, Writing Friendship: a Reciprocal Ethnography, is written in a very accessible style, with no references or academic quotations. In this appendix I summarise for other scholars the hesitations and decisions involved in the process of creating and writing a reciprocal ethnographic work.

Este libro presenta un estado del arte sobre la investigación etnográfica en colaboración con niños, niñas, adolescente y jóvenes (en adelante, NNA y jóvenes) en cuatro países Latinoamericanos: Argentina, Brasil, Colombia y Ecuador.... more

Este libro presenta un estado del arte sobre la investigación etnográfica en colaboración con niños, niñas, adolescente y jóvenes (en adelante, NNA y jóvenes) en cuatro países Latinoamericanos: Argentina, Brasil, Colombia y Ecuador. Teniendo en cuenta que entre las décadas de los ochenta y noventa del siglo XX se ha producido un giro en los estudios sobre la infancia (Prout y James, 1997; James, 2007), la revisión de trabajos abarcó el período que se extiende entre 1995 y 2016.

Este dossier reúne trabajos que permiten comparar procesos de invisibilización y de reemergencia charrúa (Uruguay), selk’nam, tehuelche, rackülche y comechingón (Argentina). En los últimos años hemos utilizado la categoría reemergencia en... more

Este dossier reúne trabajos que permiten comparar procesos de invisibilización y de reemergencia charrúa (Uruguay), selk’nam, tehuelche, rackülche y comechingón (Argentina). En los últimos años hemos utilizado la categoría reemergencia en un sentido amplio, para referir a pueblos a los que los dispositivos hegemónicos declararon extintos —o en extinción— y que, en el presente, se organizan y participan en la arena pública como miembros de colectivos indígenas. A partir de estos casos analizamos los efectos de dispositivos estatales, científicos y religiosos, y reflexionamos sobre las herramientas teóricas y metodológicas que emergen en el diálogo entre académicos e indígenas (o descendientes, según las diferentes autoadscripciones). Entre las preguntas que guiaron las reflexiones se encuentran las siguientes: ¿Por qué optamos por hablar de reemergencia para referir a los casos de pueblos indígenas a los que los dispositivos hegemónicos extinguieron entre el siglo XIX y el XX y que hoy manifiestan su presencia en el espacio público? ¿Por qué elegimos reemergencia y no emergencia? ¿Cuáles son las diferencias entre reemergencia y resurgimiento (o resurgencia)? ¿Cómo dialoga la categoría que da nombre al dossier en el debate más amplio en torno a la etnogénesis? Estas preguntas emergen en el marco de un proyecto de etnografía colaborativa con los miembros del Consejo de la Nación Charrúa (CONACHA) de Uruguay; uno de los pocos países de América Latina que no ha ratificado el Convenio 169 de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT). Los ensayos fueron presentados en la mesa Reemergencia indígena en los países del Plata: Los casos de Uruguay y de Argentina, organizado por Mariela Eva Rodríguez y Gustavo Verdesio, en el II Simposio de la Sección de Estudios del Cono Sur de Latin American Studies Association (LASA), realizado en Montevideo en julio de 2017. Agradecemos a Leila Gómez la invitación para publicar los trabajos —ampliados y revisados— en la revista Conversaciones del Cono Sur N° 3, volumen 1, Magazine of the Southern Cone Studies Section (LASA).

Questa tesi si inserisce nel dibattito interdisciplinare sull'individuazione e la promozione di modelli di governance di rete capaci di migliorare la sostenibilità sociale, ambientale ed economica dei sistemi socio-ecologici.... more

Questa tesi si inserisce nel dibattito interdisciplinare sull'individuazione e la promozione di modelli di governance di rete capaci di migliorare la sostenibilità sociale, ambientale ed economica dei sistemi socio-ecologici. L'originalità della ricerca risiede nel tentativo di far dialogare linguaggi, teorie e pratiche dell'antropologia con quelli dell'analisi delle reti sociali e della scienza della complessità, nell'analizzare una rete di interazione tra comunità di pratiche della società civile. L'analisi si basa su un caso studio consistente nella rete di collaborazioni tra organizzazioni della società civile di Verona e sui materiali raccolti e prodotti durante un lavoro di campo prolungato.

