Abstract

In the accounts compiled in this book, ethnography occurs through processes of material and social interventions that turn the field into a site for epistemic collaboration. Through creative interventions that unfold what we term as “fieldwork devices”—such as coproduced books, the circulation of repurposed data, co-organized events, authorization protocols, relational frictions, and social rhythms—anthropologists engage with their counterparts in the field in the construction of joint anthropological problematizations. In these situations, the traditional tropes of the fieldwork encounter (i.e. immersion and distance) give way to a narrative of intervention, where the aesthetics of collaboration in the production of knowledge substitutes or intermingles with participant observation. Building on this, the book proposes the concept of “experimental collaborations” to describe and conceptualize this distinctive ethnographic modality.

Adolfo Estalella is an anthropologist affiliated to the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid. His research focuses on the emergence of epistemic cultures in the city.

Tomás Sánchez Criado, Senior Researcher at the Munich Center for Technology in Society, TU Munich, is a social anthropologist with specialization in STS, working on the material politics of personal and urban care infrastructures.

“This volume… represents a very serious, worthwhile, and successful effort to bring together new works on ethnographic field methods… It will be of relevance to all practicing anthropologists, regardless of their subdiscipline, area of geographical interest, or current career position.” • David O’Kane, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany

“Experimental Collaborations provides fascinating insights into some of the muddiest disciplines premised on engaged ‘fieldwork’. The book proposes an interesting and useful theoretical framework to explicate the contemporary challenges facing ‘fieldworkers’ of various kinds.” • Matan Shapiro, Ben Gurion University of the Negev