I earned my M.A. in Communication in 1999 and my Ph.D. in Sociology in 2004—both from Washington State University. My dissertation was an ethnography of the occupational culture of professors, and focused on the experience of self-authenticity in the context of professorial work. I joined Royal Roads University in 2005 and became Professor and Canada Research Chair in 2011.
Over three years of travel across ten Canadian UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, Inhabited int... more Over three years of travel across ten Canadian UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, Inhabited introduces us to the individuals, communities, and families who live there and invites us to re-imagine our connection to wild ecosystems.
Inhabited takes us on a journey to Kluane, Nahanni, Gros Morne, Wood Buffalo, Miguasha, Waterton Lakes, and Rockies National Park, as well as Joggins Fossil Cliffs, Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, Dinosaur Provincial Park and shows us the interdependent relations of nature and culture.
Nine artisans on remote Gabriola Island reveal the differences between mass manufactured and auth... more Nine artisans on remote Gabriola Island reveal the differences between mass manufactured and authentic locally handmade through intimate portraits of their work and lifestyle.
Low and Slow follows seaplane pilots at work throughout coastal British Columbia, exploring their... more Low and Slow follows seaplane pilots at work throughout coastal British Columbia, exploring their passion, skill, knowledge of place, and teachnologies.
John Urry's ideas and observations on mobility have been profoundly inspirational throughout my c... more John Urry's ideas and observations on mobility have been profoundly inspirational throughout my career. In this video, voiced by the late John Urry himself, some of his thoughts reverberate in my mind and in the landscapes I travel through. This video was created to accompany an essay written in John Urry's memory, forthcoming in a book edited by Mimi Sheller, Ole B. Jensen, and Sven Kesselring.
This video outlines the scope and agenda of public ethnography and how and why to make research p... more This video outlines the scope and agenda of public ethnography and how and why to make research popular.
A film about people who have chosen to build their lives around renewable energy, with beautiful,... more A film about people who have chosen to build their lives around renewable energy, with beautiful, inspiring, and often challenging results. View at: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lifeoffgrid
The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography reviews and expands the field and sco... more The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography reviews and expands the field and scope of sensory ethnography by fostering new links amongst sensory, affective, more-than-human, non-representational, and multimodal sensory research traditions and composition styles. From writing and film to performance and sonic documentation, the handbook re-imagines the boundaries of sensory ethnography and posits new possibilities for scholarship conducted through the senses and for the senses.
Sensory ethnography is a trans-disciplinary research methodology focused on the significance of all the senses in perceiving, creating, and conveying meaning. Drawing from a wide variety of strategies that involve the senses as a means of inquiry, objects of study, and forms of expression, sensory ethnography has played a fundamental role in the contemporary evolution of ethnography writ large as a reflexive, embodied, situated, and multimodal form of scholarship. The handbook dwells on subjects like the genealogy of sensory ethnography, the implications of race in ethnographic inquiry, opening up ethnographic practice to simulate the future, using participatory sensory ethnography for disability studies, the untapped potential of digital touch, and much more.
This is the most definitive reference text available on the market, and is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in anthropology, sociology and the social sciences, and will serve as a state-of-the-art resource for sensory ethnographers worldwide.
This chapter introduces the subject of the book: mobilities and immobilities in/of remote places.... more This chapter introduces the subject of the book: mobilities and immobilities in/of remote places. Beginning with a basic definition of remoteness, the chapter goes on to conceptualize remote not as a physical condition but as a relational outcome of mobility constellations. More precisely, remoteness is approached as a tension between overlapping dynamics that simultaneously make it and unmake it. Remoteness is thus the emergent outcome from the interaction between the connections intended to extinguish it and the disconnections-either intentional or unintended-that end up reproducing it. From this perspective the focus shifts to understanding how a place and its residents practice, experience, and
People are key elements of wild places. At the same time, human entanglements with wild ecologies... more People are key elements of wild places. At the same time, human entanglements with wild ecologies involve extractivism, the growth of resource-based economies, and imperial-colonial expansion, activities that are wreaking havoc on our planet.
Through an ethnographic exploration of Canada’s ten UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, Inhabited reflects on the meanings of wildness, wilderness, and natural heritage. As we are introduced to local inhabitants and their perspectives, Phillip Vannini and April Vannini ask us to reflect on the colonial and dualist assumptions behind the received meaning of wild, challenging us to reimagine wildness as relational and rooted in vitality. Over the three years they spent in and around these sites, they learned from Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples about their entanglements with each other and with non-human animals, rocks, plants, trees, sky, water, and spirits. The stories, actions, and experiences they encountered challenge conventional narratives of wild places as uninhabited by people and disconnected from culture and society. While it might be tempting to dismiss the idea of wildness as outdated in the Anthropocene era, Inhabited suggests that rethinking wildness offers a better - if messier - way forward.
Part geography and anthropology, part environmental and cultural studies, and part politics and ecology, Inhabited balances a genuine love of nature’s vitality with a culturally responsible understanding of its interconnectedness with more-than-human ways of life.
The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video is a state-of-the-art volume ... more The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video is a state-of-the-art volume which encompasses the breadth and depth of the field of ethnographic film and video-based research. With more and more researchers turning to film and video as a key element of their projects, and as research video production becomes more practical due to technological advances as well as the growing acceptance of video in everyday life, this critical volume supports young researchers looking to develop the skills necessary to produce meaningful ethnographic films and videos, and serves as a comprehensive resource for social scientists looking to better understand and appreciate the unique ways in which film and video can serve as ways of knowing and as tools of knowledge mobilization.
Comprised of 31 chapters authored by some of the world’s leading experts in their respective fields, the book’s contributors synthesize existing literature, introduce the historical and conceptual dimensions of the field, illustrate innovative methodologies and techniques, survey traditional and new technologies, reflect on ethics and moral imperatives, outline ways to work with people, objects, and tools, and shape the future agenda of the field. With a particular focus on making ethnographic film and video, as opposed to analysing or critiquing it, from a variety of methodological approaches and styles, the Handbook provides both a comprehensive introduction and up-to-date survey of the field for a vast variety of audio-visual researchers, such as scholars and students in sociology, anthropology, geography, communication and media studies, education, cultural studies, film studies, visual arts and related social science and humanities. As such, it will appeal to a multidisciplinary and international audience, and features a dynamic, forward-thinking, innovative, and contemporary focus oriented toward the very latest developments in the field, as well as future possibilities.
Ethnography and qualitative research methodology in general have witnessed a staggering prolifera... more Ethnography and qualitative research methodology in general have witnessed a staggering proliferation of styles and genres over the last three decades. Modes and channels of communication have similarly expanded and diversified. Now ethnographers have the opportunity to disseminate their work not only through traditional writing but also through aural, visual, performative, hypertext, and many diverse and creative multimodal documentation strategies. Yet, many ethnographers still feel insufficiently proficient with these new literacies and opportunities for knowledge mobilization, and they therefore still limit themselves to traditional modes of communication in spite of their desire for innovation. As university-based, community-driven and politically mandated agendas for broader knowledge transfer keep increasing worldwide, the demand for public scholarship continues to grow. Arguing for the need to disseminate innovative ethnographic knowledge more widely and more effectively, this book outlines practical strategies and tools for sharing ethnographic and qualitative research through widely accessible media such as magazines, trade books, blogs, newspapers, video, radio, and social media. Drawing from practical experiences and hands-on lessons, Doing Public Ethnography provides social scientists across all disciplines with concrete tactics for mobilizing knowledge beyond the academic realm.
Wilderness provides a multidisciplinary introduction into the diverse ways in which we make sense... more Wilderness provides a multidisciplinary introduction into the diverse ways in which we make sense of wilderness: how we conceptualise it, experience it, interact with, and imagine it. Drawing upon key theorists, philosophers, and researchers who have contributed important knowledge to the topic, this title argues for a relational and process based notion of the term and understands it as a keystone for the examination of issues from conservation to more-than-human relations.
