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CSCXXX10.1177/1532708617737100Cultural Studies <span class="symbol" cstyle="symbol">↔</span> Critical MethodologiesMagnat and Kazubowski-Houston

Original Article
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies

Introduction to Special Issue:


1­–13
© 2017 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/1532708617737100
https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708617737100

of Ethnography journals.sagepub.com/home/csc

Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston1 and Virginie Magnat2

Keywords
ethnography, methodologies, qualitative research, cross-disciplinary methodology, neoliberalism, politics and culture,
reconceptualizing collaboration, decolonizing the academy, pedagogy

Introduction academia, where the pursuit of knowledge is no longer


seen as a public good and an end in and of itself? While
The theme for this special issue, which examines the many anthropologists and ethnographers in cognate disci-
transdisciplinary travels of ethnography at the intersec- plines have been critical of the pursuit of knowledge
tions of anthropology, ethnography, cultural studies, per- detached from real-life concerns and social problems, and
formance studies, sport and physical culture studies, as have, instead, practiced socially engaged and interven-
well as theology, emerged from a roundtable panel co- tionist research that benefits the people with whom they
convened by Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston and work, the utilitarian notions of knowledge under the neo-
Virginie Magnat at the Canadian Association for Theatre liberal academic regime represent something quite differ-
Research (CATR) Annual Conference held at Brock ent entirely. As Kazubowski-Houston (see this special
University in 2014. This discussion became the basis for issue, IN PRESS, p. XX) asserts, the language of social
their co-authored presentation titled “Transdisciplinary justice and activism has been co-opted by the neoliberal
Travels of Ethnography: Potentials and Perils” for the academy to disparage the notions of knowledge for knowl-
2015 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry hosted edge’s sake to advance its entrepreneurial goals and agen-
by the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign. This das. Also, as prominent anthropologist Paul Stoller notes
special issue of Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies in his recent Huffington Post blog, ethnography has come
offers a unique opportunity to enter into a cross-disciplin- under attack from other scholars, most frequently from
ary dialogue by opening this discussion to an international legal and quantitative researchers. Its plausibility, accu-
community of qualitative researchers whose work engages racy, and honesty are questioned and contrasted with the
with ethnography. In recent years, the transdisciplinary rigour and verifiability of “scientific” methods (Stoller,
romance with ethnography has become an urgent topic of 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-stoller/in-
concern vehemently debated among social sciences and defense-of-ethnography_b_8028542.html). Stoller’s blog is
humanities scholars in informal conversations and gradu- a rebuttal to legal scholar Paul Campos’s recent essay scath-
ate seminars. Responses to this romance have varied, ing the ethics and legitimacy of Alice Goffman’s (2014)
ranging from an outright skepticism and criticism to initi- widely respected ethnography, On the run, investigating the
ating conversations and ethnographic collaborations damaging and dehumanizing effects of policing of African-
across disciplinary boundaries. Notwithstanding, thus far, American men in a Philadelphia neighbourhood.
no special issues or edited volumes have taken up the Consequently, academic ethnography frequently finds itself
question of what is at stake for researchers employing eth- in defense of its own legitimacy and authority as a research
nography within, as well as across, disciplinary forma- methodology. Certainly, Stoller’s blog is an indication that,
tions sanctioned by the neoliberal university. This issue
addresses this publication gap by asking the following: 1
York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
What is lost and gained when ethnography “travels” across 2
University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, Canada
disciplines? How can ethnography’s transdisciplinary
travels contribute to how we might conceptualize, reimag- Corresponding Author:
Virginie Magnat, Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, University of
ine, and practice ethnography today and in the years to British Columbia Okanagan, CCS 368, 1148 Research Rd., Kelowna,
come? What does it mean for ethnography to “travel” British Columbia, Canada V1V 1V7.
within a competitive and profit-driven neoliberal Email: virginie.magnat@ubc.ca
2 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)

in recent years, such a defense has become urgent enough to this doctrine of discovery and embarked on the search for
break through to public discourse and reach wider, nonaca- “causal laws that applied to all cases” to produce general
demic audiences. The contributors to this special issue hold knowledge about “universal stages of development from
that it is in such contested and uncertain contexts that the barbarism to contemporary (European) civilization” (p. 38).
transdisciplinary travels of ethnography must be ultimately However, the imposition of a natural sciences paradigm on
understood and debated. the study of human social and cultural practices was con-
tested by German scholars such as Dilthey, Weber, Simmel,
Husserl, and Heidegger, who advocated for the interpreta-
Ethnography
tive approach that eventually led to the “hermeneutic turn”
Since anthropology has always differentiated itself from in mid-twentieth century anthropology.
other disciplines by its deeply contextual, historical, and Yet, in spite of this methodological shift, the positionality
quotidian methodology of ethnography, it is crucial to care- of ethnographers remained that of outside observers relying
fully historicize the confluence of anthropology and ethnog- on their scholarly expertise to generate etic descriptions that
raphy to understand what might be at stake when engaging could contribute to the advancement of knowledge in their
with ethnographic inquiry. Readers of Cultural Studies ↔ discipline, that is to say, “for an audience consisting of peo-
Critical Methodologies will notice when consulting the ple other than those who had been studied” (p. 41, italics in
newly published fifth edition of the Sage Handbook of original). Erickson specifies that the researched “were not
Qualitative Research that Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna D. expected to read the research report” as most of them were
Lincoln provocatively state in the preface, “Indeed, the tra- illiterate (p. 41). However, the so-called subjects of ethno-
ditional ethnographic text may be dead (see Snow, 1999, p. graphic research would soon dramatically disrupt the
97; Erickson, Chapter 2, this volume). . . . We are in a post- “golden age” of this realist ethnographic paradigm grounded
ethnographic, postethnographer space” (Denzin and Lincoln, in “its literary quality of ‘you are there’ reporting” (p. 42),
2018, pp. xv-xvi). In the second chapter of the Handbook, which anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski pioneered.
titled “A History of Qualitative Inquiry in Social and While privileged White men largely dominated mainstream
Educational Research,” Frederick Erickson provides critical sociology and anthropology whose authority had remained
insights into the genealogies of ethnography. He observes unchallenged, women such as Laura Bohannon (1954),
that the term ethnography was initially used by anthropolo- Hortense Powdermaker (1966), and Rosalie Wax (1971)
gists in the last quarter of the 19th century to refer to chose to address their personal experience of ethnographic
“descriptive accounts of the lifeways of particular local sets fieldwork through the use of fictionalized and self-reflexive
of people who lived in colonial situations around the world” writing (p. 45). Moreover, Indigenous scholar Vine Deloria
(Erickson, 2018, p. 38). He foregrounds the etymology of (1988/1969) indicted the anthropology of Amerindian soci-
ethnography, which he argues is informed by the ancient eties and cultures as an “ethnocentric and implicitly colo-
Greek xenophobic propensity for treating non-Greeks as the nialist” enterprise in his book Custer Died for Your Sins (p.
Other, inferring that ethnography originally signifies “writ- 46). Deloria’s critique has been further articulated within the
ing about other people” (p. 39). He links ethnographic context of dominant Western research systems by the fol-
research to early forms of qualitative social inquiry such as lowing generation of scholars who have developed
descriptive reporting of social practices and cross-cultural “Indigenous research perspectives and methods [. . .] prac-
comparisons, and includes in his historical overview the ticed by members of communities formerly studied as ‘oth-
writings of Greek scholars Herodotus (5th century B.C.E.) ers’ by ‘outsiders’ (see, for example, Kovach, 2009; Tuhiwai
and Sextus Empiricus (2nd century C.E.), Renaissance and Smith, 2012)” (p. 50).
Baroque “how to do it books” on courtly dancing, pedagogy, Feminists, Indigenous, non-Western, postcolonial, and
fishing or violin playing, along with accounts by travelers postmodern researchers have thus called into question “the
and missionaries about Native Americans under Spanish entire Enlightenment project of authoritative academic dis-
colonial rule. Erickson argues that with the rise of the course concerning human activity, whether this discourse
Enlightenment, quantitatively based inquiry became associ- manifested in the arts, in history, or in social science” (p. 50)
ated with a worldview assuming universally applicable prin- to delegitimize the evidence-based credibility of master nar-
ciples of causality. The notion of a social science emerged ratives produced by such discourse. Echoing anthropologi-
from this increasingly dominant worldview: “Some of the cal conceptions of ethnographic truths as partial and
French Enlightenment philosophers of the 18th century saw subjective that have defined the discipline since the 1980s
the possibility that social processes could be mathematically “crisis of representation” (Abu-Lughod, 1993; Clifford &
modeled and that theories of the state and of political econ- Marcus, 1986; Geertz, 1988), Erickson asserts that qualita-
omy could be formulated and empirically verified in ways tive research reports (and, by extension, ethnographic writ-
that would parallel physics, chemistry, and astronomy” (p. ing) are “often considered partial—renderings done from
28). Early sociology and anthropology were informed by within the standpoint of the life experience of the researcher,”
Magnat and Kazubowski-Houston 3

