Experimental Ethnography

Marginal places do not usually appear in pictures. Their residents have historically been deprived of representation, because they do not fit in the ideal profile of ordinary citizens. Post-modern ethnography, however, argues that the cultural other has always been within ourselves, so many people –especially artists– have understood that those marginal perspectives must be included in any work attempting to address the urban experience in all its complexity and plurality. This is the reason why many filmmakers have lately become interested in what I call places of otherness: marginal areas in which cultural others, such as immigrants, refugees, homeless, ethnic minorities and other excluded groups, can feel at home in a foreign city. This essay aims to discuss the strategies of representation of such kind of places in a particular case study: Foreign Parts (Véréna Paravel & J. P. Sniadecki, 2010), a documentary produced at Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab that depicts the everyday life in an already disappeared junkyard in Queens, New York. In this film, the documentary makers embrace a sensory approach based on intersubjectivity to give voice and visibility to the residents of that place, thus updating the politics of representation of ethnographic film and participatory documentary.

Villarmea Álvarez, Iván. 2018. Places of Otherness. Strategies of Urban Representation in 'Foreign Parts'. The Apollonian 5, 124-131.

This graduate seminar is an invitation to think through what it takes to do and write ethnography. You will alternate between readings that explicitly address methods for conducting fieldwork and those that enact and theorize the transformation of that research into writing. In tandem with the readings and our class discussions, you will complete a number of exercises aimed at familiarizing yourself with some of the practical and epistemological issues raised by fieldwork and helping you develop what we might think of as ethnographic sensibilities. Building on three fieldwork exercises, each student will design and implement a small fieldwork project based on observation and interviewing, which will be the basis of an analytical case study. The goal is to explore various ways of attuning yourself to the demands—pragmatic, conceptual, political, aesthetic, to name a few—of producing knowledge that is grounded in experience. As such, the readings and exercises will help you cultivate various modes of attention, participation, and observation; gain experience writing fieldnotes and producing other forms of documentation; analyze the fieldwork material that you gather/produce; grapple with the ethics of accountability and representation; and experiment with forms of writing that might be adequate to the task of weaving analysis, narration, and theorization into a genre recognizable as “ethnography.”

My ethnography of Delhi's Metro system, an analysis of the social and infrastructural impact of the system on the city, is now out with the University of California Press. You can read the first part of the Intro here. A South Asian version of the book has been published by Roli Books with the title: Metronama: Scenes from the Delhi Metro.

The back cover blurb:
The Moving City is a rich and intimate account of urban transformation told through the story of Delhi's Metro, a massive infrastructure project that is reshaping the city's social and urban landscapes. Ethnographic vignettes introduce the feel and form of the Metro and let readers experience the city, scene by scene, stop by stop, as if they, too, have come along for the ride. Laying bare the radical possibilities and concretized inequalities of the Metro, and how people live with and through its built environment, this is a story of women and men on the move, the nature of Indian aspiration, and what it takes morally and materially to sustain urban life. Through exquisite prose, Rashmi Sadana transports the reader to a city shaped by both its Metro and those who depend on it, revealing a perspective on Delhi unlike any other.

Social scientists and folk views have long had it that there is an association between religiosity and prosocial behaviour, but hard evidence for such a relationship is limited. Studies show that religiosity is correlated with self-reported prosociality, however this relationship is not very clear when it comes to observed prosocial behaviours. Experimental studies reveal a link between religious priming and prosocial behaviours, and remarkably such effects hold irrespectively of degrees of religiosity. Building on and combining the strengths of previous field designs, I report here the results of a field experiment in Mauritius examining the effects of religious environments on cooperation in a naturalistic setting. These results were consistent with previous findings that religious cues may increase cooperation. Importantly, this effect was not dependent on degrees of prior religiosity. Plausible interpretations of such effects are discussed.