The text is organized around themed chapters discussing the concept of wilderness and its place in the social imagination, wilderness regulation and management, access, travel and tourism, representation in media and arts, and the use of wilderness for education, exploration, play, and therapy, as well as its parcelling out in parks, reserves, or remote "wastelands". The book maps out the historical transformation of the idea of wilderness, highlighting its intersections with notions of nature and wildness and teasing out the implications of these links for theoretical debate. It offers boxes that showcase important recent case studies ranging from the development of adventure travel and eco-tourism to the practice of trekking to the changing role of technology use in the wild. Summaries of key points, further readings, Internet-based resources, short videos, and discussion questions allow readers to grasp the importance of wilderness to wider social, cultural, political, economic, historical and everyday processes.
Wilderness is designed for courses and modules on the subject at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels. The book will also assist professional geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, environmental and cultural studies scholars to engage with recent and important literature on this elusive concept.
In Popular Culture and Everyday Life Phillip Vannini and Dennis Waskul have brought together a va... more In Popular Culture and Everyday Life Phillip Vannini and Dennis Waskul have brought together a variety of short essays that illustrate the many ways that popular culture intersects with mundane experiences of everyday life. Most essays are written in a reflexive ethnographic style, primarily through observation and personal narrative, to convey insights at an intimate level that will resonate with most readers. Some of the topics are so mundane they are legitimately universal (sleeping, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, etc.), others are common enough that most readers will directly identify in some way (watching television, using mobile phones, playing video games, etc.), while some topics will appeal more-or-less depending on a reader’s gender, interests, and recreational pastimes (putting on makeup, watching the Super Bowl, homemaking, etc.). This book will remind readers of their own similar experiences, provide opportunities to reflect upon them in new ways, as well as compare and contrast how experiences relayed in these pages relate to lived experiences. The essays will easily translate into rich and lively classroom discussions that shed new light on a familiar, taken-for-granted everyday life―both individually and collectively.
At the beginning of the book, the authors have provided a grid that shows the topics and themes that each article touches on. This book is for popular culture classes, and will also be an asset in courses on the sociology of everyday life, ethnography, and social psychology.
Myriad lines surround our day-to-day lives, exiting and entering our homes. Wires connect to elec... more Myriad lines surround our day-to-day lives, exiting and entering our homes. Wires connect to electricity posts which power and heat our dwellings. Cables hook us to telephone and internet networks. Other lines stretch the world closer to us and our homes closer to the world: paved driveways link us with roads and highways, mains tap us into common water reserves and flow into municipal sewers, satellite beams reach into the atmosphere to download television signals into our living rooms. Together these lines—and possibly many others—constitute extensive and powerful webs of material and cultural significance in which our lives are suspended. These webs are the grids upon which society is pegged, the grids through which our material and social relations are entangled.
Not everyone, however, is reliant on these grids. People who—for a variety of motives—have spun alternative webs have come to know their lifestyle as “off-the-grid.” Off-the-grid dwelling refers to ways of living marked by disconnection from the infrastructural assemblages (or grids) that provide societies with the potential for power, light, and speed.
Grids of light, speed, and power can make our life comfortable and convenient but they are also troublesome companions. Grids deeply shape social relations and entrench them in differential access to power. In light of this, off-the-grid dwelling has recently emerged as an oppositional (but often negotiated and contradictory) everyday life practice. By delinking from one or more grids, an individual, group, or community needs to reinvent a different way of life and practice a different way of living.
Couched in cultural studies, cultural geography, and cultural sociology, this book aims to uncover the day-to-day practice off-grid living across Canada in order to understand why and how a person or community chooses to live off-grid; how off-the-grid dwellers cope with a world increasingly governed by the grid logic of light, power, and speed; what distinguishes off-grid dwellers' technologies and material cultures; how they accomplish comfort and convenience in their everyday life; and in what ways off-the-grid dwelling constitutes a sustainable, environmentally and culturally, lifestyle practice. In order to document the diversity of ways of life off-the-grid, the book unfolds as a series of ethnographic narratives focusing on individuals and groups who dwell in households and/or communities removed from roads, electricity, sewage, garbage collection, natural gas pipelines, water mains, telephone, internet, and television.
In addition to shedding light on off-grid lifestyles, however, this book prompts us to reflect on often taken-for-granted aspects of modern living. It aims to shows us what it means and what resources it takes to do the things we do every day: from bathing and washing and cleaning to cooking and refrigerating, from heating to cooling, from growing and hunting food to disposing of it in garbage cans and toilets, from switching on the light to flicking on appliances.
"Non-representational theory (or as it is sometimes referred to, “more-than-representational” the... more "Non-representational theory (or as it is sometimes referred to, “more-than-representational” theory) is one of the contemporary moment’s most influential theoretical perspectives within social and cultural theory.
And yet, it is often poorly understood. This is in part because of its complexity, but in large part also because of its limited treatment in few volumes chiefly dedicated to it. Indeed anyone wishing to better understand non-representational theory today has limited choices and is therefore left with a lot of interrogatives. Amongst the most important questions left unanswered are questions of method. All social and cultural theories—if they are to be proven useful—need to be applicable to the scopes of data analysis and representation. In other words, theories must be useful to researchers keen on utilizing concepts and analytical frames for their personal interpretive purposes. How useful non-representational theory is, in this sense, is yet to be understood. This book tackles this very subject and outlines a variety of ways in which non-representational ideas can influence the research process, the very value of empirical research, the nature of data, the political value of data and evidence, the methods of research, the very notion of method, and the styles, genres, and media of research.
"
What do road infrastructures, media networks, ferry boats, cell phones, automobiles, and airplane... more What do road infrastructures, media networks, ferry boats, cell phones, automobiles, and airplanes have in common? As attempts to come to terms with the virtual and material distance separating people, objects, and information they are all technologies of mobility which deeply shape our ways of life, informing ideas, demanding new skills and practices, facilitating or impeding relationships, and restricting or enabling access to crucial resources.
Forms of mobility challenge us to question the separation of disciplines such as those between communication and transportation, and of concepts such as time and space, or human subjects and material objects. The study of mobilities has recently begun to take on these challenges and to examine the social, political, historical, cultural, economic, geographic, communicative, and material dimensions of movement. Mobility studies concentrate on the intersecting movements of bodies, objects, capital, and signs across time-space, dissecting how practices, experiences representations, and political dynamics shape new networks and lifeworlds. The multiple forms of mobility examined by this young and growing field include—amongst others—subjects such as: transportation; travel and tourism; migration; transnational flows of people, objects, information, and capital; mobile communications; and social networks and meetings. This book aims to reflect on the simultaneously technological and cultural (hence, technocultural) processes underpinning many of these forms of mobility, concentrating in particular in the North, Central, and South American social context.
Whereas in Europe the study of mobilities has begun to take a strong hold in academic units, professional research networks, and recognized publication outlets, the study of mobilities is still in its adolescence in the Americas. Yet, in contrast, mobility is very much part of the core of the social imaginary, geo-politics, and cultural life of the Americas. Indeed, to be “on the move” is amongst the most quintessential characteristics of what it means to be a citizen of the Americas. This book aims to be the first to reflect on these dynamics within this large geo-cultural context.
This new methodological book/website hybrid offers academics, professional researchers, and stude... more This new methodological book/website hybrid offers academics, professional researchers, and students a broad survey of ways to popularize research. As an edited interdisciplinary book accompanied by a website featuring samples of popularized research, it will have the potential of not only telling its readers about new genres, new media, new strategies, and new imperatives for popularizing research, but most importantly it will also be useful in showing how these new processes work in the end, what they sound like, and what they look like. Visit the book’s website for more: www.popularizingresearch.net
This book aims to be the definitive guide to the sociological and anthropological study of the se... more This book aims to be the definitive guide to the sociological and anthropological study of the senses. Through a thorough analytical review of classical, recent, and emerging scholarship and the use of grounded original empirical material as strategy for sparking interest and deepening review and analysis, this comprehensive map to the field intends to be the first reference tool for both students and scholars for years to come.
In bridging cultural/qualitative sociology and cultural/humanistic anthropology we intend to explicitly blur boundaries which, in this field, are particularly weak due to the ethnographic scope of much research. Serving both the sociological and anthropological constituencies at once means bridging ethnographic traditions, cultural foci, and socio-ecological approaches to embodiment and sensuousness. The Senses in Self, Culture, and Society is intended to be a milestone in the social sciences’ somatic turn.