A partir de mi experiencia de investigación con pueblos originarios que participan en un doble proceso de reemergencia y de resurgimiento indígena, en la Patagonia austral y en Uruguay, reflexionaré sobre un campo al que suelo referir... more

A partir de mi experiencia de investigación con pueblos originarios que participan en un doble proceso de reemergencia y de resurgimiento indígena, en la Patagonia austral y en Uruguay, reflexionaré sobre un campo al que suelo referir como "etnografía adjetivada". Argumento que este tipo de abordajes, además de acompañar los proyectos de las organizaciones con las que trabajamos, contribuye a mejorar el diseño y la implementación de las políticas públicas y a descolonizar la ciencia. Más precisamente, las intenciones de horizontalizar los saberes no solo desafían al positivismo científico, sino que también mejoran la calidad de nuestras investigaciones. Al combinar reflexión y acción, la etnografía adjetivada opera como herramienta para el cambio social. Me pregunto entonces ¿cómo se traducen los cambios terminológicos en nuestra práctica científica? En otras palabras, si bien hemos erradicado categorías coloniales de la jerga ¿en qué medida hemos aprendido a pensar y a actuar a partir de conceptos y posicionamientos que los grupos subalternizados nos proponen y, en algunos casos, nos exigen? ¿Qué tan permeables son nuestras agendas de investigación a los planteos que surgen en el trabajo de campo? ¿Cómo impacta la etnografía adjetivada en las subjetividades que participan en estos procesos?

This is a collaborative ethnography project with the Jalaris Aboriginal Corporation and Maya Haviland's Side By Side Community Projects. We worked with an intergenerational group of Aboriginal women from Saltwater, Freshwater, and Desert... more

This is a collaborative ethnography project with the Jalaris Aboriginal Corporation and Maya Haviland's Side By Side Community Projects. We worked with an intergenerational group of Aboriginal women from Saltwater, Freshwater, and Desert countries around the Kimberley in Western Australia on a book about their experiences with education. The book includes creative nonfiction stories, in-depth interviews, and black and white portraiture and archival images.

This article from the summer of 2013 issue of African Arts discusses the politics of representation around photographing Mardi Gras Indians, and how the House of Dance and Feathers, a small, community-based museum in the Lower Ninth Ward... more

This article from the summer of 2013 issue of African Arts discusses the politics of representation around photographing Mardi Gras Indians, and how the House of Dance and Feathers, a small, community-based museum in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, has served as a site of memory. Using in-depth interviews from Ronald W. Lewis, the director of the museum, photographers, and Mardi Gras Indians around the city, it discusses how photography is used in and outside the tradition, and how creating a catalogue with the House of Dance and Feathers became a collaborative ethnography in repatriation.

This article introduces the concept of carceral care as those public-facing "do-better" penal practices, policies, and material actions used to ward off future investigation of underlying institutional violences of carceral spaces. As a... more

This article introduces the concept of carceral care as those public-facing "do-better" penal practices, policies, and material actions used to ward off future investigation of underlying institutional violences of carceral spaces. As a model for denaturalizing carceral care, time, space, and the perpetuity of reform, it explores theories of deviant care, mutual aid, and QTBIPoC radical relationalism. It investigates how inhabiting deviance is a necessary care practice as modeled every day by queer bonds of survival, particularly from within the confines of carceral spaces. Based on relationships built over the last four years with trans women of color organizing inside a "male-designated" state prison in Corcoran, California, this article connects questions of deviant care as the refusal of the diagnosable and individuated self through queer black/indigenous feminist of color resistance and radical thought.

What happens when a commitment to collaborative ethnographic filmmaking runs up against a community’s ambivalence towards its own history? This paper provides an ethnohistorical account of the making of the film Please Don’t Beat Me,... more

What happens when a commitment to collaborative ethnographic filmmaking runs up against a community’s ambivalence towards its own history? This paper provides an ethnohistorical account of the making of the film Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!, exploring how colonial-era “police ethnographies” and contemporary communal politics shape the collaborative endeavor. The film was made in collaboration with Budhan Theatre, an activist theater troupe from the Chhara community in the Indian city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The Chhara are one of more than 198 communities labeled as “Criminal Tribes” by the British, a colonial legacy that still informs their interactions with the police. Inspired by the work of Jean Rouch, the film makes use of experimental ethnographic and cinematic techniques. These participation frameworks allowed the members of Budhan Theatre and their families to shape the structure and content of the film itself, a process sometimes at odds with the film’s ethnographic intent.

