Space as an ethnographic tool: exploring the connections between space and events in a mediatized society
(2020) Vienna Antropology Days — Location: Vienna (28.September.2020)
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- Abstract
- This proposal questions the conceptual, methodological and theoretical relevance to attach the adjective “digital” to “ethnography” when the research field is online. Indeed, “online” practices cannot be defined as phenomena that take place exclusively online, as the internet is consecutive with and embedded in other social spaces (Miller & Slater, 2005). Therefore the proposal brings into the discussion the concept of “space” – as the internet contributes to an expansion of space, and by implication of fieldwork. The concept of space is well documented in geography (Davies, 2008), simultaneously as social, cultural as well material “productions” (Merriman et al., 2012), and can be fruitful to explore and unpack the connections between “online” and “offline”. Indeed, Leander and McKim (2003) remind us that “ethnography has always been, in some sense, a geographic project”. It is a particularly interesting perspective while researching political activity by Members of the European Parliament (and other social actors involved in EU political life such as journalists, EU Commissioners, etc.), from Brussels European quarter as a starting point to online sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, through national and local places. Space is an empirical and theoretical entry point into research on culture, relationships and symbolism - all critical to the processes involved in political work. At the same time, political activity is as much an online phenomena as it is an offline phenomena, and both are strongly related. The experience of our own research will thus offer up for consideration on how an ethnographer can look into connections between spaces and events, departing from a discussion on “muti-site” ethnography (Marcus, 1995) to human geography on space, place and site. The objective is to offer a methodological framework to move between contexts of production and use and therefore to navigate between spaces to produce “rich, reflexive and polyphonic accounts” (Møller and Robards, 2019) and, doing so, to contribute to a theoretical discussion on ethnography in a mediatized society by revisiting concepts such as space and site.
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Roginsky, S. (2020). Space as an ethnographic tool: exploring the connections between space and events in a mediatized society. Vienna Antropology Days, Vienna. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/108823