Imagine living in a place where feet and cars won’t get you very far without the help of a ferry ... more Imagine living in a place where feet and cars won’t get you very far without the help of a ferry boat. Picture having to surrender your freedom of movement to the vagaries of marine weather, to restrictions imposed by ferries’ timetables and loading capacity, and to the unpredictable fluctuations of daily and seasonal traffic. Visualize having to travel up to 36 hours to reach the nearest grocery store (and having to pay up to $300 for the privilege to get to it) and then needing to wait a week for the next homebound ferry.
How would your life change? What would home feel like? What would time mean? Would you have to re-learn how to move? And how would you feel about the technology—the ferry boat and the marine highways—that shapes your life? Would you antagonize your ferry like you would antagonize an abductor, an unreliable trickster, a greedy loan shark? Or would you embrace it as a protector? An ally in your quest to make your life different? A guardian angel keeping your place safe from the perils of the outside world? Would your ferry become part of your community, of your family, of your home? Would you use it to baby-sit your kids? Would it become part of your memories, of your biography? Would you risk your life to catch it? Would you fight to defend your island from the threat of a bridge?
Based on three years of fieldwork, 250 ferry trips, 381 interviews in three dozen island and remote coastal communities this book tells stories of movement, technoculture, and sense of place, highlighting the mundane rituals and dramas of life lived amidst routes and roots. The book will be accompanied by a 1-hour radio documentary, and a collection of images and digital narratives embedded in an interactive map.
Over three years of travel across ten Canadian UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, Inhabited int... more Over three years of travel across ten Canadian UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, Inhabited introduces us to the individuals, communities, and families who live there and invites us to re-imagine our connection to wild ecosystems.
Inhabited takes us on a journey to Kluane, Nahanni, Gros Morne, Wood Buffalo, Miguasha, Waterton Lakes, and Rockies National Park, as well as Joggins Fossil Cliffs, Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, Dinosaur Provincial Park and shows us the interdependent relations of nature and culture.
Nine artisans on remote Gabriola Island reveal the differences between mass manufactured and auth... more Nine artisans on remote Gabriola Island reveal the differences between mass manufactured and authentic locally handmade through intimate portraits of their work and lifestyle.
Low and Slow follows seaplane pilots at work throughout coastal British Columbia, exploring their... more Low and Slow follows seaplane pilots at work throughout coastal British Columbia, exploring their passion, skill, knowledge of place, and teachnologies.
John Urry's ideas and observations on mobility have been profoundly inspirational throughout my c... more John Urry's ideas and observations on mobility have been profoundly inspirational throughout my career. In this video, voiced by the late John Urry himself, some of his thoughts reverberate in my mind and in the landscapes I travel through. This video was created to accompany an essay written in John Urry's memory, forthcoming in a book edited by Mimi Sheller, Ole B. Jensen, and Sven Kesselring.
This video outlines the scope and agenda of public ethnography and how and why to make research p... more This video outlines the scope and agenda of public ethnography and how and why to make research popular.
A film about people who have chosen to build their lives around renewable energy, with beautiful,... more A film about people who have chosen to build their lives around renewable energy, with beautiful, inspiring, and often challenging results. View at: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lifeoffgrid
The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography reviews and expands the field and sco... more The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography reviews and expands the field and scope of sensory ethnography by fostering new links amongst sensory, affective, more-than-human, non-representational, and multimodal sensory research traditions and composition styles. From writing and film to performance and sonic documentation, the handbook re-imagines the boundaries of sensory ethnography and posits new possibilities for scholarship conducted through the senses and for the senses.
Sensory ethnography is a trans-disciplinary research methodology focused on the significance of all the senses in perceiving, creating, and conveying meaning. Drawing from a wide variety of strategies that involve the senses as a means of inquiry, objects of study, and forms of expression, sensory ethnography has played a fundamental role in the contemporary evolution of ethnography writ large as a reflexive, embodied, situated, and multimodal form of scholarship. The handbook dwells on subjects like the genealogy of sensory ethnography, the implications of race in ethnographic inquiry, opening up ethnographic practice to simulate the future, using participatory sensory ethnography for disability studies, the untapped potential of digital touch, and much more.
This is the most definitive reference text available on the market, and is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in anthropology, sociology and the social sciences, and will serve as a state-of-the-art resource for sensory ethnographers worldwide.
This chapter introduces the subject of the book: mobilities and immobilities in/of remote places.... more This chapter introduces the subject of the book: mobilities and immobilities in/of remote places. Beginning with a basic definition of remoteness, the chapter goes on to conceptualize remote not as a physical condition but as a relational outcome of mobility constellations. More precisely, remoteness is approached as a tension between overlapping dynamics that simultaneously make it and unmake it. Remoteness is thus the emergent outcome from the interaction between the connections intended to extinguish it and the disconnections-either intentional or unintended-that end up reproducing it. From this perspective the focus shifts to understanding how a place and its residents practice, experience, and
People are key elements of wild places. At the same time, human entanglements with wild ecologies... more People are key elements of wild places. At the same time, human entanglements with wild ecologies involve extractivism, the growth of resource-based economies, and imperial-colonial expansion, activities that are wreaking havoc on our planet.
Through an ethnographic exploration of Canada’s ten UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, Inhabited reflects on the meanings of wildness, wilderness, and natural heritage. As we are introduced to local inhabitants and their perspectives, Phillip Vannini and April Vannini ask us to reflect on the colonial and dualist assumptions behind the received meaning of wild, challenging us to reimagine wildness as relational and rooted in vitality. Over the three years they spent in and around these sites, they learned from Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples about their entanglements with each other and with non-human animals, rocks, plants, trees, sky, water, and spirits. The stories, actions, and experiences they encountered challenge conventional narratives of wild places as uninhabited by people and disconnected from culture and society. While it might be tempting to dismiss the idea of wildness as outdated in the Anthropocene era, Inhabited suggests that rethinking wildness offers a better - if messier - way forward.
Part geography and anthropology, part environmental and cultural studies, and part politics and ecology, Inhabited balances a genuine love of nature’s vitality with a culturally responsible understanding of its interconnectedness with more-than-human ways of life.
The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video is a state-of-the-art volume ... more The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video is a state-of-the-art volume which encompasses the breadth and depth of the field of ethnographic film and video-based research. With more and more researchers turning to film and video as a key element of their projects, and as research video production becomes more practical due to technological advances as well as the growing acceptance of video in everyday life, this critical volume supports young researchers looking to develop the skills necessary to produce meaningful ethnographic films and videos, and serves as a comprehensive resource for social scientists looking to better understand and appreciate the unique ways in which film and video can serve as ways of knowing and as tools of knowledge mobilization.
Comprised of 31 chapters authored by some of the world’s leading experts in their respective fields, the book’s contributors synthesize existing literature, introduce the historical and conceptual dimensions of the field, illustrate innovative methodologies and techniques, survey traditional and new technologies, reflect on ethics and moral imperatives, outline ways to work with people, objects, and tools, and shape the future agenda of the field. With a particular focus on making ethnographic film and video, as opposed to analysing or critiquing it, from a variety of methodological approaches and styles, the Handbook provides both a comprehensive introduction and up-to-date survey of the field for a vast variety of audio-visual researchers, such as scholars and students in sociology, anthropology, geography, communication and media studies, education, cultural studies, film studies, visual arts and related social science and humanities. As such, it will appeal to a multidisciplinary and international audience, and features a dynamic, forward-thinking, innovative, and contemporary focus oriented toward the very latest developments in the field, as well as future possibilities.
Ethnography and qualitative research methodology in general have witnessed a staggering prolifera... more Ethnography and qualitative research methodology in general have witnessed a staggering proliferation of styles and genres over the last three decades. Modes and channels of communication have similarly expanded and diversified. Now ethnographers have the opportunity to disseminate their work not only through traditional writing but also through aural, visual, performative, hypertext, and many diverse and creative multimodal documentation strategies. Yet, many ethnographers still feel insufficiently proficient with these new literacies and opportunities for knowledge mobilization, and they therefore still limit themselves to traditional modes of communication in spite of their desire for innovation. As university-based, community-driven and politically mandated agendas for broader knowledge transfer keep increasing worldwide, the demand for public scholarship continues to grow. Arguing for the need to disseminate innovative ethnographic knowledge more widely and more effectively, this book outlines practical strategies and tools for sharing ethnographic and qualitative research through widely accessible media such as magazines, trade books, blogs, newspapers, video, radio, and social media. Drawing from practical experiences and hands-on lessons, Doing Public Ethnography provides social scientists across all disciplines with concrete tactics for mobilizing knowledge beyond the academic realm.