Social scientists and folk views have long had it that there is an association between religiosity and prosocial behaviour, but hard evidence for such a relationship is limited. Studies show that religiosity is correlated with self-reported prosociality, however this relationship is not very clear when it comes to observed prosocial behaviours. Experimental studies reveal a link between religious priming and prosocial behaviours, and remarkably such effects hold irrespectively of degrees of religiosity. Building on and combining the strengths of previous field designs, I report here the results of a field experiment in Mauritius examining the effects of religious environments on cooperation in a naturalistic setting. These results were consistent with previous findings that religious cues may increase cooperation. Importantly, this effect was not dependent on degrees of prior religiosity. Plausible interpretations of such effects are discussed.

La Enciclopedia de cosas vivas y muertas: el lago de Texcoco es un libro que da cuenta de las múltiples transformaciones del lago más grande en la cuenca central mexicana, luego de haber sufrido una desecación inducida durante los siglos posteriores a la colonización española. Desde su uso experimental del texto y su apropiación crítica de una metodología de conocimiento, esta enciclopedia re-interpreta un lugar, entendiéndolo como un entramado de elementos humanos y no humanos, fragmentos y temporalidades.

Lake Texcoco: Encyclopedia of Things Living and Dead is a book that accounts for the multiple transformations of the largest lake in the central Mexico basin. This lagoon was desiccated over centuries, following the Spanish conquest. Through an experimental use of the text and a critical appropriation of a knowledge methodology, this encyclopedia re-interprets the lake as an entanglement of human agents, non-human elements, fragments, and temporalities.

In May 2019 we launched a special exhibition at the Uganda Museum in Kampala titled “The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin.” It consisted of 150 images made by government photographers in the 1970s. In this essay we explore how political history has been delimited in the Museum, and how these limitations shaped the exhibition we curated. From the time of its creation, the Museum’s disparate and multifarious collections were exhibited as ethnographic specimens, stripped of historical context. Spatially and organizationally, “The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin” turned its back on the ethnographic architecture of the Uganda Museum. The transformation of these vivid, evocative, aesthetically appealing photographs into historical evidence of atrocity was intensely discomfiting. We have been obliged to organize the exhibition around categories that did not correspond with the logic of the photographic archive, with the architecture of the Museum, or with the experiences of the people who lived through the 1970s. The exhibition has made history, but not entirely in ways that we chose.

La médiation expérimentale qu’opère Trinh T. Minh-ha consiste à transmettre un geste cinématographique singulier qui emprunte différentes stratégies empathiques déployées lors de chacune des étapes de la production filmique. Cette recherche ambitionne de définir la notion polysémique d’empathie, puis d’aborder, sous cet angle multiple, la théorie-pratique du film, théorisée et expérimentée par la réalisatrice : Trinh T. Minh-ha vise à renouveler l’expérience du spectateur au monde et à l’altérité. Pour exemplifier notre problème, nous analyserons deux films anthropologiques réalisés par Trinh T. Minh-ha : « Reassemblage » (1982) et « The Fourth Dimension » (2001). L’anthropologie visuelle produite par Trinh T. Minh-ha s’appuie sur la qualité de « plasticité » du cinéma, telle qu’Élie Faure la définit dans son recueil « Fonction du cinéma, de la cinéplastique à son destin sociale (1921-1937) ». Cette «  cinéplastique  » sociale, par la réunion formelle de ses propriétés éthique et esthétique, rejoint notre concept de geste cinématographique vecteur d’empathie engagé par Trinh T. Minh-ha. L’article de David Macdougall «  L’anthropologie visuelle et les chemins du savoir  », publié en 2004 dans la revue scientifique « Journal des anthropologues (98-99) », nous permettra de circonscrire le cinéma anthropologie de Trinh T. Minh-ha au sein du courant postmoderne. En nous référant aussi aux textes publiés en 2008 dans la revue scientifique 
« Journal des anthropologues (114-115) » dirigée par Ghislaine Gallenga et intitulée 
« L’empathie en anthropologie », nous discuterons les approches de filmage et de montage mises en œuvre par la réalisatrice afin d’expliciter le rapport d’«  empathie esthétique  » présent lors de l’expérience spectatorielle. La théorie-pratique de Trinh T. Minh-ha semble finalement superposer à une forme postmoderne une poétique du cinéma qui envisage de nouvelles «  correspondances  » générant une résonance affective et perceptive menant à un «  sentir-avec  » polysensoriel défendu par le théoricien de la poésie Michel Collot dont nous adapterons l’idée d’un «  continuum  » entre film, réalisateur et spectateur.