One central demand is that anthropology needs more collaborative authorship and symmetric engagement with ethnographic interlocutors and minoritized scholars (Kennemore & Postero 2021). Partly as an engagement with these calls, but also... more

One central demand is that anthropology needs more collaborative authorship and symmetric engagement with ethnographic interlocutors and minoritized scholars (Kennemore & Postero 2021). Partly as an engagement with these calls, but also due to changing requirements of funders, anthropologists today often participate in large interdisciplinary and transnational research teams. Yet, balanced collaboration and authorship are difficult, especially when pursued with international partners in the Global South and junior postdocs in the Global North. This essay interrogates the anthropological record in the JRAI as a way to contextualize this new push for anthropological collaboration. The selected articles offer comparative and critical lenses on anthropological collaboration by asking how decolonial perspectives fit within market-driven academic spaces, where neoliberal rules have dramatically impacted the ways in which academia operates.

Il panel si propone di discutere esperienze e/o progetti di etnografia collaborativa nell’indagine delle forme di relazionalità familiare nel mondo contemporaneo. Oggi più che mai l’antropologo è chiamato a giustificare in termini di... more

Il panel si propone di discutere esperienze e/o progetti di etnografia collaborativa nell’indagine delle forme di relazionalità familiare nel mondo contemporaneo. Oggi più che mai l’antropologo è chiamato a giustificare in termini di utilità il proprio lavoro e l’impegno che richiede alla partecipazione degli interlocutori (d’Orsi 2008). Da questa prospettiva l’etnografia collaborativa può rappresentare un valido contributo teoretico e un’efficace innovazione metodologica tali da rendere maggiormente proattiva la dimensione applicativa di un’antropologia impegnata a incalzare le questioni pubbliche e a restituire una scrittura fruibile anche da altri saperi (Rappaport 2008). ....

This autoethnographic duet is an artful inquiry about the tragedy of a beginning music teacher. A painful story about a music teacher and sexual allegations from an adolescent female, our composition blends music and story to transform... more

This autoethnographic duet is an artful inquiry about the tragedy of a beginning music teacher. A painful story about a music teacher and sexual allegations from an adolescent female, our composition blends music and story to transform understandings through creative engagement and push the boundaries to evoke visceral and emotional responses regarding suicide. Sociocultural issues draw deep reflection about wider political issues that arise for teachers who display difficulties with moral issues and misguided choices. The epiphany-epiphony (Gouzouasis, 2013) through story and music reveals the cultural irony of ideology and secrecy in professional misconduct. Unfortunately, in this circumstance, the outcome was catastrophic.

This paper describes a collaborative ethnography about political and pedagogical practices of the Movement of Peasant Women in Santa Catarina (Brazil). In particular, it investigates the educational potential of the agroecological... more

This paper describes a collaborative ethnography about political and pedagogical practices of the Movement of Peasant Women in Santa Catarina (Brazil). In particular, it investigates the educational potential of the agroecological practices and reflections developed by the movement, in order to rethink the "negated relation" between the peasants of European origin and the native population, into the social-political-cultural context of the State of Santa Catarina. After a brief reference to the background of the study about the educational practices of the social movements, the author presents her research and focuses on the political, ethical and methodological implications of an investigation with a social movement. How can the identification with the struggles of the social movement contribute to the research? In which way, is it possible to promote the reciprocity in all stages of the survey? Can the discussion about the researcher's interpretations with her interlocutors promote any non-individualistic modalities of ethnographic writing?

After almost a decade of austerity, and well within the fourth year of the migration crisis, Greek society has been persistently threatened by ‘Others’, internal and external. This contribution focuses on how the entanglement of the two... more

After almost a decade of austerity, and well within the fourth year of the migration crisis, Greek society has been persistently threatened by ‘Others’, internal and external. This contribution focuses on how the entanglement of the two crises morphs the contemporary modalities of racism and xenophobia in the country. Our aim is to employ the binaries of exclusion/inclusion to explore how the crises are negotiated, interchangeably and simultaneously – yet following correlating argumentations – to justify or even motivate hostile tendencies towards the ‘other’. In the dangerously delicate process of managing a crisis, the entanglement of finances and migration becomes further nuanced as the migrant is not only perceived to threaten a precarious economy but, mainly, a precarious identity. From a methodological perspective, we argue that the analysis on the effects of two related yet distinct crises by the authors results in a coinciding exploration of racism as a common effect. The benefit of this process is found in the constant exchange of insight and the duality of the analytical lens – either in the phase of collection or interpretation of data.