Wilderness provides a multidisciplinary introduction into the diverse ways in which we make sense... more Wilderness provides a multidisciplinary introduction into the diverse ways in which we make sense of wilderness: how we conceptualise it, experience it, interact with, and imagine it. Drawing upon key theorists, philosophers, and researchers who have contributed important knowledge to the topic, this title argues for a relational and process based notion of the term and understands it as a keystone for the examination of issues from conservation to more-than-human relations.
The text is organized around themed chapters discussing the concept of wilderness and its place in the social imagination, wilderness regulation and management, access, travel and tourism, representation in media and arts, and the use of wilderness for education, exploration, play, and therapy, as well as its parcelling out in parks, reserves, or remote "wastelands". The book maps out the historical transformation of the idea of wilderness, highlighting its intersections with notions of nature and wildness and teasing out the implications of these links for theoretical debate. It offers boxes that showcase important recent case studies ranging from the development of adventure travel and eco-tourism to the practice of trekking to the changing role of technology use in the wild. Summaries of key points, further readings, Internet-based resources, short videos, and discussion questions allow readers to grasp the importance of wilderness to wider social, cultural, political, economic, historical and everyday processes.
Wilderness is designed for courses and modules on the subject at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels. The book will also assist professional geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, environmental and cultural studies scholars to engage with recent and important literature on this elusive concept.
In Popular Culture and Everyday Life Phillip Vannini and Dennis Waskul have brought together a va... more In Popular Culture and Everyday Life Phillip Vannini and Dennis Waskul have brought together a variety of short essays that illustrate the many ways that popular culture intersects with mundane experiences of everyday life. Most essays are written in a reflexive ethnographic style, primarily through observation and personal narrative, to convey insights at an intimate level that will resonate with most readers. Some of the topics are so mundane they are legitimately universal (sleeping, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, etc.), others are common enough that most readers will directly identify in some way (watching television, using mobile phones, playing video games, etc.), while some topics will appeal more-or-less depending on a reader’s gender, interests, and recreational pastimes (putting on makeup, watching the Super Bowl, homemaking, etc.). This book will remind readers of their own similar experiences, provide opportunities to reflect upon them in new ways, as well as compare and contrast how experiences relayed in these pages relate to lived experiences. The essays will easily translate into rich and lively classroom discussions that shed new light on a familiar, taken-for-granted everyday life―both individually and collectively.
At the beginning of the book, the authors have provided a grid that shows the topics and themes that each article touches on. This book is for popular culture classes, and will also be an asset in courses on the sociology of everyday life, ethnography, and social psychology.
Myriad lines surround our day-to-day lives, exiting and entering our homes. Wires connect to elec... more Myriad lines surround our day-to-day lives, exiting and entering our homes. Wires connect to electricity posts which power and heat our dwellings. Cables hook us to telephone and internet networks. Other lines stretch the world closer to us and our homes closer to the world: paved driveways link us with roads and highways, mains tap us into common water reserves and flow into municipal sewers, satellite beams reach into the atmosphere to download television signals into our living rooms. Together these lines—and possibly many others—constitute extensive and powerful webs of material and cultural significance in which our lives are suspended. These webs are the grids upon which society is pegged, the grids through which our material and social relations are entangled.
Not everyone, however, is reliant on these grids. People who—for a variety of motives—have spun alternative webs have come to know their lifestyle as “off-the-grid.” Off-the-grid dwelling refers to ways of living marked by disconnection from the infrastructural assemblages (or grids) that provide societies with the potential for power, light, and speed.
Grids of light, speed, and power can make our life comfortable and convenient but they are also troublesome companions. Grids deeply shape social relations and entrench them in differential access to power. In light of this, off-the-grid dwelling has recently emerged as an oppositional (but often negotiated and contradictory) everyday life practice. By delinking from one or more grids, an individual, group, or community needs to reinvent a different way of life and practice a different way of living.
Couched in cultural studies, cultural geography, and cultural sociology, this book aims to uncover the day-to-day practice off-grid living across Canada in order to understand why and how a person or community chooses to live off-grid; how off-the-grid dwellers cope with a world increasingly governed by the grid logic of light, power, and speed; what distinguishes off-grid dwellers' technologies and material cultures; how they accomplish comfort and convenience in their everyday life; and in what ways off-the-grid dwelling constitutes a sustainable, environmentally and culturally, lifestyle practice. In order to document the diversity of ways of life off-the-grid, the book unfolds as a series of ethnographic narratives focusing on individuals and groups who dwell in households and/or communities removed from roads, electricity, sewage, garbage collection, natural gas pipelines, water mains, telephone, internet, and television.
In addition to shedding light on off-grid lifestyles, however, this book prompts us to reflect on often taken-for-granted aspects of modern living. It aims to shows us what it means and what resources it takes to do the things we do every day: from bathing and washing and cleaning to cooking and refrigerating, from heating to cooling, from growing and hunting food to disposing of it in garbage cans and toilets, from switching on the light to flicking on appliances.
"Non-representational theory (or as it is sometimes referred to, “more-than-representational” the... more "Non-representational theory (or as it is sometimes referred to, “more-than-representational” theory) is one of the contemporary moment’s most influential theoretical perspectives within social and cultural theory.
And yet, it is often poorly understood. This is in part because of its complexity, but in large part also because of its limited treatment in few volumes chiefly dedicated to it. Indeed anyone wishing to better understand non-representational theory today has limited choices and is therefore left with a lot of interrogatives. Amongst the most important questions left unanswered are questions of method. All social and cultural theories—if they are to be proven useful—need to be applicable to the scopes of data analysis and representation. In other words, theories must be useful to researchers keen on utilizing concepts and analytical frames for their personal interpretive purposes. How useful non-representational theory is, in this sense, is yet to be understood. This book tackles this very subject and outlines a variety of ways in which non-representational ideas can influence the research process, the very value of empirical research, the nature of data, the political value of data and evidence, the methods of research, the very notion of method, and the styles, genres, and media of research.
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What do road infrastructures, media networks, ferry boats, cell phones, automobiles, and airplane... more What do road infrastructures, media networks, ferry boats, cell phones, automobiles, and airplanes have in common? As attempts to come to terms with the virtual and material distance separating people, objects, and information they are all technologies of mobility which deeply shape our ways of life, informing ideas, demanding new skills and practices, facilitating or impeding relationships, and restricting or enabling access to crucial resources.
Forms of mobility challenge us to question the separation of disciplines such as those between communication and transportation, and of concepts such as time and space, or human subjects and material objects. The study of mobilities has recently begun to take on these challenges and to examine the social, political, historical, cultural, economic, geographic, communicative, and material dimensions of movement. Mobility studies concentrate on the intersecting movements of bodies, objects, capital, and signs across time-space, dissecting how practices, experiences representations, and political dynamics shape new networks and lifeworlds. The multiple forms of mobility examined by this young and growing field include—amongst others—subjects such as: transportation; travel and tourism; migration; transnational flows of people, objects, information, and capital; mobile communications; and social networks and meetings. This book aims to reflect on the simultaneously technological and cultural (hence, technocultural) processes underpinning many of these forms of mobility, concentrating in particular in the North, Central, and South American social context.
Whereas in Europe the study of mobilities has begun to take a strong hold in academic units, professional research networks, and recognized publication outlets, the study of mobilities is still in its adolescence in the Americas. Yet, in contrast, mobility is very much part of the core of the social imaginary, geo-politics, and cultural life of the Americas. Indeed, to be “on the move” is amongst the most quintessential characteristics of what it means to be a citizen of the Americas. This book aims to be the first to reflect on these dynamics within this large geo-cultural context.
This new methodological book/website hybrid offers academics, professional researchers, and stude... more This new methodological book/website hybrid offers academics, professional researchers, and students a broad survey of ways to popularize research. As an edited interdisciplinary book accompanied by a website featuring samples of popularized research, it will have the potential of not only telling its readers about new genres, new media, new strategies, and new imperatives for popularizing research, but most importantly it will also be useful in showing how these new processes work in the end, what they sound like, and what they look like. Visit the book’s website for more: www.popularizingresearch.net
This book aims to be the definitive guide to the sociological and anthropological study of the se... more This book aims to be the definitive guide to the sociological and anthropological study of the senses. Through a thorough analytical review of classical, recent, and emerging scholarship and the use of grounded original empirical material as strategy for sparking interest and deepening review and analysis, this comprehensive map to the field intends to be the first reference tool for both students and scholars for years to come.