Trinh T. Minh-ha's experimental mediation consists in conveying a singular cinematographic gesture that borrows different empathic strategies used during each stage of film production. This research aims at defining the polysemous notion of empathy, and then, from this plural angle, to approach the practical theory of the film, theorized and experimented by the director: Trinh T. Minh-ha aims at renewing the experience of the audience to the world and to otherness. To explain our problem, we will analyze the two of the anthropological films directed by Trinh T. Minh-ha: “Reassemblage” (1982) and “The Fourth Dimension” (2001). The visual anthropology produced by Trinh T. Minh-ha is based on the quality of the “plasticity” of cinema, such as Élie Faure defines it in his book “Fonction du cinéma, de la cinéplastique à son destin sociale (1921-1937)”. This social “cinéplastique” through the formal mix of its ethical and aesthetic characteristics, meets our concept of a cinematographic gesture, vector of empathy committed by Trinh T. Minh-ha. The article “Visual anthropology and the ways of knowledge” written by David Macdougall and published in 2004 in the scientific magazine “Journal des anthropologues (98-99)” will help us to contextualize the anthropological cinema of Trinh T. Minh-ha inside the postmodern movement. We will also refer to the texts published in 2008 in the scientific magazine “Journal des anthropologues (114-115)” directed by Ghislaine Gallenga and entitled 
"Empathy in anthropology" to discuss the filmmaking and editing approaches of the director in order to understand the following experience of the audiences as characterized as an aesthetic empathy in relation to these films. The practical theory of Trinh T. Minh-ha seems to cross a postmodern form with a poetics of cinema and thus produces an affective and perceptive theme, a polysensory “feel-with” described by the theorist of poetry Michel Collot whose ideas of a “continuum” between film, director and spectator we’ll apply.

L'empathie au coeur du cinéma anthropologique de Trinh T. Minh-ha : les cas de Reassemblage et The Fourth Dimension
Par Joachim Raginel Département d'histoire de l'art et études cinématographiques Faculté des arts et des sciences Mémoire présenté à la Faculté des études supérieures en vue de l'obtention du grade de M.A. en études cinématographiques

Resumen: los futuros de la etnografía están relacionados con cómo nos acercamos a los límites de la práctica etnográfica y de la disciplina antropológica. Dicho acercamiento se puede lograr al plantear nuevos tipos de preguntas y objetos de estudio, con una aproximación a lo que la ciencia a menudo ha dejado sin mirar o decir. También a través de innovaciones metodológicas, por medio de conectar técnicas para investigar relaciones sociales hasta ahora separadas y de construir dispositivos para intervenir el campo. Este artículo explora esta última opción, al proponer un acercamiento a formas creativas de comprender y experimentar la práctica etnográfica. Presenta una reflexión de alternativas metodológicas a través de tres casos metodológicos: exposición, novela etnográfica e instalación performativa. Interesado en repensar los límites disciplinares, el artículo propone nuevas configuraciones etnográficas y formas de conocimiento antropológico, más allá de las académicas. Concluye que, para ello, es necesario expandir las herramientas epistemológicas y relacionales del trabajo etnográfico, además de reconsiderar cómo nuestro trabajo entra en las discusiones públicas. La aproximación al límite —la epistemología de y en el limen— es, por tanto, un ejercicio metodológico y personal.

Palabras clave: antropología contemporánea, disciplinas académicas, epistemología del límite, etnografía experimental, exposición de campo.

Ethnographic Boundaries: An Anthropological Approach in Three Creative Experiments

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.

Keywords: Academic disciplines, contemporary anthropology, epistemology of boundaries, experimental ethnography, field exposure.