and suggests that their validity may be “compared to that of 20th-century urban “community work” of the Chicago
novels and poetry—a pointing toward ‘truths’ that are not School (Sluka & Robben, 2007, p. 12), and finally to the
literal” (p. 53). He nevertheless underlines salient cross-dis- contributions from literary and cultural studies that have
ciplinary contradictions: While “realist” ethnography has refocused ethnography toward questions of hegemony,
come under intense scrutiny in both anthropology and soci- power, identity, and agency in capitalist contexts. However,
ology, this paradigm still tends to be privileged in applied it is not until the late 1990s that participant observation-
fields such as education, medicine, and business, “while based ethnography gained currency in other disciplines,
more recently developed approaches have sometimes been which began theorizing, practicing, and writing about eth-
adopted (especially in education) and sometimes met with nography from their own unique perspectives (see, for
skepticism or outright rejection” (p. 53). Moreover, he fore- example, Delamont, 2002; Jackson, 1987). This develop-
grounds current tensions between scholarly standards for ment marks what has been called an “ethnographic turn” in
research excellence promoted by universities, funding agen- the humanities and social sciences, especially in the fields
cies, and peer-reviewed journals that require “rigorous, sys- of cultural, communication, and performance studies, but
tematic, and objective methodologies to obtain valid and also in sociology, education, health studies, business, social
reliable knowledge” (p. 56), and calls for critical and inter- work, the study of sport and physical culture, and theology,
ventionist forms of inquiry that oppose these institutional among others. This, in part, is the result of postmodern cri-
expectations. Ethnography is therefore confronted with new tiques of scientific positivism, reductionism, armchair
challenges while being offered opportunities for further scholarship, and traditional researcher–researched power
transformations. imbalances. These critiques, in turn, have been articulated
In recent years, within anthropology, the wide range of as responses to the shifts in the global relations of power
imaginative, collaborative, visual, auditory, embodied, per- emerging from post-World War II, anticolonial liberation
formative, and multi-sited methodological experimenta- movements and, since the 1970s, from Indigenous, antiglo-
tions—that require anthropologists to think critically about balization, and environmental justice struggles worldwide.
the ethnographic process/product, ethnographer–interlocu- The so-called “subjects” of academic research—as well as
tor relations, ethics, ethnographic field, and ethnographic scholars committed to postcolonial critique, socially
data—have further driven such ethnographic transforma- engaged research, and decolonizing Western academia—
tions (Elliott & Culhane, 2017; Faubion, 2009; Kazubowski- have taken to task not only global capitalism’s neocolonial
Houston, 2010; Magnat, 2011; Marcus, 1995, 2000; Salazar institutions, policies, and practices but also the dominance
et al., 2017; Taussig, 2011). Today, anthropological eth- of Western knowledge systems, theories, epistemologies,
nography tracks routes, global connections, scapes, and and methodologies. The 1980s and 1990s had already borne
zones of friction, and concerns itself with interior dia- witness to a transdisciplinary questioning of the relation-
logues, imaginaries, human-nonhuman relations, and ships between knowledge and power (Fabian, 1983;
affective dimensions of the everyday (Appadurai, 1996; Foucault, 1980; Mitchell, 1988; Mudimbe, 1988; Said,
Clifford, 1997; Crapanzano, 2004; Irving, 2011; Kohn, 1978; Spivak, 1988), further taken up in the work of femi-
2013; Stewart, 2007; Tsing, 2004). Those who carry out nist theorist Emma Pérez (1999); historian and postcolonial
multisited research, for instance, frequently work in a field theorist Dispeh Chakrabarty (2000); anthropologists Ann
that cannot be conceptualized in any traditional and long- Stoler (2002), Gustavo Lins Ribero and Arturo Escobar
term sense. Moreover, anthropology’s recent turn to textu- (2006), and Rosalind Morris (2010); and qualitative
alism, ontology, and antirepresentationalist frameworks researchers Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and
privileges the literary and/or the philosophical over eth- Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2008). “Who has the power to repre-
nography and social analysis (e.g. Asad, 1990, 2003; Dirks, sent whom, under what circumstances, and for whose ben-
2001; Henare, Holbraad, & Wastell, 2007; Kohn, 2013; efits?” have become some of the central questions guiding
Viveiros de Castro, 2015). these critiques. It is not surprising, then, that anthropology’s
questioning of its own imperialist and epistemological
Transdisciplinary Romance underpinnings, and its shift toward cultural critique more
The genealogies of ethnography as anthropology’s central broadly, have deeply resonated across the humanities and
and defining methodology have been undeniably social sciences. Most significantly for this discussion,
multifarious, tracing back to the 19th-century Christian
­ anthropology’s central and defining research methodol-
missionaries and merchants’ colonial descriptions of the ogy—ethnography—with its unique focus on lived experi-
“primitives,” the work of anthropologist and social theorist ence, contextual analysis, and its commitment to cultivating
Lewis H. Morgan, the fieldwork of 19th-century sociolo- deep and long-term ethnographer–interlocutor relationships,
gists in Britain and France who relied on observation to has become acutely relevant to the growing transdisciplinary
understand their own societies (Wax, 1971, pp. 21-41), the concerns over the relationship between knowledge and power
4 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)