In bridging cultural/qualitative sociology and cultural/humanistic anthropology we intend to explicitly blur boundaries which, in this field, are particularly weak due to the ethnographic scope of much research. Serving both the sociological and anthropological constituencies at once means bridging ethnographic traditions, cultural foci, and socio-ecological approaches to embodiment and sensuousness. The Senses in Self, Culture, and Society is intended to be a milestone in the social sciences’ somatic turn.
Imagine living in a place where feet and cars won’t get you very far without the help of a ferry ... more Imagine living in a place where feet and cars won’t get you very far without the help of a ferry boat. Picture having to surrender your freedom of movement to the vagaries of marine weather, to restrictions imposed by ferries’ timetables and loading capacity, and to the unpredictable fluctuations of daily and seasonal traffic. Visualize having to travel up to 36 hours to reach the nearest grocery store (and having to pay up to $300 for the privilege to get to it) and then needing to wait a week for the next homebound ferry.
How would your life change? What would home feel like? What would time mean? Would you have to re-learn how to move? And how would you feel about the technology—the ferry boat and the marine highways—that shapes your life? Would you antagonize your ferry like you would antagonize an abductor, an unreliable trickster, a greedy loan shark? Or would you embrace it as a protector? An ally in your quest to make your life different? A guardian angel keeping your place safe from the perils of the outside world? Would your ferry become part of your community, of your family, of your home? Would you use it to baby-sit your kids? Would it become part of your memories, of your biography? Would you risk your life to catch it? Would you fight to defend your island from the threat of a bridge?
Based on three years of fieldwork, 250 ferry trips, 381 interviews in three dozen island and remote coastal communities this book tells stories of movement, technoculture, and sense of place, highlighting the mundane rituals and dramas of life lived amidst routes and roots. The book will be accompanied by a 1-hour radio documentary, and a collection of images and digital narratives embedded in an interactive map.
Drawing from multisite ethnographic research conducted at four Canadian UNESCO World Heritage nat... more Drawing from multisite ethnographic research conducted at four Canadian UNESCO World Heritage natural sites, this writing focuses on the geosocialities of fossils and argues that fossils are alive: vitalist matter capable of affecting and being affected by the geosocial meshworks in which they are entangled. In the present writing, these relations are explored through more-than-representational ethnographic fragments intended to enliven the geophilia of fossils by underscoring the way they are animated through affect, memory, performance, narrative, possibility, and imagination.
This 40-day diary tracks the ordinary effects of self-isolation and quarantine on a small island ... more This 40-day diary tracks the ordinary effects of self-isolation and quarantine on a small island off the British Columbia coast. Drawing on reflections on the emotional and embodied dimensions of self-isolation, and on observations of the effects of physical distancing in public spaces, the writing paints a picture of COVID-19 as atmospheric dis-ease. Whereas disease is sickness and disorder, dis-ease is a social malaise infecting the body public via atmospheric contagion. Atmospheric disease, it is argued, is a shared mode of attention and a mix of effects permeating a place with the diffused rhythms, shared sensations, contagious moods, and common orientations typical of self-isolation.
Drawing from our fieldwork conducted at three Canadian parks inscribed as Natural on the UNESCO W... more Drawing from our fieldwork conducted at three Canadian parks inscribed as Natural on the UNESCO World Heritage list (Kluane National Park, Dinosaur Provincial Park, and Wood Buffalo National Park) this paper describes wildness as an atmosphere. Through three ethnographic vignettes we paint a picture of wildness as a kind of ephemeral and uncontrollable event that can be felt and sensed, something that can be affected by a more-than-human life and something that can affect a more-than human life. Rather than thinking of wildness as a concept marked by absence—the absence of people, the absence of development, the absence of human history and society—we describe wildness as a presence. In doing so we re-envision wildness as the expression of the vitality of the sacred: a vitalist, life-giving energy that transcends human nature, a vitalist energy worthy of respect and honour. As ethnographic moments highlight, at times these vital energies are present and obvious, but at other times they are mere possibilities, speculations, implications, gestures suspended between presence and absence, vital forces of natures acting almost in excess of human comprehension and demanding careful attunement.
International Review of Qualitative Research, 2019
Wood Buffalo National Park is Canada’s largest and the world’s second largest national park. For ... more Wood Buffalo National Park is Canada’s largest and the world’s second largest national park. For the last half century, industrial mega projects such as BC Hydro’s W.A.C. Bennett Dam first and tar sands oil extraction later have been exhausting the “natural resources” of the park, decimating wildlife, and severing the sacred relations among Indigenous people, their ways of life, and their land. This extractivist regime has led to a point when, in 2014, the Mikisew Cree First Nation—frustrated by the Canadian government’s continued unwillingness to listen to their grievances—filed a petition to ask UNESCO to add Wood Buffalo National Park to the list of the world’s endangered World Heritage sites. In this article, we describe how such events unfolded and what the current situation signifies for environmental politics, wilderness conservation, and Indigenous relations with settler society within a colonial state.
Can humans and wild life co-exist? Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and nearby Wa... more Can humans and wild life co-exist? Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and nearby Waterton Lakes National Park and Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, we present two etho-ethnographic fables that show how a positive coexistence of humans and wild life may be sought after and achieved. The two stories–narrated by animals’ voices–prompt us to rethink the very meanings of wild life and humanity and challenge us to envision and appreciate a new kind of affective relationship between people and non-human animals. By attending to the mutual trust and care inherent in respect-based multi-species entanglements, in this article we attune ourselves to the importance of the relational autonomy of wild animals and generate ideas on what wild life could be when understood from the perspective of relational and Indigenous ontologies.
Whereas the arts have acquired a greater role in ethnographic practice as of late, artisanship ha... more Whereas the arts have acquired a greater role in ethnographic practice as of late, artisanship has not; artisans regularly remain subjects of ethnographic analysis rather than educators or sources of epistemological and aesthetic inspiration for ethnographers. As students of material culture and aesthetic practices, we argue that ethnography has a lot to learn from artisans and advance a vision for an artisan-inspired ethnography. In particular, we ask, “what would an artisanal ethnography be like?” “What can we learn from artisans as ethnographic educators?” “How would the artisanship-inspired ethnographer work?” “What would be his or her styles, tools, goals, and guiding principles?” Through a methodological reflection on the production of our film A Time for Making, we engage with these questions.
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2019
Countless authors have deconstructed both the romantic and the troubled history of wildness and w... more Countless authors have deconstructed both the romantic and the troubled history of wildness and wilderness, yet very few researchers have ever asked people: “What does wild mean to you?” In doing so, with our research we aim to understand wildness as a phenomenological and relational entity and aim to make sense of the multiple ways in which personal entanglements with particular places inform contingent and place-based ideas of wildness. Although there are many dimensions to both the experience and the idea of wildness, in this paper we reflect in particular on one: vitality. We draw our data from dozens of interviews held across Canada and base our interpretations on a combination of traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge, relational ontologies, and more-than-representational theories.
This paper reports on ethnographic research conducted at one of Canada's Natural World Heritage s... more This paper reports on ethnographic research conducted at one of Canada's Natural World Heritage sites: Gros Morne National Park. UNESCO's criteria for the identification of natural heritage sites and its descriptions of the specific qualities of listed sites are informed by a dualist ontology that sharply separates nature and culture. The result of this separation between nature and culture is the construction of natural heritage spaces that seem to exist in a vacuum from social life, abstracted from human relations, largely devoid of human presence, and thus emptied of the many stories that make them meaningful to both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous residents. In contrast, this paper/video combination describes how natures at a Canadian natural heritage site are relationally woven with the lives of their human inhabitants. The narratives we share about Gros Morne are meant to re‐animate this site in response to the World Heritage classification, calling to attention the perpetual growth and becoming of its relational environments. We make our case by utilising a short video to recount the stories, experiences, and perspectives of a few residents who have taught us about Gros Morne. We argue that in place of natural heritage we ought to consider the concept of ecological heritage.
