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The Ethnographic Effect: Imagining a Next Generation of Methodological Possibilities II

Fri, September 1, 2:00 to 3:30pm, Sheraton Boston, Floor: 3, Fairfax A

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

STS scholarship draws on two distinct methodological imaginaries when considering how it produces knowledge. On the one hand there are detailed, meticulous and somewhat prescriptive guidelines to data collection, production and analyses sanctioned by particular scholarly communities. On the other hand, we find theoretically innovative descriptions of results based on methodological tactics that privilege unruly, creative and improvisational approaches. This panel invites scholars who wish to explore the space in between these two families of methodological approaches. It begins from the assumption that while academic knowledge production depends on methods and theories, unruliness and creativity are intrinsic to their emergence. We hope to recuperate the notion of the exercise as an embodied space of rediscovery while excising from it the idea of “mastery.” Whether being carefully designed or invented on the fly, exercises unleash intuition, invention and recuperation of generative traditions. Exercises enable the conditions for the ethnographic effect, which we take to be unexpected journeys with our materials after they have been generated. We invite scholars who have developed their own exercises to discuss the theoretical and political underpinnings of their thinking and doing. We will focus on the ‘mechanics’ of their inventions as well as on how their contributions build upon, expand, interrupt or redirect existing ideas. Recognizing that the promise of mastery is misleading and that methods are both generic and discovered anew each time they are performed, we open a space to consider practicalities and politics of methodological creativity and analytical innovation.

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