and the ethics of academic research. This, in turn, has made not only “how to do” ethnography but also what types of
the marriage between ethnography and other disciplines an knowledge to produce, and for what purposes. Ultimately,
inevitable outcome. In the last decade, in particular, in certain for Fabian and de Rooij, each disciplinary context should
disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts, ethnography has reinvent ethnography for its own sake, but in ways that
become a buzzword synonymous with interviews, qualitative eschew the “how-to” approaches and “hit-and-run” (p. 22)
research, community-based performances, autobiographical methods, and that focus on cultivating deep and prolonged
research, performance ethnography, and so on. Ethnography relationships with interlocutors in the field.
“how-to” books and edited collections have proliferated in Other perspectives (both within and outside of anthropol-
many disciplines and fields (e.g., Gobo, 2008; Pawluch, ogy) have dismissed such concerns as representative of aca-
Shaffir, & Miall, 2005; Thomas, 1993). demic turf-claiming (Turner, 2002; Youngblood, 2007)
Some scholars—usually (but not exclusively) anthro- linked to an anthropological obsession with ethnography,
pologists—have mistrusted this transdisciplinary romance especially in its more “traditional,” Malinowskian rendition
with ethnography (Fabian & de Rooij, 2008; Carter, IN (Green, 2010; Ingold, 2014; McLean, 2013; Widlok, 2009).
PRESS). They perceive it as the methodologizing of eth- Indeed, it is possible to argue that instead of inevitably water-
nography, a process that appropriates ethnography as ing down ethnography, some borrowings by non-anthropolo-
“method” to provide a set of tools that can be learned and gists have enriched its practice by enhancing “our
applied across different disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and understanding of what constitutes good ethnography”
methodological fields, and they express concerns over the (Widlock, 2009, pp. 42-43). Appropriation anxieties
ethical implications of misappropriating ethnography expressed by anthropologists about ethnography might hence
stripped of anthropological historicity. They hold that eth- be assuaged whenever non-anthropologists help remind them
nography is largely improvisational, creative, and situ- of “the contemporary and trans-disciplinary relevance of eth-
ated—a sensibility that cultivates a particular understanding, nographic fieldwork” (Green, 2010, http://intergraph-journal.
a way of being in, sensing, feeling, and responding to, the net/enhanced/vol3issue2/4.html). Moreover, there is a press-
world. It is also a particular way of creating knowledge: an ing need for anthropology to curb a growing tendency to
“unfinished” (Stewart, 2008) process of tacking back and “define its identity and distinctiveness principally on its
forth between field and theory. Researchers may use differ- deployment of ethnographic methods,” a disciplinary stance
ent “methods” of conducting research—interviews, partici- that seems inadequate to those who, like Tim Ingold, argue
pant observation, life story recordings, photography, film, that anthropology must reassert its public voice by offering
performance, drawings, sounds recordings, and so on— productive ways of “healing the rupture between imagination
which could, to a certain extent, be taught and learned, yet and real life” (Ingold, 2014, p. 383). For others, like Stuart
ethnography is not a sum of various methods since it is per- MacLean, anthropology’s defensiveness comes from being
formed differently by different individuals under different challenged to engage with the complexities of the contempo-
circumstances (Castañeda, 2006; Malkki, 2007; Wolcott, rary world (McLean, 2013, p. 67).
2004). Even how one conducts interviews or participant
observation might have to be modified or entirely refigured
Rethinking Ethnography in Neoliberal Academia
according to the specificity of the research field. In addi-
tion, there is a wide range of context-specific skills, forms Such defensive mechanisms resulting in methodological
of awareness and perception, embodied responses, and turf-claiming may be triggered by the paranoid climate of
imaginaries that researchers need to cultivate and inhabit— the neoliberal restructuring of academia and the devaluation
all of which cannot be easily passed on from one researcher of qualitative inquiry. As noted by Denzin and Lincoln in
to another. Any attempt at reducing ethnography to their introduction to the fifth edition of the Sage Handbook
“method” risks compromising some of its most valuable of Qualitative Research, “the re-invigorated evidence-based
features, including the notion of the partiality of ethno- research movement” and its attempts to “scientize qualita-
graphic truths, the strategy of reflexivity, a commitment to tive approaches” have incited some qualitative researchers
cultural critique, and “writing against culture” (Abu- to advocate “a strategic positivism,” and compelled others to
Lughod, 1991). Johannes Fabian and Vincent de Rooij have call for “a return to neopositivist or postpositivist traditional
best exemplified these concerns in their seminal critique of ethnographic methods (Clarke, Friese, & Washburn, 2015,
the methodologization of fieldwork published in the Sage p. 40)” (pp. 2-3). While they interrogate these problematic
Handbook of Cultural Studies (2008). In their view, what re-orientations, Denzin and Lincoln simultaneously caution
anthropology knows about ethnography cannot be easily against uncritical claims of qualitative ethicism that “can
exported to other disciplines for quick consumption, direct our attention away” from the ways in which qualita-
because committing to ethnography as a research methodol- tive inquiry and ethnography are “used to sell products in the
ogy also entails committing to anthropology, its history, and consumer market-place” (p. 7). Paradoxically, in spite of the
the lessons that come with it (p. 5). These lessons concern growing popularity of ethnography in other disciplines,
Magnat and Kazubowski-Houston 5