In 2009 UNESCO’s World Heritage Program inscribed nine mountain parks located in Northeastern Ita... more In 2009 UNESCO’s World Heritage Program inscribed nine mountain parks located in Northeastern Italy under the single Dolomites World Heritage Site (DWHS). Under criterion vii, they were acknowledged by the World Heritage Convention to be ‘widely regarded as being among the most attractive mountain landscapes in the world’ with their beauty being ‘intrinsic’ to the nature of the mountains. In our film and paper we argue for a reconsideration of the ‘intrinsic nature’ of its beauty in a sense that is much different than that intended by UNESCO. Following a relational line of reasoning we argue that the essence of the distinctive landscape of the Dolomites lies in the entanglements occurring among its inhabitants who, in the course of living there, have historically been and are currently immersed in its formation. We suggest that through such entanglements – sometimes consonant and sometimes dissonant with ‘authorized’ notions of the heritage landscape – the Dolomitic landscapes exist as manicured landscapes. By drawing from the concept of memoryscape and non-representational ideas we articulate the notion of a manicured landscape.
What matter is walking ground made of? And how does such ground matter? What is the relationship ... more What matter is walking ground made of? And how does such ground matter? What is the relationship between walking surfaces and people’s experience of natural landscapes? And how do different ground surfaces enact different meshworks of conservation politics, mobility, and tourism infrastructure? Drawing from nonrepresentational theory and from audiovisual fieldwork conducted in and around Australia’s Cradle Mountain, part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, this article and its accompanying video focus on the materials of walking trails to understand the relations among walking, the built environment, and the sensory and affective experience of place. Arguing that trails and trail surfaces—and boardwalks in particular—serve as influential material conduits for variously contested outdoor recreation mobilities, this article develops the argument that pathways are elements in the world’s transformation of itself.
The present article is a brief reflection accompanying Low and Slow: a 26 min ethnographic video ... more The present article is a brief reflection accompanying Low and Slow: a 26 min ethnographic video documenting the occupation of commercial floatplane pilots, with a particular focus on their skills, technologies, sense of place and knowledge of weather. The video was independently produced, directed and edited by the author of this article. To date the video is slated to air in the fall of 2016 on the Canadian TV channel Knowledge Network. The paper offers a reflection on the video’s objectives, its production and distribution in order to encourage others to practice video-based mobile methods, to edit their audiovisual work, and to disseminate it more widely than video-based research has been disseminated so far. To this effect, the article offers reflections on the fruitful intersection between mobile methods and ethnographic video, on precisely how Low and Slow was produced and distributed, and on why mobility students and scholars should view the use of video documentation as an important methodological research tool.
This paper explores the intensities of long-distance commuting journeys in order to understand ho... more This paper explores the intensities of long-distance commuting journeys in order to understand how bodily sensibilities become attuned to the regular mobilities which they undertake. More people are travelling farther to and from work than ever before, owing to a variety of factors which relate to complex social and geographical dynamics of transport, housing, lifestyle, and employment. Yet, the experiential dimensions of long-distance commuting have not received the attention that they deserve within research on mobilities. Drawing from fieldwork conducted in Australia, Canada, and Denmark this paper aims to further develop our collective understanding of the experiential particulars of long-distance workers or ‘supercommuters’. Rather than focusing on the extensive dimensions of mobilities that are implicated in broad social patterns and trends, our paper turns to the intensive dimensions of this experience for supercommuters by developing an understanding of embodied kinetic energy, commotion and quality. Exploring how experiences of supercommuters are constituted by a range of different material and bodily forces enables us to more sensitively consider the practical, technical, and affective implications of this increasingly prevalent yet underexplored travel practice.
In this article we present a theoretical framework for an understanding of the relationship betwe... more In this article we present a theoretical framework for an understanding of the relationship between the material design of mobilities technologies and the multisensorial human body. Situating our work in the emerging field of “mobilities design” within the broader so-called mobilities turn, we focus on two very different aircraft types and their design (the large passenger jet Boeing 737 and the small propeller aircraft DHC-2) in order to explore the sensuousness of in-flight experience and atmosphere. We focus on the interior design of the aircraft as well as on their technical capacities, and end with a conclusion that offers a fl at ontological view of mobilities design. We argue that according the material design of mobilities technologies must be inscribed on equal terms with the sensing human subject if we are to claim that we have reached a better understanding of how mobility feels.
During 2014–2015, we produced a short video documentary, titled The Art of Wild, which focused on... more During 2014–2015, we produced a short video documentary, titled The Art of Wild, which focused on the audiovisual practices of outdoor adventurers. This short written report reflects on an idea inspired by the video: the GoPro gaze. Enacted by increasingly sophisticated, portable and affordable recording audiovisual technologies such as the GoPro Hero camera, the ‘GoPro gaze’ entails not just the pursuit of pleasures derived from adventure and nature-based travel, but also the production and distribution of professional-quality independent videos for Internet audiences. Based on a series of ‘go-along’ interviews with adventure travelers/athletes/artists, this article and the accompanying video prompt us to reflect on how the affective pleasures and technological affordances of the ‘GoPro gaze’ trouble the established idea of the ‘tourist gaze’.
Over the last decade and a half, socio-cultural geographies have witnessed a genuine explosion of... more Over the last decade and a half, socio-cultural geographies have witnessed a genuine explosion of interest in the ethnographic tradition. Such interest is due in part to the increasing acceptance of non-representational ideas across the field and the way these ideas have constructively informed the long-standing debate on the analytics, esthetics, and politics of ethnographic representation. Non-representational theoretical ideas have influenced the way ethnographers tackle important methodological and conceptual undercurrents in their work, such as vitality, performativity, corporeality, sensuality, and mobility. This article aims to capture a few of the characteristics of this constantly evolving non-representational ethnographic style. Non-representational ethnography seeks to cultivate an affinity for the analysis of events, practices, assemblages, structures of feeling, and the backgrounds of everyday life against which relations unfold in their myriad potentials. Non-representational ethnography emphasizes the fleeting, viscous, lively, embodied, material, more-than-human, precognitive, non-discursive dimensions of spatially and temporally complex lifeworlds.
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Inhabited takes us on a journey to Kluane, Nahanni, Gros Morne, Wood Buffalo, Miguasha, Waterton Lakes, and Rockies National Park, as well as Joggins Fossil Cliffs, Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, Dinosaur Provincial Park and shows us the interdependent relations of nature and culture.
Sensory ethnography is a trans-disciplinary research methodology focused on the significance of all the senses in perceiving, creating, and conveying meaning. Drawing from a wide variety of strategies that involve the senses as a means of inquiry, objects of study, and forms of expression, sensory ethnography has played a fundamental role in the contemporary evolution of ethnography writ large as a reflexive, embodied, situated, and multimodal form of scholarship. The handbook dwells on subjects like the genealogy of sensory ethnography, the implications of race in ethnographic inquiry, opening up ethnographic practice to simulate the future, using participatory sensory ethnography for disability studies, the untapped potential of digital touch, and much more.
This is the most definitive reference text available on the market, and is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in anthropology, sociology and the social sciences, and will serve as a state-of-the-art resource for sensory ethnographers worldwide.
Through an ethnographic exploration of Canada’s ten UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, Inhabited reflects on the meanings of wildness, wilderness, and natural heritage. As we are introduced to local inhabitants and their perspectives, Phillip Vannini and April Vannini ask us to reflect on the colonial and dualist assumptions behind the received meaning of wild, challenging us to reimagine wildness as relational and rooted in vitality. Over the three years they spent in and around these sites, they learned from Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples about their entanglements with each other and with non-human animals, rocks, plants, trees, sky, water, and spirits. The stories, actions, and experiences they encountered challenge conventional narratives of wild places as uninhabited by people and disconnected from culture and society. While it might be tempting to dismiss the idea of wildness as outdated in the Anthropocene era, Inhabited suggests that rethinking wildness offers a better - if messier - way forward.
Part geography and anthropology, part environmental and cultural studies, and part politics and ecology, Inhabited balances a genuine love of nature’s vitality with a culturally responsible understanding of its interconnectedness with more-than-human ways of life.