El colonialismo de colonos que se llevó a cabo en Uruguay y los procesos implicados en la constitución del Estado nación involucraron masacres, despojos, represiones y control de los pueblos originarios que habitaban el territorio. Las... more

El colonialismo de colonos que se llevó a cabo en Uruguay y los procesos implicados en la constitución del Estado nación involucraron masacres, despojos, represiones y control de los pueblos originarios que habitaban el territorio. Las narrativas hegemónicas que fundamentan la construcción de la nación uruguaya, por otra parte, han sido efectivas en ocultar los procesos de dominación y subalternización de los indígenas, así como en su invisibilización. Actualmente, sustentándose en la premisa que sostiene que "no hay indios", los mandatarios nacionales continúan negándose a ratificar el Convenio 169 de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT). A pesar de este contexto desfavorable, sin embargo, en las últimas dos décadas han ido cobrando visibilidad las luchas y los reclamos de colectivos conformados por personas que se autoadscriben como charrúas y "descendientes". Con el objetivo de derribar la representación simbólica de la extinción, estos colectivos llevan adelante proyectos y acciones que buscan conectar pasado y presente, así como también confrontar los discursos que borran la continuidad con sus ancestros. A partir de un proceso de investigación colaborativa entre académicos y charrúas, este trabajo propone analizar los modos en que los actuales procesos de reemergencia o resurgimiento indígena desafían las narrativas hegemónicas que forjaron la nación uruguaya como "blanca", "sin indios", y pone en discusión antiguos presupuestos esencialistas y racistas que no sólo niegan su presencia en el Uruguay contemporáneo, sino también sus derechos como pueblos preexistentes.

This autoethnographic duet is an artful inquiry about the tragedy of a beginning music teacher. A painful story about a music teacher and sexual allegations from an adolescent female, our composition blends music and story to transform... more

This autoethnographic duet is an artful inquiry about the tragedy of a beginning music teacher. A painful story about a music teacher and sexual allegations from an adolescent female, our composition blends music and story to transform understandings through creative engagement and push the boundaries to evoke visceral and emotional responses regarding suicide. Sociocultural issues draw deep re ection about wider political issues that arise for teachers who display di culties with moral issues and misguided choices. The epiphany-epiphony (Gouzouasis, 2013) through story and music reveals the cultural irony of ideology and secrecy in professional misconduct. Unfortunately, in this circumstance, the outcome was catastrophic.

Este ensayo es fruto de una experiencia de investigación etnográfica de carácter colaborativo y experimental, junto a técnicos de un Centro Juvenil ubicado en las proximidades de Casavalle, Montevideo. A partir de ejercicios de mapeo... more

Este ensayo es fruto de una experiencia de investigación etnográfica de carácter colaborativo y experimental, junto a técnicos de un Centro Juvenil ubicado en las proximidades de Casavalle, Montevideo. A partir de ejercicios de mapeo colectivo, recorridas y análisis de otras fuentes de información, procuramos generar conocimien-to sobre las condiciones contemporáneas de la periferia urbana, a un tiempo que se plantea una línea de intervención con la población, en particular con los jóvenes residentes en estas zonas. En primer lugar se contextualiza la investigación, explicitando las condiciones de una “revisita etnográfica” a Casavalle y su potencial conceptualizador. Luego, se profundiza desde una “experiencia oblicua” la conceptualización del territorio en cuestión, desde el caso singular proyectando diferentes niveles y sentidos de generalización en relación al habitar urbano contemporáneo. Posteriormente se pasa a una propuesta de intervención ligada a las características distintivas del fenómeno, lo que a un tiempo nos permite profundizar en la conceptualización del habitar y los procesos de subjetivación, la prácticas de diseño y comunicación, apelando a la emergencia de “sujetos cartografantes” desde un “activismo expresivo”. Finalmente, se concluye poniendo el acento en reflexionar sobre los modelos de ciudad que están en juego principalmente desde las políticas sociales y otros agentes, afirmando la necesidad de concebir formas híbridas de “rurbanidad” e intentando superar la precariedad característica de una forma de habitar históricamente reproductora de exclusión y vulneración de derechos.

A host of ambient music pieces produced in Iran appeared on social media around 2010. Against all odds, these works started to gradually form a small ‘scene’ in the Iranian capital until around 2013. This scene has since been represented... more

A host of ambient music pieces produced in Iran appeared on social media around 2010. Against all odds, these works started to gradually form a small ‘scene’ in the Iranian capital until around 2013. This scene has since been represented publicly and legally inside the country. It is also well known within experimental electronic music circles outside the country. In a politically forced absence of many art/music forms in the public domain since the 1979 revolution, the emergence and burgeoning of such an ‘avant-garde’ scene is significant. This article argues how the scene’s aesthetics, in the broadest sense of the term, can be understood as a locus for crystallisation of a concurrent resistance against and embodiment of an invasive, yet ambiguous, form of ethical-moral-legal control. This text also makes a case for how an interdisciplinary integration of ethnographic fieldwork within a practice-based research context in music/sound and anthropology, can contribute towards formation of composite methodologies that are beneficial to both fields.

