Ethnographic Boundaries: An Anthropological Approach in Three Creative Experiments
No. 47 (2022-04-01)Author(s)
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Francisco MartínezTallinna Ülikool - Eesti Kunstiakadeemia, Estonia
Abstract
The futures of ethnography revolve around how we approach the boundaries of ethnographic practice and the anthropological discipline. Such an approach can be pursued by posing new kinds of questions and objects of study, with an approach to what science has often left unexamined or unsaid. It can also be made possible by means of methodological innovations, that connect techniques to investigate hitherto separate social relations and build devices to intervene in the field. This article explores the latter option by proposing an approach to creative ways of understanding and experiencing ethnographic practice. It presents a reflection of methodological alternatives through three methodological cases: exhibition, ethnographic novel, and performative installation. Interested in rethinking the boundaries of the discipline, this article offers new ethnographic configurations and forms of anthropological knowledge that go beyond academia. It concludes that, to do so, we must expand the epistemological and relational tools of ethnographic work, and reconsider how our work engages in public discussions. The boundary approach —its epistemology and its limen— is, therefore, a methodological and personal exercise.
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