Comprised of 31 chapters authored by some of the world’s leading experts in their respective fields, the book’s contributors synthesize existing literature, introduce the historical and conceptual dimensions of the field, illustrate innovative methodologies and techniques, survey traditional and new technologies, reflect on ethics and moral imperatives, outline ways to work with people, objects, and tools, and shape the future agenda of the field. With a particular focus on making ethnographic film and video, as opposed to analysing or critiquing it, from a variety of methodological approaches and styles, the Handbook provides both a comprehensive introduction and up-to-date survey of the field for a vast variety of audio-visual researchers, such as scholars and students in sociology, anthropology, geography, communication and media studies, education, cultural studies, film studies, visual arts and related social science and humanities. As such, it will appeal to a multidisciplinary and international audience, and features a dynamic, forward-thinking, innovative, and contemporary focus oriented toward the very latest developments in the field, as well as future possibilities.
The text is organized around themed chapters discussing the concept of wilderness and its place in the social imagination, wilderness regulation and management, access, travel and tourism, representation in media and arts, and the use of wilderness for education, exploration, play, and therapy, as well as its parcelling out in parks, reserves, or remote "wastelands". The book maps out the historical transformation of the idea of wilderness, highlighting its intersections with notions of nature and wildness and teasing out the implications of these links for theoretical debate. It offers boxes that showcase important recent case studies ranging from the development of adventure travel and eco-tourism to the practice of trekking to the changing role of technology use in the wild. Summaries of key points, further readings, Internet-based resources, short videos, and discussion questions allow readers to grasp the importance of wilderness to wider social, cultural, political, economic, historical and everyday processes.
Wilderness is designed for courses and modules on the subject at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels. The book will also assist professional geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, environmental and cultural studies scholars to engage with recent and important literature on this elusive concept.
At the beginning of the book, the authors have provided a grid that shows the topics and themes that each article touches on. This book is for popular culture classes, and will also be an asset in courses on the sociology of everyday life, ethnography, and social psychology.
Not everyone, however, is reliant on these grids. People who—for a variety of motives—have spun alternative webs have come to know their lifestyle as “off-the-grid.” Off-the-grid dwelling refers to ways of living marked by disconnection from the infrastructural assemblages (or grids) that provide societies with the potential for power, light, and speed.
Grids of light, speed, and power can make our life comfortable and convenient but they are also troublesome companions. Grids deeply shape social relations and entrench them in differential access to power. In light of this, off-the-grid dwelling has recently emerged as an oppositional (but often negotiated and contradictory) everyday life practice. By delinking from one or more grids, an individual, group, or community needs to reinvent a different way of life and practice a different way of living.
Couched in cultural studies, cultural geography, and cultural sociology, this book aims to uncover the day-to-day practice off-grid living across Canada in order to understand why and how a person or community chooses to live off-grid; how off-the-grid dwellers cope with a world increasingly governed by the grid logic of light, power, and speed; what distinguishes off-grid dwellers' technologies and material cultures; how they accomplish comfort and convenience in their everyday life; and in what ways off-the-grid dwelling constitutes a sustainable, environmentally and culturally, lifestyle practice. In order to document the diversity of ways of life off-the-grid, the book unfolds as a series of ethnographic narratives focusing on individuals and groups who dwell in households and/or communities removed from roads, electricity, sewage, garbage collection, natural gas pipelines, water mains, telephone, internet, and television.
In addition to shedding light on off-grid lifestyles, however, this book prompts us to reflect on often taken-for-granted aspects of modern living. It aims to shows us what it means and what resources it takes to do the things we do every day: from bathing and washing and cleaning to cooking and refrigerating, from heating to cooling, from growing and hunting food to disposing of it in garbage cans and toilets, from switching on the light to flicking on appliances.
And yet, it is often poorly understood. This is in part because of its complexity, but in large part also because of its limited treatment in few volumes chiefly dedicated to it. Indeed anyone wishing to better understand non-representational theory today has limited choices and is therefore left with a lot of interrogatives. Amongst the most important questions left unanswered are questions of method. All social and cultural theories—if they are to be proven useful—need to be applicable to the scopes of data analysis and representation. In other words, theories must be useful to researchers keen on utilizing concepts and analytical frames for their personal interpretive purposes. How useful non-representational theory is, in this sense, is yet to be understood. This book tackles this very subject and outlines a variety of ways in which non-representational ideas can influence the research process, the very value of empirical research, the nature of data, the political value of data and evidence, the methods of research, the very notion of method, and the styles, genres, and media of research.
"
Forms of mobility challenge us to question the separation of disciplines such as those between communication and transportation, and of concepts such as time and space, or human subjects and material objects. The study of mobilities has recently begun to take on these challenges and to examine the social, political, historical, cultural, economic, geographic, communicative, and material dimensions of movement. Mobility studies concentrate on the intersecting movements of bodies, objects, capital, and signs across time-space, dissecting how practices, experiences representations, and political dynamics shape new networks and lifeworlds. The multiple forms of mobility examined by this young and growing field include—amongst others—subjects such as: transportation; travel and tourism; migration; transnational flows of people, objects, information, and capital; mobile communications; and social networks and meetings. This book aims to reflect on the simultaneously technological and cultural (hence, technocultural) processes underpinning many of these forms of mobility, concentrating in particular in the North, Central, and South American social context.
Whereas in Europe the study of mobilities has begun to take a strong hold in academic units, professional research networks, and recognized publication outlets, the study of mobilities is still in its adolescence in the Americas. Yet, in contrast, mobility is very much part of the core of the social imaginary, geo-politics, and cultural life of the Americas. Indeed, to be “on the move” is amongst the most quintessential characteristics of what it means to be a citizen of the Americas. This book aims to be the first to reflect on these dynamics within this large geo-cultural context.
In bridging cultural/qualitative sociology and cultural/humanistic anthropology we intend to explicitly blur boundaries which, in this field, are particularly weak due to the ethnographic scope of much research. Serving both the sociological and anthropological constituencies at once means bridging ethnographic traditions, cultural foci, and socio-ecological approaches to embodiment and sensuousness. The Senses in Self, Culture, and Society is intended to be a milestone in the social sciences’ somatic turn.
How would your life change? What would home feel like? What would time mean? Would you have to re-learn how to move? And how would you feel about the technology—the ferry boat and the marine highways—that shapes your life? Would you antagonize your ferry like you would antagonize an abductor, an unreliable trickster, a greedy loan shark? Or would you embrace it as a protector? An ally in your quest to make your life different? A guardian angel keeping your place safe from the perils of the outside world? Would your ferry become part of your community, of your family, of your home? Would you use it to baby-sit your kids? Would it become part of your memories, of your biography? Would you risk your life to catch it? Would you fight to defend your island from the threat of a bridge?
Based on three years of fieldwork, 250 ferry trips, 381 interviews in three dozen island and remote coastal communities this book tells stories of movement, technoculture, and sense of place, highlighting the mundane rituals and dramas of life lived amidst routes and roots. The book will be accompanied by a 1-hour radio documentary, and a collection of images and digital narratives embedded in an interactive map.
Inhabited takes us on a journey to Kluane, Nahanni, Gros Morne, Wood Buffalo, Miguasha, Waterton Lakes, and Rockies National Park, as well as Joggins Fossil Cliffs, Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, Dinosaur Provincial Park and shows us the interdependent relations of nature and culture.
Sensory ethnography is a trans-disciplinary research methodology focused on the significance of all the senses in perceiving, creating, and conveying meaning. Drawing from a wide variety of strategies that involve the senses as a means of inquiry, objects of study, and forms of expression, sensory ethnography has played a fundamental role in the contemporary evolution of ethnography writ large as a reflexive, embodied, situated, and multimodal form of scholarship. The handbook dwells on subjects like the genealogy of sensory ethnography, the implications of race in ethnographic inquiry, opening up ethnographic practice to simulate the future, using participatory sensory ethnography for disability studies, the untapped potential of digital touch, and much more.
This is the most definitive reference text available on the market, and is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in anthropology, sociology and the social sciences, and will serve as a state-of-the-art resource for sensory ethnographers worldwide.