Limites etnográficos: uma abordagem antropológica em três experiências criativas

Resumo: o futuro da etnografia está relacionado com como nos aproximamos dos limites da prática etnográfica e da disciplina antropológica. Essa abordagem pode se dar ao se proporem novos tipos de perguntas e objetos de estudos, com uma abordagem para a qual a ciência muitas vezes vem deixando de olhar ou dizer. Também por meio das inovações metodológicas, por meio de conectar técnicas para pesquisar relações sociais até agora separadas e de construir dispositivos para intervir no campo. Este artigo explora esta última opção, ao propor uma abordagem de formas criativas de compreender e experimentar a prática etnográfica. Apresenta uma reflexão de alternativas metodológicas mediante três casos metodológicos: exposição, romance etnográfico e instalação performativa. Interessado em repensar os limites disciplinares, este artigo apresenta novas configurações etnográficas e formas de conhecimento antropológico, mais além das acadêmicas. Conclui-se que, para isso, é necessário expandir as ferramentas epistemológicas e relacionais do trabalho etnográfica, além de reconsiderar como nosso trabalho entra nas discussões públicas. A abordagem do limite — a epistemologia de e no limiar — é, portanto, um exercício metodológico e pessoal.

Palavras-chave: antropologia contemporânea, disciplinas acadêmicas, epistemologia do limite, etnografia experimental, exposição de campo.

This article explores the embodied experience of parkour in Bogotá, which means the way its practitioners produce nomadic subjectivities and create heterotopies in contemporary cities through the transformation of their bodies. By understanding parkour as a discipline aimed at building a body capable of doing spectacular movements and tracing multiple routes along the cities, I examine how this culture of movement and its aesthetics of existence produce flowing bodies and lines of flight. From an anthropological analysis of affects and becoming, I propose a debate on new ways of dwelling the city through body movements.

Este artículo explora la experiencia incorporada del parkour en Bogotá, esto es, la forma en que sus practicantes producen subjetividades nómadas y cómo, a través de transformaciones corporales, crean heterotopías en las ciudades contemporáneas. Definido el parkour como una disciplina que busca construir un cuerpo capaz de realizar movimientos espectaculares con el fin de trazar múltiples trayectos en la ciudad, se examina, por un lado, si esta cultura del movimiento y sus estéticas de la existencia producen cuerpos que trazan líneas de fuga y, por otro, cómo, desde el análisis de los afectos y una antropología del devenir, podemos debatir nuevas formas de habitar la ciudad a partir del movimiento.

Arba’īn names the Shi’a elegiac ritual commemorating the fortieth day of ‘Āshūrā – the 7th century murder of Husayn at the Battle of Karbala. In South Iranian provinces like Būshihr Arba’īn expresses a distinctly black character marked by animation and drumming virtuosity. Iranian filmmaker Nāsir Taqvāī’s experimental ethnographic documentary Arba’īn (1970) chronicles the regional peculiarities of this ritual, reflecting in both its form and content fragile testament to a haphazardly recorded history of African slavery absorbed into oblivion. Drawing upon historiographical, musicological, ethnographic sources and black studies, this article takes Taqvā’ī’s filmic mediation as an occasion to demonstrate the way so-called syncretized forms reveal historical information about slavery in nontransparent ways.

Un caso muy temprano de la etnografía experimental en el cine mexicano, la película Judea: Semana Santa entre los Coras (Nicolás Echevarría, 1974) retrata la celebración llamada La Judea del grupo étnico los coras del estado de Nayarit de México. Judea refleja una sensibilidad moldeada por nuevas formas de experimentalismo en la música y el cine, exploradas por el cineasta en la Ciudad de México y Nueva York. Prestando especial atención al montaje audiovisual, este ensayo propone que los sonidos compuestos para la banda sonora por Mario Lavista, tanto como las imágenes de que fueron filmadas y editadas por el cineasta, reflejan el valor que se le da a la respuesta abierta del espectador-oyente «liberado» en esas comunidades experimentalistas. Además, este análisis muestra dónde Judea coincide y diverge de las ideas y prácticas defendidas por el cineasta etnográfico Jean Rouch en los años setenta y principios de los ochenta.

