Ethnography Matters

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.

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As far as fieldwork tools go, hardly anything drives an ethnographer more crazy than trying to find the most appropriate fieldwork tools.  That is why we decided for the August issue of Ethnography Matters, we’d talk all about fieldwork tools and launch a new series called “The Tools we Use.”

Heather Ford starts us off with a discussion of the software she uses for her Wikipedia research, followed by Jenna Burrell’srecommendations for software she has tried and wants to try in the field. Rachelle Annechino suggests a few Android appsalong with colored markers and Tricia Wang tells us about her anxieties of not knowing which tools she’ll use for her analysis process.

“Tools we Use” is an ongoing series, so if you have a fieldwork process or an app review you’d like to contribute, please contact us!

Rachelle Annechino also offers another post this month on the fears and delights in using ethnography to research drug use. She reveals some assumptions around drug consumption. And she throws in Lady Gaga to her post!

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Ethnozine: July ’12 edition

Just because summer is here doesn’t mean that ethnographers slow down.This month Heather Ford updates us on her Wikipedia research. She shares with us screenshots from her digital ethnography of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, revealing how Wikipedians manage sources in breaking news events. Tricia Wang finished up a few years of fieldwork in China and shares with us a new process for writing ethnographic fieldnotes, live fieldnoting. We have four guest contributors for The Ethnographer’s Reading List. Sam Ladner’s list mixes creativity with time, religion, and humor. Nicolas Nova’s list takes us back to objects, public spaces, and lines. Christina Dennaoui’s list brings us some science, emotion and pain. Elisa Oreglia’s list gives us something new, something blue, and something borrowed.

 Other tidbits:

Jason Antrosio at Living Anthropologically compiled a list of anthropology communities with a facebook page. We saw familiar communities like Savage Minds, but we also discovered new ones like Neuroanthropology,  ALLA (The Association of Latina/o Anthropologistsa) and How to be an Anthropologist.  We’ve added several their blogs and a few new ones to our blogroll. Do let us know if you would like to suggest a site to add to our blogroll!

Do you have a post that you would like featured on Ethnography Matters? Or would you like to be our next guest contributor? Here are some ideas for how you can participate. Email us! We’d love to hear from you.

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Sign up for the monthly Ethnozine  |  Join Ethnography Matters google groups  | become a guest contributor

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The June Ethnozine is online.

Summer is here in the Western hemisphere! Many of us are going into fieldwork or doing some catch up reading. This month we are launching a new series called “The Ethnographer’s Reading List.” We’re starting off with Tricia Wang’s summer reading list and then featuring two contributors who work in the industry, Carla Borsoi of AOL and Jay Owens of FACE. Thanks to Roy Christopher for giving us the inspiration to create the Reading List series! Every summer, Roy asks friends and colleagues to create a reading list in which he laboriously compiles and links to Powell’s online store. After we saw his list, we wanted to create an ongoing one at Ethnography Matters. Do check out Roy’s 2012 list that has contributions from Howard Reingold to Douglas Rushkoff.

Our July guest contributor, Jared Braiterman, is a design anthropologist based in Tokyo, Japan. Jared starts off the summer with an exciting post, first telling us that we should break anthropology rules and second suggesting that design anthropology is distinct from ethnography.  The last time we had a post this provocative was when guest contributor Sam Ladner asked if “Corporate Ethnography sucked?” What are your thoughts on Jared’s ideas? What rules do you break? And how different do you think design anthropology is from ethnography? We’d love to hear your thoughts on Jared’s article in the comments section.

Jenna gives us the final installments of the The Ethnographer’s Complete Guide to Big Data. You can read all three installments together, part 1 , part 2, and part 3. Lastly, Heather talks to Annie Lin of Wikimedia Foundation about their collaboration between Cairo and the Middle East.

We announced the idea for an ethnographic reading group last month on Mendeley. We’ve just posted some of our ideas for how to conduct the group. For now, the blog contributors will experiment with how to conduct a virtual reading group and we’ll report back by the end of the summer on how to start a reading group! Anyone who is interested is invited to join on Mendeley (sign up here). Also help compile a list of ethnographic monographs on our shared Mendeley group or share with us your ideas for the group!

Do you have a post that you would like featured on Ethnography Matters? Or would you like to be our next guest contributor? Here are some ideas for how you can participate. Email us! We’d love to hear from you.

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