Through an ethnographic exploration of Canada’s ten UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, Inhabited reflects on the meanings of wildness, wilderness, and natural heritage. As we are introduced to local inhabitants and their perspectives, Phillip Vannini and April Vannini ask us to reflect on the colonial and dualist assumptions behind the received meaning of wild, challenging us to reimagine wildness as relational and rooted in vitality. Over the three years they spent in and around these sites, they learned from Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples about their entanglements with each other and with non-human animals, rocks, plants, trees, sky, water, and spirits. The stories, actions, and experiences they encountered challenge conventional narratives of wild places as uninhabited by people and disconnected from culture and society. While it might be tempting to dismiss the idea of wildness as outdated in the Anthropocene era, Inhabited suggests that rethinking wildness offers a better - if messier - way forward.
Part geography and anthropology, part environmental and cultural studies, and part politics and ecology, Inhabited balances a genuine love of nature’s vitality with a culturally responsible understanding of its interconnectedness with more-than-human ways of life.
Comprised of 31 chapters authored by some of the world’s leading experts in their respective fields, the book’s contributors synthesize existing literature, introduce the historical and conceptual dimensions of the field, illustrate innovative methodologies and techniques, survey traditional and new technologies, reflect on ethics and moral imperatives, outline ways to work with people, objects, and tools, and shape the future agenda of the field. With a particular focus on making ethnographic film and video, as opposed to analysing or critiquing it, from a variety of methodological approaches and styles, the Handbook provides both a comprehensive introduction and up-to-date survey of the field for a vast variety of audio-visual researchers, such as scholars and students in sociology, anthropology, geography, communication and media studies, education, cultural studies, film studies, visual arts and related social science and humanities. As such, it will appeal to a multidisciplinary and international audience, and features a dynamic, forward-thinking, innovative, and contemporary focus oriented toward the very latest developments in the field, as well as future possibilities.
The text is organized around themed chapters discussing the concept of wilderness and its place in the social imagination, wilderness regulation and management, access, travel and tourism, representation in media and arts, and the use of wilderness for education, exploration, play, and therapy, as well as its parcelling out in parks, reserves, or remote "wastelands". The book maps out the historical transformation of the idea of wilderness, highlighting its intersections with notions of nature and wildness and teasing out the implications of these links for theoretical debate. It offers boxes that showcase important recent case studies ranging from the development of adventure travel and eco-tourism to the practice of trekking to the changing role of technology use in the wild. Summaries of key points, further readings, Internet-based resources, short videos, and discussion questions allow readers to grasp the importance of wilderness to wider social, cultural, political, economic, historical and everyday processes.
Wilderness is designed for courses and modules on the subject at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels. The book will also assist professional geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, environmental and cultural studies scholars to engage with recent and important literature on this elusive concept.
At the beginning of the book, the authors have provided a grid that shows the topics and themes that each article touches on. This book is for popular culture classes, and will also be an asset in courses on the sociology of everyday life, ethnography, and social psychology.
Not everyone, however, is reliant on these grids. People who—for a variety of motives—have spun alternative webs have come to know their lifestyle as “off-the-grid.” Off-the-grid dwelling refers to ways of living marked by disconnection from the infrastructural assemblages (or grids) that provide societies with the potential for power, light, and speed.
Grids of light, speed, and power can make our life comfortable and convenient but they are also troublesome companions. Grids deeply shape social relations and entrench them in differential access to power. In light of this, off-the-grid dwelling has recently emerged as an oppositional (but often negotiated and contradictory) everyday life practice. By delinking from one or more grids, an individual, group, or community needs to reinvent a different way of life and practice a different way of living.
Couched in cultural studies, cultural geography, and cultural sociology, this book aims to uncover the day-to-day practice off-grid living across Canada in order to understand why and how a person or community chooses to live off-grid; how off-the-grid dwellers cope with a world increasingly governed by the grid logic of light, power, and speed; what distinguishes off-grid dwellers' technologies and material cultures; how they accomplish comfort and convenience in their everyday life; and in what ways off-the-grid dwelling constitutes a sustainable, environmentally and culturally, lifestyle practice. In order to document the diversity of ways of life off-the-grid, the book unfolds as a series of ethnographic narratives focusing on individuals and groups who dwell in households and/or communities removed from roads, electricity, sewage, garbage collection, natural gas pipelines, water mains, telephone, internet, and television.
In addition to shedding light on off-grid lifestyles, however, this book prompts us to reflect on often taken-for-granted aspects of modern living. It aims to shows us what it means and what resources it takes to do the things we do every day: from bathing and washing and cleaning to cooking and refrigerating, from heating to cooling, from growing and hunting food to disposing of it in garbage cans and toilets, from switching on the light to flicking on appliances.
And yet, it is often poorly understood. This is in part because of its complexity, but in large part also because of its limited treatment in few volumes chiefly dedicated to it. Indeed anyone wishing to better understand non-representational theory today has limited choices and is therefore left with a lot of interrogatives. Amongst the most important questions left unanswered are questions of method. All social and cultural theories—if they are to be proven useful—need to be applicable to the scopes of data analysis and representation. In other words, theories must be useful to researchers keen on utilizing concepts and analytical frames for their personal interpretive purposes. How useful non-representational theory is, in this sense, is yet to be understood. This book tackles this very subject and outlines a variety of ways in which non-representational ideas can influence the research process, the very value of empirical research, the nature of data, the political value of data and evidence, the methods of research, the very notion of method, and the styles, genres, and media of research.
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Forms of mobility challenge us to question the separation of disciplines such as those between communication and transportation, and of concepts such as time and space, or human subjects and material objects. The study of mobilities has recently begun to take on these challenges and to examine the social, political, historical, cultural, economic, geographic, communicative, and material dimensions of movement. Mobility studies concentrate on the intersecting movements of bodies, objects, capital, and signs across time-space, dissecting how practices, experiences representations, and political dynamics shape new networks and lifeworlds. The multiple forms of mobility examined by this young and growing field include—amongst others—subjects such as: transportation; travel and tourism; migration; transnational flows of people, objects, information, and capital; mobile communications; and social networks and meetings. This book aims to reflect on the simultaneously technological and cultural (hence, technocultural) processes underpinning many of these forms of mobility, concentrating in particular in the North, Central, and South American social context.
Whereas in Europe the study of mobilities has begun to take a strong hold in academic units, professional research networks, and recognized publication outlets, the study of mobilities is still in its adolescence in the Americas. Yet, in contrast, mobility is very much part of the core of the social imaginary, geo-politics, and cultural life of the Americas. Indeed, to be “on the move” is amongst the most quintessential characteristics of what it means to be a citizen of the Americas. This book aims to be the first to reflect on these dynamics within this large geo-cultural context.
In bridging cultural/qualitative sociology and cultural/humanistic anthropology we intend to explicitly blur boundaries which, in this field, are particularly weak due to the ethnographic scope of much research. Serving both the sociological and anthropological constituencies at once means bridging ethnographic traditions, cultural foci, and socio-ecological approaches to embodiment and sensuousness. The Senses in Self, Culture, and Society is intended to be a milestone in the social sciences’ somatic turn.
How would your life change? What would home feel like? What would time mean? Would you have to re-learn how to move? And how would you feel about the technology—the ferry boat and the marine highways—that shapes your life? Would you antagonize your ferry like you would antagonize an abductor, an unreliable trickster, a greedy loan shark? Or would you embrace it as a protector? An ally in your quest to make your life different? A guardian angel keeping your place safe from the perils of the outside world? Would your ferry become part of your community, of your family, of your home? Would you use it to baby-sit your kids? Would it become part of your memories, of your biography? Would you risk your life to catch it? Would you fight to defend your island from the threat of a bridge?
Based on three years of fieldwork, 250 ferry trips, 381 interviews in three dozen island and remote coastal communities this book tells stories of movement, technoculture, and sense of place, highlighting the mundane rituals and dramas of life lived amidst routes and roots. The book will be accompanied by a 1-hour radio documentary, and a collection of images and digital narratives embedded in an interactive map.
natural heritage spaces that seem to exist in a vacuum from social life, abstracted from human relations, largely devoid of human presence, and thus emptied of the many stories that make them meaningful to both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous residents. In contrast, this paper/video combination describes how natures at a Canadian natural heritage site are relationally woven with the lives of their human inhabitants. The narratives we share about Gros Morne are meant to re‐animate this
site in response to the World Heritage classification, calling to attention the perpetual growth and becoming of its relational environments. We make our case by utilising a short video to recount the stories, experiences, and perspectives of a few residents who have taught us about Gros Morne. We argue that in place of natural heritage we ought to consider the concept of ecological heritage.