anthropologists have been struggling to defend the viability understand performativity not only as citationality, that is to
of this time-intensive methodology within the behemoth that say, “an internalized repetition of hegemonic stylized acts
is academic managerialism. Understandably then, some of inherited from the status quo” but also as having “the capa-
them harbor strong misgivings about the transdisciplinary bility of resistance [through] an internalized repetition of sub-
trajectories of ethnography, for when their prized methodol- versive stylized acts inherited by contested identities” (p.
ogy wanders off into other disciplines and fields, they feel 181), then it becomes possible for them to harness the sub-
caught in a double-bind requiring them to either reclaim its versive potential of performativity to resist, challenge, and
ownership or develop new arguments about what makes change hegemonic forces of exclusion, oppression, and dis-
anthropology unique and viable. In this transdisciplinary crimination. Accordingly, in their “Manifesto for
moment, when anthropological research is carried out both Ethnography” published in Cultural Studies ↔ Critical
at and away from home, anthropology’s topical foci—power Methodologies in 2002, Paul Willis and Mats Trondmann
and politics, marginalization, globalization, ontologies, net- define ethnography as “the sensitive register of how expe-
works, consumption, human-nonhuman relations, and so rience and culture indicate, as well as help to constitute,
on—clearly overlap with those of other disciplines in the profound social and structural change,” and observe that
humanities and social sciences, which calls into question the the challenge for ethnographers lies in bringing “that ‛reg-
relevance of anthropology within the escalating competi- istered experience’ into a productive but unfussy relation to
tiveness of corporatized academia. ‛theory,’ so maximizing the illumination of wider change”
In their introduction, Denzin and Lincoln point to “an (p. 399). J. Van Loon (2001) contends that “the main impact
increasing sensitivity to and sophistication about the pitfalls of cultural studies on ethnography has been that the latter
and promises of ethnography and qualitative research” (p. 2), has become not only a subject but also an instrument of a
and it is therefore crucial to foreground the significant num- continuous process of critical engagement with our own
ber of scholars who have addressed the value, challenges, being-in-the-world, beyond the taking for granted of that
and potentialities of ethnography from entirely different which already exists” (p. 4). While embodiment is pivotal
multidisciplinary standpoints. For example, Dwight
­ to ethnographic practice, Van Loon stresses that “the body
Conquergood’s “Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical is never simply there, it is made, practised and processed,”
Cultural Politics,” published in an anthology of his influential and suggests that it is precisely this processing, this
essays, Cultural Struggles: Performance Ethnography, and “becoming-body,” that is the work of ethnography (p. 22).
Practice (2013), asserts, “No group of scholars is struggling In her examination of the turbulent relationship between
more acutely and productively with the political tensions of anthropology, ethnography, and cultural studies, Charmaine
research than ethnographers. For ethnography, the undermin- McEachern (1998) remarks that while the field of cultural
ing of objectivist science came roughly at the same time as studies has been influenced by anthropology’s critical re-
the collapse of colonialism” (p. 81). Defining ethnography as evaluation of the ethnographic enterprise in the 1980s,
“an intensely sensuous way of knowing” that challenges “the anthropologists who are investigating their own contempo-
visualist bias of positivism with talk about voices, utterances, rary society and culture could learn from cultural studies
intonations, multivocality” (pp. 83, 87), he favors metaphors forms of ethnography whose main focus has been on iden-
of sound that privilege “temporal process, proximity, and tity and agency in capitalist societies. Moreover, exploring
incorporation,” and listening as “an interiorizing experience, hegemonic and subversive constructions of identity in con-
a gathering together, a drawing in,” that he contrasts with temporary culture and issues of personal agency has also
sight, observation, detachment, distance, and objectivity been pivotal to autoethnography, a practice whose theory,
linked to “the spatial practices of division, separation, com- history, ethics, and commitment to social justice are exam-
partmentalization, and surveillance” (p. 87). Stressing the ined in The Handbook of Autoethnography (2013).
embodied dimension of ethnographic practice, he contends George E. Marcus and Paul Rabinow discuss anthropol-
that “the return of the body” shifts the emphasis “from space ogy’s transformation under the influence of its most impor-
to time, from sight and vision to sound and voice, from text tant interdisciplinary alliances in the humanities, namely,
to performance, from authority to vulnerability” (p. 87). D. literary and cultural studies, leading to the re-definition of
Soyini Madison (2006) responds by stating that ethnographic fieldwork as the practice of “forming relation-
“Conquergood’s call to rethink ethnography is to revision, ships of mutual stakes and mutual appropriations for differ-
reinvent, and recommit to an ethnography that must engage a ent purposes on a common intellectual ground, forged
postcolonial, post-civil rights, post-cold war, postfeminist, together in perhaps a halting, partial way, but sometimes,
and postmodern world. . . . We are called to attend in the most when one is lucky, in a committed way” (Designs for an
deep and abiding way to an ethnographic encounter with Anthropology of the Contemporary, 2008, p. 66). Luke Eric
Otherness that demands our whole body” (pp. 347-348). In Lassiter (2005) asserts in The Chicago Guide to Collaborative
Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance, Ethnography that engaging in collaborative ethnographic
Madison (2012) argues that if critical ethnographers research “challenges the authority not only of the
6 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)

