Moving Ethnography: Infrastructuring Doubletakes and Switchbacks in Experimental Collaborative Methods

Authors

Aalok Khandekar, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad
Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Lindsay Poirier, University of California, DavisFollow
Alli Morgan, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Alison Kenner, Drexel University
Kim Fortun, University of California, Irvine
Mike Fortun, University of California, Irvine

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2021

Publication Title

Science and Technology Studies

Publication Title

Science and Technology Studies

Volume

34

Issue

3

Abstract

In this article, we describe how our work at a particular nexus of STS, ethnography, and critical theory—informed by experimental sensibilities in both the arts and sciences—transformed as we built and learned to use collaborative workflows and supporting digital infrastructure. Responding to the call of this special issue to be “ethnographic about ethnography,” we describe what we have learned about our own methods and collaborative practices through building digital infrastructure to support them. Supporting and accounting for how experimental ethnographic projects move—through different points in a research workflow, with many switchbacks, with project designs constantly changing as the research develops—was a key challenge. Addressing it depended on understanding creative data practices and analytic workflows, redesigning and building technological infrastructure, and constant attention to collaboration ethics. We refer to this as the need for doubletakes on method. We focus on the development of The Asthma Files, a collaborative ethnography project to understand the cultural dimensions of environmental health, and on the Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, digital infrastructure first built to support The Asthma Files but now available as a community resource for archiving, analyzing, and publishing ethnographic data and writing. A key finding is that different traditions and practices of ethnography require different infrastructures.

Comments

Archived as published.

First Page

78

Last Page

102

Recommended Citation

Khandekar, Aalok; Costelloe-Kuehn, Brandon; Poirier, Lindsay; Morgan, Alli; Kenner, Alison; Fortun, Kim; and Fortun, Mike, "Moving Ethnography: Infrastructuring Doubletakes and Switchbacks in Experimental Collaborative Methods" (2021). Statistical and Data Sciences: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/sds_facpubs/55

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.23987/STS.89782

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.