This paper explores practices and imaginations of space among young people in postwar Beirut. Relying on an innovative collaborative-mapping methodology, it shifts the focus from the traditional analysis of the city at war, centred on... more

This paper explores practices and imaginations of space among young people in postwar Beirut. Relying on an innovative collaborative-mapping methodology, it shifts the focus from the traditional analysis of the city at war, centred on anxious urbanism, toward spatial dynamics of conflict transformation. It deploys an ethnographic approach to shed light on everyday perceptions of the urban landscape among a group of students. Their visions of space are composed along conventional tropes, comparable to Bakhtin's notion of chronotopes: images that connect temporal and spatial relationships to describe their ways of inhabiting the city. These images reveal that their experiences of space are not produced exclusively in relation to the memory of wartime topographies and politico-religious territories. Rather, they are also the result of their personal trajectories and agency. For these young people, ordinary encounters inspire a reframing of the political geography of the everyday, including renewed narratives on coexistence and strategies of circumventing the sense of spatial confinement they inherited from the war. The analysis shows that the experiences of these students stand in sharp contrast with the dominant image of unbending intergroup boundaries in postwar Lebanon. Young people's abilities to navigate, negotiate and rediscover social encounters in a complex, changing environment call attention to the transformative power of micro-situations in postwar contexts. Through highlighting their original lifestyles and ways of thinking, this paper argues that the city, far from only symbolizing and reproducing conflicts, is also the place where mundane practices and imaginations reinvent the social fabric.

A partir de conversaciones entre dos estudiantes de la licenciatura en antropología —integrantes del Consejo de la Nación Charrúa (CONACHA) de Uruguay— y dos antropólogas sociales —de Brasil y Argentina— reflexionaremos sobre las... more

A partir de conversaciones entre dos estudiantes de la licenciatura en antropología —integrantes del Consejo de la Nación Charrúa (CONACHA) de Uruguay— y dos antropólogas sociales —de Brasil y Argentina— reflexionaremos sobre las políticas de la memoria y los procesos de subjetivación política en relación con los siguientes puntos: (a) paradojas de un Estado que garantiza un amplio abanico de derechos, pero se rehúsa a ratificar el Convenio 169 de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT) bajo la premisa de que en 1831 —en Salsipuedes— murieron los “últimos charrúas”, (b) negación, borramiento o silenciamiento del genocidio fundacional y su continuidad a través de dispositivos analizados en el marco del colonialismo de colonos, y (c) desafíos de la etnografía colaborativa y la autoetnografía. Con la intención de aportar nuestras reflexiones nos preguntamos: ¿Por qué en Uruguay las políticas de la memoria son inmunes a las demandas de los pueblos originarios? ¿Cómo repercute tal ausencia en las subjetividades que integran los colectivos charrúas? ¿Cuáles son las estrategias políticas de las memorias subalternizadas en contextos de reemergencia y resurgimiento indígena?

Overhead conversations between strangers can seem to capture the zeitgeist of a city...

This paper presents challenges and life strategies of highly educated single mothers in Lithuania. My ethnography traces the impact on strategies of remaining in a country where exit strategies – alcoholism, suicide, emigration – prevail... more

This paper presents challenges and life strategies of highly educated single mothers in Lithuania. My ethnography traces the impact on strategies of remaining in a country where exit strategies – alcoholism, suicide, emigration – prevail and seem as an " easier " option. It is a study concerned with the relationship between precarity, single motherhood, social reproduction and everyday living. I focus on precarious living conditions, social isolation and stigmatization, unappreciated and highly gendered care-work. Based on collaborative ethnographic fieldwork material, the paper presents the micro-level attempts to negotiate what it means to be a lone caretaker , to revalorize and challenge the hegemonic narratives of individual strength and success.

