Abstract

What if rather than conceptualizing it as a ‘method’ ethnography was to be appreciated as an act of anthropological invention? Already decades ago Roy Wagner proposed that more than discovering the cultures they were studying anthropologists ‘invent’ them. In his usage, the anthropological invention happens at a conceptual level: in the process of analysis, when the anthropologist is relating his ethnographic experience in textual form. Our fieldwork experiences might allow us to probe into another version of invention: one that happens in the empirical encounter, when anthropologists are engaged in relating with others and devising the conditions for their inquiry to be possible. Ethnography, we would like to advance, is a twofold act of invention that happens when constructing relations: in the field and out of the field.

Any anthropologist undertaking fieldwork must have surely faced the challenging circumstance of having to forge relations with complete strangers. Resorting to forms of sociality already known as well as guides and norms of learnt methods is never enough, since social life tends to overflow its own scripts and anthropologist have always to resort to their own creativity and invention in the field. Rarely though is the figure of invention acknowledged as integral to the ethnographic practice, and fieldwork is never conceptualized in those terms. And yet, alongside the traditional techniques (interview, field diary, observation, etc.) ethnography is always full of grand and minor gestures that make it possible to inquire with others. We thus propose to consider ethnography not as a method but as an act of invention of the very possibility of anthropological inquiries in the field.

This has an important corollary, affecting how we might approach its teaching and learning. Rather than manuals or handbooks of methods––where the invention integral to the field practices of anthropologists tends to be systematically obviated–perhaps ethnography requires a different mode of compiling its inventive condition. This is something that we belief the present moment demands from anthropologists, a situation requiring from us a different care of knowledge: one that looks after the inventiveness of our modes of inquiry because they open the possibility for future inquiries.

About the speakers

Dr. Adolfo Estalella is Assistant Professor (Profesor Ayudante Doctor) at the Department of Social Anthropology and Social Psychology Department, Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). His research interests follow three topics threaded by a common issue: the investigation of the epistemic transformations of our contemporary taking place in the city, the Internet, and anthropology itself. For over a decade I have been investigating practices of city-making of citizen and activist groups, I have paid attention to practices of material intervention, documentary production and legal invention. His professional practice as anthropologist has led him to explore different registries in the form of artistic and cultural projects: he has recently curated the exhibition 'Madrid, a medias' (2017), and has authored and produced a show that hybridizes rap and anthropology, 'Pelea Villana' (2019). More in http://www.estalella.eu

Dr. Tomás Criado is Senior Researcher at the Chair of Urban Anthropology and co-coordinator of the Stadtlabor of Multimodal Anthropology of the Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt-University of Berlin. Working at the crossroads of Anthropology and STS, he has developed a particular concern around how bodily diversity – paying special attention to disabled and older people – comes to matter in the knowledge, material and care politics of participatory city-making.

He is currently working on a book project on these topics, drawing from ethnographic and archival materials from the city of Barcelona as well as his experiments in architectural design studio projects in Germany, tentatively titled An Uncommon City: Bodily Diversity and the Activation of Possible Urbanisms. In his work he has also been experimenting with different forms of public engagement, ethnography and pedagogy. He has recently co-edited Experimental Collaborations: Ethnography through Fieldwork Devices (Berghahn, 2018, with Adolfo Estalella) and Re-learning design. Pedagogic experiments with STS in design studio courses (DISEÑA, 2018, with Ignacio Farías).