This month we celebrate Ethnographymatter’s first year with a bumper edition of features about ethnographic practice in the world, as well as some exciting news about the growth of our team!
Tricia Wang writes a reflection of the past year at Ethnography Matters, covering some of the more remarkable discussions over the year as we’ve grown into a “community of mavericks whose curiosity about and commitment to ethnography have ignited discussions about ethnography outside of formal institutions”. Rachelle Annechino tells us the “love story of two ethnographers” by letting us in on her chats with Judd and Tamar Antin about their work as research scientists studying motivation and public health narratives.
We’re really lucky to have two guest contributors this month. Wendy Hsu writes about the software that she built to gather more qualitative data for her research on independent rock musicians, and Erik Bigras shares the story of The Asthma Files, a project to understand the contested space of asthma research.
This month also sees the launch of the Ethnomatters Book Club #ethnobookclub with a conversation about what struck readers as important or interesting about Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ book, ‘Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil’.
We’d love you to contribute to the discussion, so feel free to head on over to the group or contribute your ideas on the blog or anywhere else using the #ethnobookclub tag. We’re also hoping to see a few face-to-face book clubs emerging and feeding into the virtual conversation in the new year so let us know if you’re interested in starting one in your city!
Last, but certainly not least, to celebrate our one-year anniversary we’re very excited to announce that Nicolas Nova joins the team as a regular contributor. Nicolas has written several guest posts already for Ethnomatters and brings a great deal of experience in design research, interaction design and speculative applied ethnography. What’s more, Nicolas is based in Switzerland and works closely with design and corporate firms throughout Europe so we’re looking forward to him bringing a new community of European researchers to our conversation.
What a year it’s been! Here’s to even more fruitful, supportive conversations in the next 🙂
The Ethnomatters Team.
PS: Would you like to be our next guest contributor? Ethnography Matters is your space. You can feature a project/paper/book/syllabus, provide a fieldwork update, or share your thoughts. Here are some more ideas for how you can participate. We’d love to hear from you!
Announcements
- Today (19 November) Deadline for Microsoft Research Social Media Collective postdoctoral research applications. “This position is an ideal opportunity for a scholar whose work draws on anthropology, communication, media studies, sociology, and/or science and technology studies to bring empirical and critical perspectives to complex socio-technical issues.”
- 30 November Deadline for contributions to the December EthnoZine edition
- New blog The American Anthropological Association’s Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC) recently launched a new blog that ‘aims to promote dialogue on theories, tools, and social interactions that explore questions at the intersection of anthropology and science and technology studies.
Next month
- #ethnobookclub We’re not done with Death Without Weeping yet, but if you want to get a head start for our January book, we’re going to be reading “Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae” by Michael Veal. Do order yours and join in on the second #ethnobookclub.
- Music ethnographer, Wendy Hsu will give us the second installment of her Digital Ethnography post. Did you read the first one, On Digital Ethnography: What computers have to do with ethnography? It generated a lot of comments, and we’d love to see yours!
- Erik Bigras from The Asthma Files, will give us the second installment on ethnographers are working with the medical community to collect shared data. Check out his first post,Innovation in Asthma Research: Using Ethnography to Study a Global Health Problem.
- Nicolas Nova, our new regular contributor will start off with his post on his new book, Curious Rituals: Gestural Interaction in the Digital Everyday.