This story begins in the backroom of a Chicago skate shop in the summer of 2014. Hundreds of us are assembled in the damp heat of the room for the main gig of a local DIY (do-it-yourself) punk festival, chatting over cans of cheap beer and sweating profusely as we wait for bands to play. A new band whose name I haven't yet learned has begun setting up onstage, and they look a little different from the others. Even with the massive span of North American DIY punk and its abundance of small regional scenes, the proliferation of online blogs, popular zines such as Maximum Rocknroll, small independent music festivals, and the movement of bands and their respective sounds and styles has ensured some sort of aesthetic uniformity to the style and music of the greater scene. This is to say that the increased access that participants in the DIY punk network have to the wider scene contributes to a quickly shifting dialectic of subcultural styles in which dominant aesthetic trends routinely shift. More importantly, this access to regional scenes throughout the continent allows participants to geographically map out dominant trends by region, distinguishing for example, between the street-smart artiness of New York City's late-2000s punk scene and the post-apocalyptic imagery of Pittsburgh raw punk bands like Eel and Ratface. In the geographic imagination of a style-savvy North American punk rocker, each city or region on the continent seems to have its own localized sound and style.

"PERMANENT VACATION. Cinema and the Leisure Class".

The open-air cinema is closely linked to summer holidays: a space and time where the working class is freed from work obligations and where the chance for enjoyment and leisure presents itself. Setting out from the concurrence between Thorstein Veblen’s book The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899, and the birth of cinema via Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory, the Lumière brothers’ 1895 film, this series, screened on the outdoor terraces of the Museo, offers a journey through the history of the medium, focusing on its relationship with the conception of holidaying, leisure, travel and tourism, through which a whole range of ideas and questions that surface at this intersection are analysed. In other words: the consolidation of a working class freed from work and embodied in the display of social status; the working-class conquest of paid holidays, with the subsequent division between work and unproductive time; or the ensuing appearance of mass tourism at the heart of the social, cultural, economic and even landscape transformations that gave rise to the appearance of the subject-tourist, motivated by the desire to seek different but at the same time identical and uniform experiences. The working-class dream of a permanent vacation, aspiration or condemnation?

Analyzing three contemporary documentaries (Andrés Di Tella's Fotografias, Sandhya Suri's I for India, and Tania Cypriano's Grandma has a Video Camera) this chapter explores the relationship between the camera and migration, arguing that it serves not only as a recording device per se, but as a mobility mechanism, setting certain migratory journeys in motion.

Ecomemoria comprises an intergenerational group of Chilean exiles living in the UK and in Chile who aim to keep alive the memory of and claim justice for those who were disappeared (desaparecidos) and killed (ejecutados políticos) during Pinochet's dictatorship (1973–1990). This piece draws on the authors' recent participation in a specific tree-planting ceremony performed by this group in Wales. By looking at the relocation of bodies, and the enactments and artefacts within the site-specificity of this event, a reflection on both the diasporic space developed and the unexpectedly complex character of the “living memorial” the group aims to cultivate will be elaborated. Ecomemoria's members match their living memory project with the trees that commemorate the life of the disappeared. Yet this conception here is complicated by highlighting the transnational, as well as the active, social, embodied and uncanny character of the ceremony which, as it will be argued, comprises a living memorial in its own right. This essay starts by briefly presenting Ecomemoria, to then describe and deconstruct the ceremony's diasporic and haunting qualities. Finally, to conclude, a much more complex idea of a living memorial will be developed in consideration of the mobile, affective, embodied and ghostly mise-en-scène the ceremony produces.

Martinho, Gabriel
Buenos Aires, Universidad del Cine, 2021.
La inscripción ensayística del espacio sonoro en la escritura documental.

Ebook publicado por la editorial de la Fundación Universidad del Cine de Buenos Aires, Argentina. PDF (ISBN 978-987-48192-0-8)
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En su tesis de posgrado correspondiente a la Maestría de Cine Documental de la Universidad del Cine, Gabriel Martinho hace un recorrido por los problemas que se han presentado en la tradición documental en relación al sonido.

La escritura del cine documental se ha consolidado a lo largo de la historia del género a partir de la posibilidad de inscribir el sonido en el desarrollo de la puesta en escena, ya que el sonido surge para imprimir un sentido sobre las imágenes, despertando cierta autoridad epistemológica de una argumentación y por ende la circunscripción de un contexto histórico sobre los eventos filmados.

