Ethnography by surprise.
Exploring the Potentials of Experimental, Playful, Speculative and Improvised Fieldwork
Workshopleitung: Ruth Dorothea Eggel MA (Köln), Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Luggauer (Berlin), Dr. Jonas Tinius (Berlin)
In ethnographic modes of crafting knowledge, surprise, contingency, and chance are not undesired, or troubling; rather, they are embraced as fundamental to the research process. Following the open-endedness of everyday practices could be a shorthand for fieldwork itself (Malaby 2009). In fact, there is a parallel between certain practices within lived realities from the laboratory to the theatre or music studio with fieldwork in particular and cultural analysis in general. Bundled and expressed as serendipity, “the art of making an unthought finding” (Van Andel 1994), surprise, contingency, and chance form core elements of ethnography (Greverus 2002; Lindner 2012; Martinez 2018) that help us as ethnographers to make sense of the complexities of everyday lived experiences (McGranahan 2018). Taking surprise, unpredictability, and dazzle which Marilyn Strathern describes as the very ‘ethnographic moment’ (1999/2022) seriously and considering it as generative within cultural analytical endeavours opens up fieldwork towards experimental and hence playful, improvised, improvising, as well as speculative practices of engagement. In this workshop, we want to collect different such ‘ethnographic moments of unexpected generativity’. Drawing on conceptualisations of ethnography as experimental practices and unexpected forms of collaborations (Estalella & Sánchez Criado 2018 & 2023; Ballestero & Winthereik 2021) we want to reflect upon the generative potential and meaning of ‘ethnographic moments’ for knowledge production in the continuum of Empirical Cultural Analysis, European Ethnology, and Cultural Anthropology.
The workshop is organized in two parts. In the first part, we will discuss how concepts of the experimental (Rheinberger 1994), surprise (Takaragawa & Howe 2019), the improvisational (Dumit, O’Connor, Drum, and McCullough 2018), playful (Hamayon 2016; Heller 2013; Taylor 2022), and speculative (Stengers 2010) can become productive and advance ethnography as a mode of knowledge production by surprise. Additionally, we seek to facilitate critical reflection on the systemic inequities and asymmetric power differentials that affect the ways in which we are able to be surprised and engage in the creation of scientific knowledge in experimental ways. Ethnographic approaches to understanding serendipity and surprises are not purely coincidental but deployed intentionally and usually at least partially invited and rehearsed. In the second part of this workshop, we will shift from conceptual discussions to hands-on experimentation. Together we will explore and test ethnographic devices, which we ask participants to ‘bring along’, designed to invite surprise and foster serendipity to engage research partners in re-negotiations of cultural norms and interactively explore unfamiliar practices. Potential tools and approaches include games to spark playful engagements, encounters with more-than-human agents, or the more-than-humans themselves or acts of rehearsed improvisation as generative methods for unexpected social encounters. By combining conceptual reflection with practical experimentation, this workshop aims to foster a re-imagination for how ethnography can embrace surprise, fosters creativity, and uses the unexpected as a strategic and intentional tool. While simultaneously and critically interrogating the contexts, power dynamics and dangers of experimentation, we hope to inspire new approaches for an ethnography of the unexpected.
Practicalities
During the first hour of the workshop, we will be discussing the text “Introduction. Experimental Collaborations” (2018) by Tomás S. Criado & Adolfo Estalella and “Surprise” (2019) by Stephanie Takaragawa and Cymene Howe. In the second part of the workshop, we will test and reflect upon fieldwork devices, and participants are invited to bring their “own” devices! To receive the reading, for further information on possible fieldwork devices, and any other questions, please feel free to contact rde@colognegamelab.de, elisabeth.luggauer@hu-berlin.de, or jonas.tinius@hu-berlin.de!