single-authored text, but also of the single-voiced activist, explore possible (re-)orientations spanning a broad spec-
and it forges a ‛co-activism’ in much more complex, diverse, trum of ethnographic research and raising key epistemo-
and multivocal ways (Schensul & Stern, 1985).” He further logical and methodological questions. In particular,
contends that such a collaborative process “blurs the lines contributors put diverse multidisciplinary perspectives into
between academic and community discourse, between aca- conversation to consider what it means for ethnography to
demic and applied anthropology, between theory and prac- travel across disciplines and fields, and, conversely, what
tice, and it places collaborative ethnography among the different disciplines and fields might contribute to the prac-
many kinds of public and activist efforts that have long tice of ethnography.
abounded in our field (see, for example, Stull & Schensul, Anthropologist Thomas F. Carter thus argues in
1985)” (pp. 153-154). “Disciplinary (Per)Mutations of Ethnography” that ethnog-
Most recently, a growing number of scholars in diverse raphy must acknowledge and address “the incomplete nature
disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields have welcomed the of human knowledge” through the ethnographer’s own
multifarious potentials of working ethnographically and col- “entanglement with the object of enquiry” (p. XX). Stressing
laboratively across social sciences, humanities, science and that the ethnographer does not begin from a position of
technology studies, and the creative arts. This is exemplified authority or expertise through which empirical facts are to
by several recently published interdisciplinary edited volumes be discovered and analyzed, Carter refers to his long-term
on ethnographic experimentations and multidisciplinary col- fieldwork on Cuban baseball and reflects on the ways in
laborations, including A Different Kind of Ethnography: which his ethnographic knowledge had to continually recon-
Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies (2017) stitute itself as the practice of Cuban baseball underwent
edited by Denielle Elliott and Dara Culhane, which focuses on transformations over the last two decades. Providing exam-
ethnography at the intersections of anthropology and the cre- ples from acclaimed ethnographies on the urban poor con-
ative arts; Anthropologies and Futures: Researching Emerging ducted in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia by
and Uncertain Worlds (2017) edited by Juan Francisco Bourgeois, Venkatesh, and Goffman, he contends that eth-
Salazar, Sarah Pink, Andrew Irving, and Johannes Sjöberg, nography, while being inherently comparative, focuses on
which explores a range of creative approaches to research or different kinds of comparison when ethnographers working
Theoretical Scholarship and Applied Practice (2017) edited on the same topic have different disciplinary training. Carter
by Sarah Pink, Vaike Fors, and Tom O’Dell that engages with specifies that ethnography is a craft requiring specific inves-
collaborative interdisciplinary research at the intersections of tigative skills honed through long-term practice, and that it is
theoretical research and applied practices outside academia. through the combined implementation of these skills “in a
Additionally, a variety of transdisciplinary research and specific context-laden field” (p. XX) that ethnographic
­educational centers, ventures, and networks have sprung up in knowledge is crafted. Ethnography is therefore informed by
the last few years, such as The Centre for Imaginative “the disciplinary framing of one’s epistemological prac-
Ethnography (CIE), a transnational cyber-collective tices” (p. XX), leading to the development of a particular
committed to creative, embodied, critical, and politically
­ ethnographic sensibility. He observes that because the study
­conscious research; Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard of culture has become increasingly important in other disci-
University that explores intersections between e­thnography plines, anthropology can no longer claim ethnographic field-
and aesthetics; the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at work as a methodological approach specifically designed for
Manchester University, which initiates collaborations between the production of anthropological knowledge about culture.
sensory ethnography, practice-based methods, photography Within the context of globalization, transnationalism, and
and digital media, and art/museum i­nstallations; and the two new technologies, the field itself may be “conceptualized as
new European Association for Social Anthropology (EASA) a confluence of various forces enmeshing the ethnographic
Networks, Future Anthropologies Network (FAN) committed object of enquiry” (p. XX), while the mutations of ethnogra-
to creative, interdisciplinary, and applied research focused on phy that occur in the course of its transdisciplinary travels
futures, and #Colleex-Collaboratory for Ethnographic may be traced to each discipline’s primary focus, “whether it
Experimentation devoted to exploring experimental be ‛society’ (sociology), ‘health’ (medicine), ‘space’ (geog-
approaches to ethnographic fieldwork. raphy), ‘mind’ (psychology) or ‘culture’ and ‘subculture’
found in a range of interdisciplinary fields (cultural studies,
From “Turf Claiming” to “Turf Sharing”: The sport studies, media studies, leisure studies and so forth),
underpinning the ethnographer’s default position” (p. XX).
Promise of Transdisciplinary Coalition and
Carter warns, however, that one of the consequences of these
Collaboration permutations has been the conflation of ethnographic meth-
Building on the work of scholars whose perspectives have odology with method—which may include participant
been highlighted in this introduction, the articles featured in observation, interviews, life histories, mapmaking, film,
this special issue draw from specific areas of expertise to photography, and archival work. Yet for Carter, ethnography
Magnat and Kazubowski-Houston 7

is not a method, but rather, a methodology, because it is “a significant role in facilitating the travels of ethnography, it
specific way of doing research and producing knowledge has done so under the influence of biomedical disciplines
about our world in which the researcher engages with the that privilege behavioral theories and accountability to pro-
limits of one’s own knowledge” (p. XX). Foregrounding the tect researchers from the potential dangers associated with
open-ended nature of ethnographic enquiry and the ethnog- ethnographic fieldwork. Yet they emphasize that according
rapher’s critical positionality, Carter concludes that it is pre- to some anthropologists and research safety scholars,
cisely because this form of enquiry produces partial and “shifting analytical and applied focus from controlling risk
incomplete knowledge that ethnography succeeds in “rais- to managing uncertainty” can become a way of acknowl-
ing uncertainties in our certitudes” (p. XX) through its edging and capitalizing on “the experiential, emotional,
exploration of the “ambiguities, uncertainties, and technical, and systematic learning that arises through
unknowns” (p. XX) of human existence within particular encountering uncertainty” (p. XX). Morgan and Pink fore-
contexts and under specific circumstances. ground the notion of “ethnographic apprenticeship,” which
In their coauthored article “Researcher Safety? they envision as “a ‛mode of learning’ that is itself genera-
Ethnography in the Interdisciplinary World of Audit tive of researcher safety” (p. XX) because it requires eth-
Cultures,” anthropologists Jennie Morgan and Sarah Pink nographers to engage in “an on-going practical activity
seek to “harness the creative potential of uncertainty” (p. situated in specific material, social, temporal, affective,
XX) and provocatively suggest that developing “a reflex- and sensory environments” (p. XX).They relate this per-
ive awareness of what we do not know could be safer than spective to the creative and responsive dimensions of eth-
the ‛truths’ that we think we know” (p. XX). The authors nographic research that can be productively harnessed to
hence scrutinize the regulatory logics of institutional critique OSH anticipatory logics. Their critical autoethno-
research governance and investigate the implications of graphic analysis of their fieldwork experience enables
occupational safety and health (OSH) on ethnographic them to identify four key aspects of researcher safety—
practice. Their collaborative autoethnographic approach to learning, knowing, doing, and improvising—that have
researching workplace OSH in the construction, health been pivotal to their research process. They advocate the
care, and logistics sectors raises salient questions about the development of a “storied knowledge perspective,” which
dangers of research safety policies imposed through insti- can become a way of cultivating what they define as “an
tutional guidelines, regulations, and protocols to anticipate anthropologically-theorized reflexive awareness of what
and safeguard against the potential risks linked to conduct- we do not know and of how we might ongoingly and cre-
ing fieldwork, whether these risks be physical (e.g., injury), atively respond through our research practice to such
emotional (e.g., feelings of isolation), or linked to gender uncertainty” (p. X). The challenge, of course, is to effec-
(e.g., harassment). Pointing out that such regulatory frame- tively promote researcher safety while supporting a form
works are informed by disciplinary behavioral theories that of risk-taking that embraces the unpredictability of ethno-
are contested in anthropology, health care, and social work, graphic practice and resists the logics of “anticipation” and
the authors argue that ethnographers working in the inter- “preparedness” symptomatic of audit culture in the increas-
disciplinary field of safety research are uniquely positioned ingly techno-bureaucratic environment of the neoliberal
to identify and address the contradictions lying at the core university. The authors respond to this challenge by assert-
of OSH top–down regulatory frameworks focused on indi- ing that anticipatory and adaptive ways of engaging with
vidual behavioral issues. They contend that “a critical uncertainty must be relational rather than oppositional, and
understanding of how transdisciplinary anticipatory logics they urge ethnographers to contribute to critical transdisci-
of OSH encroach on ethnographic practice” (p. XX) is cru- plinary debates about the necessity of creatively redesign-
cial to the development of alternative methodological and ing OSH guidance in the academy.
conceptual approaches to researcher safety. They employ Creativity, storied knowledge, improvisation, risk-taking,
autoethnography to provide insights into how it is possible and embracing uncertainty are pivotal to Magdalena
“to ‛know how’ to research (safety) safely” through the Kazubowski-Houston’s article “quiet theatre: The Radical
blending of “anticipatory OSH logics with contingent, per- Politics of Silence,” which explores how working at the
sonal, and improvisatory ways of knowing” (p. XX). They intersections of ethnography, performance, storytelling, and
refer to the fieldwork they conducted on workplace OSH imagination might contribute to an engaged and interven-
across health care, logistics, and construction organiza- tionist anthropology and activist ethnographic research prac-
tions. Within this transdisciplinary context, the authors tice more broadly. Kazubowski-Houston focuses on the
contend that ethnographically informed anthropological project she conducted in collaboration with an elderly Roma
theory can produce a critique of “the bureaucratization of woman, Randia, which studied Roma elders’ experiences of
academic practice and research governance” (p. XX) that aging in Poland after the nation’s accession to the European
can be beneficial to ethnographers working across disci- Union. Over the past decade, in the aftermath of mass migra-
plines. They suggest that while OSH has played a tion of young and middle-aged Roma to Western Europe,
8 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)