En este sentido, si por un lado el espacio sonoro documental ha intentado asentar cierta base discursiva en la producción de conocimiento de lo real, en definitiva, ha funcionado como el principal punto de desestabilización del espacio diegético, capaz de inducir sensaciones y formas de pensamiento acerca de las evidencias históricas.

Senses of the experimental in contemporary ethnography. An  epistemological debate

En  este  ensayo  nos  proponemos  problematizar  la  concepción  de  lo  “experimental”  en  la  etnografía contemporánea a partir de preguntarnos sobre los sentidos que pueden considerarse al  respecto,  en  particular  aquellos  que  evaluamos  como  los  más  fértiles  para  su  desarrollo.  Un  primer  haz  de  sentidos  nos  exige  plantearnos  el  rol  de  la  experiencia  en  la  producción  de conocimiento etnográfico en todas las etapas del proceso. En segundo lugar, llegamos al  corazón  de  la  problemática  epistemológica  recuperando  los  sentidos  de  lo  experimental  provenientes de las ciencias naturales, las artes y la filosofía más afines a la labor etnográfica. Concluimos  por  último,  con  una  serie  de  consideraciones  sobre  la  necesidad  de  superar  la  dicotomía  entre  tradición  e  innovación  de  una  forma  pos-vanguardista,  encontrando  en  la  revolución  permanente  la  mejor  dinámica  que  se  ajusta  a  esta  estrategia  de  investigación  e  intervención.

In  this  essay  we  propossal  a  problematization  the  concept  of  the  “experimental”  in  the  contemporary  ethnography.  We  propouse  questioning  the  senses  which  can  be  considerers  about them, in particular those we estimate like a more fertile for his development. A first line of senses, it requires us to expose the role of experience on ethnographic knowledge during all  steps  of  process.  In  a  second  time,  we  arrived  to  heart  of  epistemological  problematic  taking the senses of experimental from the natural sciences, arts and philosophy closer to the ethnographic labour. Finally, we concluse whith a series of consideration about the superation of dicotomy beetween tradition and innovation in a post-vanguardian way, finding in the permanent revolution the macht better dinamic for this strategic of research and intervention.

Palabras clave: Etnografía  experimental.  Producción  de  conocimiento.  Creación  conceptual.  Laboratorio  antropológico. Revolución permanente

Keywords: Experimental  Ethnography.  Knowledge  Production.  Conceptual  Creation.  Anthropological  Laboratory. Permanent Revolution

Ethnographers aim to understand life as lived, as poetry aims to evoke it. As social (and specifically medical) anthropologists navigating cross-currents of disciplinary expectations, in this article we hold ethnography and poetry side-by-side. We ask what they share and where they diverge. Specifically, we explore how poetry and ethnography inhabit (and are inhabited by) the physical, psychological and social experiences of pain. We each share our experiences of writing poetry as practicing anthropologists, and consider the potential for active cross-pollinations of ethnographic and poetic practice as a route to understanding both the heights and depths of embodied human experience.

We have been conducting collaborative ethnographic research together for over 20 years. Over the past 12 months, this collaboration has included face-to-face encounters, both in Kampala, Uganda, and in Perth, Australia. However, since the advent of COVID-19-related 'lockdowns' in our respective countries, our engagements have been conducted exclusively over online platforms, including WhatsApp, Facebook and - increasingly - Zoom. In this article, we reflect upon our shared experience of conducting ethnography through this platform as a tool for understanding the effects of the pandemic in Uganda. We argue that, despite all kinds of material constraints (at both ends), Zoom has much to offer the ethnographer particularly because it can generate an intimate understanding of experience and time. However, against this advantage, some aspects of social life remain beyond the range of its channels, for which an assemblage of additional methods are required. We finish by reflecting upon what these methods have contributed to our long-term study of emergent cultures of mobility in Uganda - a study which is now being conducted in an ostensible context of immobility.

