Chapter Contribution
The role of place in ethnography has multiple and overlapping dimensions—it defines the specificity of a field site, allowing ethnographic research to be both situated and reflexive, and, at the same time, as in urban and landscape ethnography, it may also be the research subject, or assemblage of subjects, in itself. For audiovisual modes of ethnographic research, which utilize mechanical bodies in space—cameras, microphones, and other recording devices—place anchors the ecology of relations between the researcher, the recording devices, and everything around them, allowing for the various forms of perception within these relations to articulate new forms of knowledge, making sensory modes of ethnographic research possible. Yet in much ethnographic research, place is often thought of as a backdrop: a silent witness from which we derive only secondary information. This chapter challenges this notion, referencing several films and research experiences as illustrations of what paying close attention to place offers audiovisual ethnographers.
The role of place in ethnography has multiple and overlapping dimensions—it defines the specificity of a field site, allowing ethnographic research to be both situated and reflexive, and, at the same time, as in urban and landscape ethnography, it may also be the research subject, or assemblage of subjects, in itself. For audiovisual modes of ethnographic research, which utilize mechanical bodies in space—cameras, microphones, and other recording devices—place anchors the ecology of relations between the researcher, the recording devices, and everything around them, allowing for the various forms of perception within these relations to articulate new forms of knowledge, making sensory modes of ethnographic research possible. Yet in much ethnographic research, place is often thought of as a backdrop: a silent witness from which we derive only secondary information. This chapter challenges this notion, referencing several films and research experiences as illustrations of what paying close attention to place offers audiovisual ethnographers.