many elderly Roma struggle alone to make ends meet in a Natalie Wigg-Stevenson contributes to current debates on
context of growing prejudice and discrimination. how transdiciplinary ethnographic approaches intervene
Kazubowski-Houston used dramatic storytelling as an eth- within specific disciplinary discourses in her article “What’s
nographic research methodology in which the ethnographer Really Going On: Ethnographic Theology and the Production
and interlocutor stepped into character and co-performed of Theological Knowledge.” She highlights a shift away
fictional stories loosely based on their lives. Their acting from text-based theological traditions toward how these tra-
style merged elements of what could be characterized as ditions are embodied in practice, and argues that while eth-
psychological realism where the actor identifies with the nography can help theology to develop a more reflexive
character; Brechtian epic theatre, where the actor portrays, articulation of its own discourse, working within a theologi-
rather than identifies with, their character; and magic real- cal context is also an opportunity for reinventing ethnogra-
ism, through which reality and fiction intermingle. This fic- phy. Wigg-Stevenson refers to her own experience of
tional dramatic storytelling approach can be seen as an disbelief when, as a theology graduate student and practic-
“imaginative ethnography” that attends to people’s imagina- ing Christian, she went on a field trip with her classmates to
tive lifeworlds and experiments with a variety of creative a nursing home where a woman who was battling an incur-
techniques in the field. In the dramatic storytelling sessions, able illness “claimed to have died, met Jesus, and come back
the interlocutor and ethnographer constructed characters that to tell her story” (p. XX). Wigg-Stevenson explains that on
partook in a process of “surrealist adventure” (p. XX) by hearing the woman’s testimony, the cohort of graduate stu-
means of “projective improvisation” and mimicry (p. XX). dents rejected the story’s plausibility, a collective experience
Kazubowski-Houston employed dramatic storytelling with that led her to ask why the possibility of a human encounter
the intent to practice what she calls “an anthropology of pos- with God was unfathomable for ethnographers working
sibility” (p. XX) committed to engagement, collaboration, within the discipline of theology. She recalls that when lis-
reflexivity, and intervention. In particular, she was interested tening to the woman’s story, “something in her joy, in her
in exploring how transdisciplinary approaches to ethnogra- witness, made me want to believe,” and goes on to observe
phy that engage the imagination through the creative arts that “when theological tradition presses theologians to dis-
might contribute to an interventionist and applied anthropol- miss theological reality, then something has gone wrong” (p.
ogy by facilitating a space for reimagining the real, and for XX). She specifies that whereas theology’s relevance is
constructing knowledge about “imaginative lifeworlds” as a questioned by many church-going Christians, its legitimacy
form of “oppositional narrative.” “quiet theatre: The Radical as an academic discipline that maintains an allegiance to
Politics of Silence” focuses on the ways that dramatic story- Christian doctrine is also at stake, as evidenced by theolo-
telling—where silence defined the ethnographer-interlocu- gy’s ongoing interdisciplinary negotiations with religious
tor relations— constituted “quiet theatre,” a form of radical studies. Wigg-Stevenson chooses to foreground tensions
politics working through imagination, affect, fiction, projec- between these two fields by pointing to theology’s problem-
tive improvisation, and empathy. Likening the silence that atic lack of critical reflexivity, perhaps most significantly
encapsulated her dramatic storytelling sessions to that of manifest in its inability to historicize the complicity of
Samuel Beckett’s existential play Waiting for Godot—a Christian traditions with institutional violence, while simul-
poetic commentary on the hopelessness, absurdity, and taneously highlighting the positivist approach privileged by
bankruptcy of a post-World War II world—Kazubowski- religious studies, whose claims of scientific objectivity,
Houston traces how such a seemingly paralyzing “quiet the- rigor, and neutrality have long been challenged by anthro-
atre” in her project constituted an important transformative pology. She infers that “ethnographic methods cannot, in
politics, facilitating a reciprocal empathic attunement between and of themselves, solve the problem of an approach that
ethnographer and interlocutor—a “space of sincerity.” obliterates the empirical with the theological. But neither . . .
Silence, she argues, while historically equated with lack, defi- can we use them to do the reverse” (p. XX). Having acknowl-
ciency, absence, or trauma, needs to be reimagined as a space edged, along with Fabian, de Rooij, and others, that “the
for radical action, where “quiet forms of knowing” (p. XX) methodologization of ethnography in its transdisciplinary
make and remake the past, present, and future. Such “quiet” migration is deeply problematic” (p. XX), she envisions an
activism, for Kazubowski-Houston, is a contextually specific alternative approach that builds on Kathryn Tanner’s descrip-
method that takes to task the meanings of intervention in eth- tion of theology as a cultural practice through which
nographic research. She proposes that when working against Christian identity is produced and experienced, and suggests
Western ideals of humanitarianism and hollow neoliberal dis- that emphasizing the hybrid and relational dimensions of
courses of social justice and community engagement, trans- this identity can help “map a much more dynamic theologi-
disciplinary ethnographic approaches might provide a starting cal terrain” (p. XX) for the kind of reflexive cultural critique
point for attending to the unpredictable, complicated, ephem- championed by anthropologists who conceive of ethno-
eral, humble, and elusive ways in which intervention might graphic practice as a form of activism and intervention.
play out in the field. Wigg-Stevenson hence proposes to reinvent theological
Magnat and Kazubowski-Houston 9