Link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1aojo_dwXqluBE Collaboration in qualitative research is increasingly encouraged and rewarded in many national and global funding schemes. Collaboration by scholars in (radically) different disciplines... more

Link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1aojo_dwXqluBE
Collaboration in qualitative research is increasingly encouraged and rewarded in many national and global funding schemes. Collaboration by scholars in (radically) different disciplines using different methods is becoming common, however less attention is given to collaboration using shared approaches across closely-related disciplines. This paper considers the ethnographic insights of four researchers from different (but related) disciplinary backgrounds who conducted collaborative fieldwork in one site-West Coast Park (WCP) in Singapore-over two periods of fieldwork. We conducted an experimental collaboration to study emotions, affect and mundane space through sharing and comparing our interpretations of everyday life in WCP. We ask, how do researchers capture or speak to the affective properties circulated during collaboration? Second, how should researchers approach the affective properties of mundane activities in space? Our paper develops a four-fold 'affective inventory' consisting of: a) multiple-attunements to the (un)familiar; b) attentiveness to affective affordances and their governing effects; c) attentiveness to involuntary affective charges, and; d) awareness of how our diverse affective biographies affect the (im)perceptibility of affect. We propose that such an inventory functions as a valuable guidepost in navigating collaborative ethnographies, especially when exploring emotions and affect.

As the Covid-19 pandemic gripped the world, many became physically isolated and disconnected. During this time TikTok became the most downloaded app of the year, quickly becoming a global sensation. This article offers an initial... more

As the Covid-19 pandemic gripped the world, many became physically isolated and disconnected. During this time TikTok became the most downloaded app of the year, quickly becoming a global sensation. This article offers an initial exploration of two key themes relating to the app and begins situating what made the app popular during an unprecedentedly tumultuous period. To achieve this, we consider algorithmic intimacy and representations of identity as a starting point for deeper engagement with TikTok and what makes it unique to other social media platforms. This article first explores the ways in which the TikTok algorithm captures and reflects forms of user identity through the For You Page (FYP). This is then explored in relation to the forms of intimacy, which are enabled through the algorithm both in relation to user and platform and user relationships with other users and non-users. This article describes innovative and unique collaborative ethnographic methods, which make the space between user and screen methodologically viable. Where more conventional anthropological methods would struggle, this collaborative approach also draws attention to potential ethics of care toward researchers operating in times of pandemic and the feelings of isolation and anxiety, which frequently accompany the 'lone ethnographer'.

Directly affecting the drinking water of over 300,000 people in nine counties of West Virginia, the January 9, 2014 chemical spill in the Elk River at Charleston was labeled by The New York Times as " one of the most serious incidents of... more

Directly affecting the drinking water of over 300,000 people in nine counties of West Virginia, the January 9, 2014 chemical spill in the Elk River at Charleston was labeled by The New York Times as " one of the most serious incidents of chemical contamination of drinking water in American history. " Organized as a forum of informal presentations and interactive dialog, this roundtable session explores the work of several participants in a collaborative oral history project sponsored by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and funded by the Oral History Association's Emerging Crisis Research Fund. We will describe partnerships created with other researchers, scholars, documentarians, writers, students, activists and other citizens as the project continues to emerge. Since this collective project began in earnest in the months following this catastrophic spill, several other unfolding disasters involving contaminated drinking water on a mass scale have been revealed—including, most recently, the case of widespread lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan. Against the sordid backdrop of these manifestly harmful events, as well as in the milieu of widespread concern for short and long-term impacts of hydro-fracking across the United States, this roundtable will allow for broad consideration of far-reaching social, economic, and health effects of toxic exposure as expressed in the accounts and everyday lives of local people. A physician recounts learning about the spill very late in the day and having to evacuate the hospital. An attorney and longtime activist says that he suddenly feels as though he's living in an unfamiliar world. A pregnant woman describes the fear and unease she carries along with her baby. A home health care worker questions how this threat could have gone unnoticed for decades. A small business owner wonders if he and his family would be better off someplace else. Seemingly having to pick between business interests and jobs, on the one hand, and overall quality of life and public safety, on the other, communities like Charleston may find themselves painfully torn as they seek to find a way forward in a world of imperatives shaped by powerful

This catalog is the result of the Lower Kenai Peninsula Sugpiaq Material Culture and Heritage Preservation Project funded by Museums Alaska. It contains over 3,200 items from the Pratt Museum’s cultural collections. While each of these... more

This catalog is the result of the Lower Kenai Peninsula Sugpiaq Material Culture and Heritage Preservation Project funded by Museums Alaska. It contains over 3,200 items from the Pratt
Museum’s cultural collections. While each of these items is related to the Sugpiaq history of the region, they vary greatly in their age, type, and significance for Sugpiaq people.