En el presente artículo se elabora una lectura de El Zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo de José María Arguedas, desde una óptica proveniente de la antropología, haciéndola dialogar con el género de la etnografía experimental, enmarcado dentro de la crisis del  paradigma positivista en ciencias sociales. Esta novela pretendedar cuenta de un contexto intercultural complejo, elaborando una fórmula textual con mayores facultades de abordaje que la novela indigenista o el realismo etnográfico clásico. Si bien Arguedas no tiene pretensiones científicas, su novela refleja y abre aspectos de la realidad utilizando recursos como el collage, el mito como antecedente histórico y la perspectiva polifónica mediante el discurso de diversos actores sociales presentes en la obra. Todo ello evidencia su formación como etnólogo a la vez que literato, inscribiéndose dentro del fenómeno de los géneros confusos y larefiguración del pensamiento social (Geertz 1980). Se procede a partir de la novela en su totalidad y los diarios que la acompañan, destacando ciertos fragmentos y nutriéndonos de perspectivas teóricas referentes a la etnografía. Igualmente, evidenciamos la complejidad del estilo arguediano, como los cuestionamientos teóricos y epistemológicos de la antropología de la segunda mitad del siglo XX.

In this presentation, I explore how a community at the margins of national histories registers sonic memory as a means of survivance. Makota’ay, a Taiwanese indigenous (Pangcah) community in present-day Hualien County, has both benefitted and suffered from its location at the mouth of the Siugulan River. As Pangcah oral history recounts, river and ocean brought the ancestors of Makota’ay Pangcah to Makota’ay and still delivers resources. The river also conveyed colonial merchants, armies, and settlers (including Taiwan’s ethnic Chinese majority). Thus, Maokota’ay Pangcah live in multiply occupied places in which sounds index both ancestral presence and a series of colonial occupations from the late 19th Century to the present. Employing soundscape documentation as well as oral historical and archival research, I listen for more than sonic traces of these multiple occupations: I consider how Pangcah register these traces as sonic memories. I argue that such registrations often display a gap between the intentions of occupiers and the lived experience of the community, a kind of failed mimesis through which indigenous people sound traces of occupation, making these sounds resonate as figures of survivance. At times, sound, such as the echo of waves within a coastal cave or a drop of dew into a canyon, transforms relationships of occupation; when these sounds are narrated, they become alternate histories. As such, sound in its various registrations forms part of an ethics of place opposed to settler presence. To understand the ethical force of remembered sound, I argue, requires us to think more clearly about how indigenous people employ sonic practices—some traditional but others borrowed from settlers—to register sounds of occupation. This work will require closer engagement with indigenous sonic practices and also suggests frameworks for collaborative sound installation art.

Recipient of the Canadian Association for Theatre Research 2014 Ann Saddlemyer Book Award Honorable Mention

"This book will be a valuable resource for scholars interested in the work of Grotowski, Polish theatre, women theatre practitioners, as well as those engaged in practice-as-research." - Review by Tanya Dean, TDR

"This is a valuable body of work... the first to give full attention to the female angle of Grotowski’s legacy." - Review by Lara Szypszak, Canadian Theatre Review

"Magnat is asking provocative and important questions, and offering access to a rich and fascinating realm of performance practice." - Review by Brian Schultis, Studies in Theatre and Performance

Watch the Companion Documentary Film Series on the Routledge Performance Archive (http://www.routledgeperformancearchive.com)

[Editorial, Issue 1(1)] We are delighted to launch this new online journal of entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography. In so doing, we aim to engage with some of the challenges and questions that contemporary multimodal ethnographic practice throws up: What knowledge do multimodal and multimedia encounters generate? What languages are available to researchers to describe the coming together of different modes and media? What are the everyday practices involved in such convergences and divergences? How might these encounters themselves be described?

https://entanglementsjournal.org/entanglements-that-matter/

As a practice-led researcher traversing the multiple worlds that exist between artists, communities and institutions, I turned to poetry to begin to speak the unspeakable; to retrieve the metaphorical bones of a story that were taken out.
(See article Abstract for further details).

A comparative review article of Kathleen Stewart & Lauren Berlant's 'The hundreds' (2019, Duke University Press) and Anand Pandian & Stuart McLean's (eds.) 'Crumpled paper boat: Experiments in ethnographic writing' (2017, Duke University Press).