ethnography that might be reconfigured as “an apprenticed voice” with concepts of agency, subjectivity, representa-
spiritual discipline” through which apprenticeship to faith tion, and power grounded in dominant Western conceptions
and scholarly apprenticeship may be fully integrated. From of an autonomous, rational, speaking subject, which have
such a perspective, theological ethnography cannot be perhaps been most effectively challenged by Mikhail
reduced to either “a cultural analysis of a Christian practice Bakhtin’s (1981) notions of dialogism, heteroglossia, and
or a cultural critique of a Christian tradition” (p. XX), polyphony. She foregrounds interdisciplinary voice studies
thereby becoming free to focus on the production of “fresh scholar Konstantinos Thomaidis’s analysis (2014) of what
theological insights and possibilities for Christian living” (p. cultural theorist Adriana Cavarero (2005) names the “devo-
XX). Re-visiting her reaction to the Christian woman’s near- calization of logos” in Western philosophy (p. 40), making
death story, the author envisions an interdisciplinary it possible to historicize the exclusion, marginalization, and
approach combining cross-cultural studies, nonreductionist silencing of vocality. Inviting us to embark on an imaginary
neurological perspectives, insights from pastoral care, and visit to ancient Greece, Magnat proposes to probe the ori-
Christian doctrines of revelation and eschatology. She gins of devocalization through a performative ethnographic
observes that “the proliferation of creative, literary, artistic, encounter with Plato’s Ion, a conflictual dramatic dialogue
or performance-based approaches with which anthropolo- opposing the illustrious philosopher Socrates to Ion, an
gists have experimented have not, by and large, found their acclaimed epic story-teller, champion of rhapsodic contests,
way into the array of methodological options for theologians and established vocal expert. Magnat contends that criti-
to engage” (p. XX), even though these might offer produc- cally examining Plato’s anxiety about performance and
tive representational strategies. Moreover, in light of the vocality can become a way for performance studies schol-
“shared complicity between anthropologists, theologians, ars to reclaim the embodied, nonvisual materiality of the
and Christian missionaries in colonial projects” (p. XX), she sonic, aural, phonic, and vocal dimensions of performativ-
argues that critical reflexivity and historical consciousness ity. She infers from this close encounter with the Ion that
must be practiced rigorously by theologians when engaging Plato might have associated vocality with the power of oral-
with ethnography. She further contends that theology can ity and the dangers of live performance, as suggested by
contribute to the social sciences its commitment to fully Walter Ong (1982/2002). She highlights the perplexing
engage with the spiritual dimensions of life, thus opening nature of Plato’s prejudice against embodiment, perfor-
possibilities for mutually beneficial interdisciplinary col- mance, and voice by pointing out that these fundamental
laborations focused on decolonizing research that might elements of oral culture “must have played a pivotal role in
address the theological Doctrine of Discovery, the intergen- the traditional pedagogy of ancient Greece, where philoso-
erational spiritual impact of residential schools on phy was an interactive public forum, or a sport event of the
Indigenous communities, as well as practices of reconcilia- mind that probably took the form of improvised arguments
tion in South Africa, Canada, and elsewhere. In support of between highly skilled debaters” (p. XX). This is corrobo-
such interdisciplinary research orientations, the editors of rated by a happenstance meeting “in the field” with
this special issue would like to suggest that these collabora- Thomaidis, who describes the sonic/phonic environment of
tions might also consider the crucial role of spirituality for Socrates’s symposium as inherently dialogic as well as
Indigenous sovereignty movements in their ongoing resis- inclusive of musicality and rhythm, an aspect that Plato
tance to colonialism. rejects in his writings. These remarks compel Magnat to
In “A Traveling Ethnography of Voice in Qualitative posit that Plato strives to silence the aural/oral properties of
Research,” Virginie Magnat tracks anthropology’s colonial logos precisely because he senses that their potentially sub-
legacy in the development of ethnography, a methodology versive power can undermine the primacy of discursivity, as
initially designed to make the cultural practices of the Other in the case of epic poetry chanted by skillful rhapsodists. To
legible to the West by translating orality and embodiment redress the ideologically charged devocalization of logos
into scholarly writing. Linking the privileging of literacy whose genealogy can be traced to Plato, Magnat challenges
and print culture in the academy to Dwight Conquergood’s qualitative researchers to listen to, engage with, and learn
(2013) notion of scriptocentrism, she investigates how the from the practitioners of contemporary oral cultures “whose
sensorially experienced nondiscursive materiality of vocal- continuity critically hinges upon the vulnerability, relation-
ity becomes “voice” when reduced to a conceptual abstrac- ality, and reciprocity of the lived voice” (p. XX).
tion or a metaphor through visualist and textualist theoretical In “Beyond Boundaries: The Development and Potential
frameworks. Magnat argues that the potentially scriptocen- of Ethnography in the Study of Sport and Physical Culture,”
tric dimension of the anthropological ethnographic project Kass Gibson and Michael Atkinson focus on embodiment
poses a methodological risk in light of the increasingly and agency as they explore the implications of the transdis-
widespread usage of ethnography within the interdisciplin- ciplinary travels of ethnography for their research on exer-
ary domain of qualitative inquiry. She traces the ways in cise, physical activity, and fitness practices. The authors
which anthropology problematically equates “having a observe that whereas play and games have been thoroughly
10 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 00(0)

investigated by anthropologists, sport and exercise have not well-being, and inclusivity. Gibson and Atkinson conclude
been considered legitimate subjects of inquiry because they their discussion by providing a detailed guideline designed
do not seem to fit anthropological categories of cultural for PCS ethnographers committed to the development of
practice. Having acknowledged anthropological ethnogra- alternative perspectives through a sustained engagement
phies that focus on sport to explore issues of cultural repro- with first-person research practice.
duction and resistance, nationalism, identity, globalization, Norman K. Denzin’s dialogical and polyphonic contribu-
gender, and sexualities, along with ethnographies of body- tion titled “Performing Ethnography: Staging Resistance” is
building as a form of subculture, Gibson and Atkinson a nontraditional text offering a performative writing model
stress that gym studies, aerobic classes, and other fitness that employs a play-within-a-play structure, requiring read-
practices tend to be investigated by sociologists and cultural ers to become active co-creators called on to imagine and
studies scholars rather than anthropologists. They note that possibly perform the characters summoned by this dynamic
violence in sport has been a major focus of ethnographic web of relationships. Denzin opens with a manifesto-qua
fieldwork conducted by researchers interested in marginal- abstract in which he sets the stage for a transgressive, imagi-
ized subcultures. The authors foreground a growing interest native, and interventionist approach that “bends and twists
in privileged sporting subcultures as well as physical cul- the meanings of theatre, drama, audience, ethnography, . . .
tures beyond sport, whose study might provide new insights performance, politics and ethics” (p. XX) and that refuses to
into privileges linked to race, class, gender, sexuality, and separate the writer from the ethnographer, the performer and
so on. Yet they observe that because Physical Culture the world. The role of the ethnographer thus becomes that of
Studies (PCS) laboratories are usually housed in kinesiol- a performer-poet-critic whose unruly, passionate, and dis-
ogy departments, research focused on advancing athletic ruptive actions “can change reality by making social justice
performance and chronic disease prevention tends to be pri- visible” (p. XX) in a world whose democratic public life is
oritized and supported by private funding. The authors nev- dangerously undermined by Trump’s “politics of extremism,
ertheless identify PCS scholars who resist this trend by misogyny and ultra-nationalism” (p. XX). Denzin provoca-
privileging issues of embodiment, reflexivity, representa- tively de-centers his own authority by featuring an impres-
tion, and intervention, and who are committed to effecting sive cast of influential theorists, artist-scholars, and activists
cultural, social, and political change through the promotion whose work has shaped the interdisciplinary field of qualita-
of “more equitable, safe, inclusive, pleasurable, and mean- tive inquiry. These include Victor Turner, Richard Schechner,
ingful experiences” (p. XX). Warning against the pitfalls of Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, Erving Goffman, Dwight
autoethnographic hyper-reflexivity, including “introspec- Conquergood, D. Soyini Madison, Anna Deavere Smith,
tive hand-wringing [and] tales of self-valour” (p. XX), the Johnny Saldana, and Gloria Anzaldua, whose voices he jux-
authors assert that PCS scholarship must explore ways of taposes with those of historical, legendary, fictional, and
understanding the milieu of sport and physical culture mythological characters such as Buffalo Bill, Tonto, and
beyond that of “a breeding ground for injustice, suffering, especially Coyote, whose role as savvy trickster, irreverent
alienation, and a host of other social problems” (p. XX) and cultural hero, and incisive devil’s advocate, helps to destabi-
make room for the socio-historical situatedness of practitio- lize theoretical discourses by poking fun at academic author-
ners’ perspectives to inform PCS theorizing, which they ity and asking tough questions. It is Coyote who points out,
argue necessarily requires long-term fieldwork and rigorous for example, that Freire and Boal believed in the necessity of
ethnographic practice. They advocate “embodied cultural putting one’s life on the line: “They have lived the call. They
studies in and of the first-person,” an ethnographic approach have lived lives of resistance. It is not idle talk for them. In
they consider to be more humane, emotionally sensitive, their hands, theatre becomes the means for revolution”
and interpersonal. They contend that privileging the emic (p. XX). In the spirit of Bakhtinian heteroglossia, this muti-
perspective of insiders makes it possible to explore “human layered, plurivocal, and at times surreal ethnographic mon-
pleasure through movement as a (if not the) core substan- tage performs resistance with virtuosity and bravado on the
tive and ethnographic focus” (p. XX) and to theorize this edge of carnivalesque chaos. Perhaps most importantly in
lived experience as a form of embodied cultural pleasure the context of this special issue, Denzin’s intersubjective
that can provide practitioners with “a sense of creative cocktail of critical and creative insights sparks flashes of
agency” (p. XX). By challenging dominant discourses reflexivity that mimic the epiphanies of ethnographic field-
focusing on power differentials, the authors invite PCS work. Anna Deavere Smith hence shares her experience of
scholars to consider the meaningful and pleasurable dimen- being an African-American woman “speaking in the voice
sions of physical culture and investigate the extent to which and manner of historical figures (living and dead)” and
“forms of sport, exercise, dance, and play” might help prac- explains that “an actor’s race and gender is on one side of the
titioners to fulfill “psychological, emotional and cultural bridge, and the other they pursue is across the bridge. The
needs and desires” (p. XX) through the cultivation of a type effort to cross the bridge is the drama” (p. XX). While
of agency that promotes mind–body connection, health and Deavere Smith’s performances are based on facts, they are
Magnat and Kazubowski-Houston 11

“not offered as truths, but as fictions that attempt to tell other sciences, the arts, and the humanities makes much more
truths, the kind of truths that live in fiction and in imaginary sense than holding onto the garrison mentality of disciplin-
worlds” (p. XX). This piece similarly relies on fiction and ary self-righteousness. By working together to reinvent eth-
imagination through the interweaving of the dramatic, theat- nography, as prompted by Fabian and de Rooij, in a way that
rical, performative, and ethnographic strands of qualitative values the cultivation of morally and intellectually sustain-
research. Foregrounding the resources offered by critical able relationships, we might foster a mutually beneficial
pedagogy, the theater of the oppressed, performance studies, cross/inter/trans-disciplinary dialogue about otherwise
anthropology, critical ethnography, and arts-based inquiry, unforeseen possibilities, including the application of 21st
Denzin invites us “to inspire acts of activism” (p. XX) and to century research to real-world issues that call for ethically
take a courageous stance against the pervasiveness of nihilist sensitive, culturally specific, socially responsible, and politi-
rhetoric epitomized by Trump’s rise to power in the United cally efficacious alternatives. As unequivocally stated by
States. Through this spectacular call to enact a politics of Norman Denzin in the conclusion of his energizing contribu-
liberation in the era of late neoliberal capitalism, Denzin tion, “There is no going back” (p. XX).
compellingly asserts his conviction that the facts and experi-
ences of oppression can be used to change history, thereby Declaration of Conflicting Interests
urging us to embody a critical pedagogy in action whose
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
insurgent performativity he believes can dramatically to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
empower global and local struggles for social justice.
These articles therefore offer a wide range of perspec-
tives on salient epistemological and methodological ques- Funding
tions related to ethnographic research, from anthropological The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
and sociological understandings of fieldwork to performa- for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
tive and imaginative ethnographic journeys that call into
question prescriptive conceptions of research and academic
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in-defense-of-ethnography_b_.html8028542 Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston is Associate Professor in the
Taussig, M. (2011). I swear I saw this: Drawings in fieldwork note- Department of Theatre at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her
books, namely my own. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. book, Staging strife (2010), was awarded the International
Thomaidis, K. (2014). The revocalization of logos? Thinking, Congress of Qualitative Inquiry Outstanding Qualitative Book
doing and disseminating voice. Studies in Musical Theatre, Award and the Canadian Association for Theatre Research Ann
8, 177-187. Saddlemyer Book Prize (2011). She is the Co-Founding Member
Thomas, J. (1993). Doing critical ethnography. Newbury Park, of the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography (CIE) [imaginativeeth-
CA: SAGE. nography.org]
Tsing, A. L. (2004). Friction: An ethnography of global connec-
tion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Virginie Magnat is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Creative
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
and Indigenous people (2nd ed.). London: Zed. Her monograph Grotowski, women, and contemporary perfor-
Turner, B. L. (2002). Contested identities: Human-environment geog- mance: Meetings with remarkable women (Routledge 2014) and
raphy and disciplinary implications in a restructuring academy. its companion documentary film series (Routledge Performance
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92, 52-74. Archive) are based on four years of embodied research and multi-
Van Loon, J. (2001). Ethnography: A critical turn in cultural sited fieldwork funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities
studies. In P. Atkinson, A. Coffey, S. Delamont, J. Lofland, Research Council of Canada.

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