Ethnographic Reform: A technical turn

Abstract

This article explores a recent technical turn – an interest in the interrogation of the technical means through which the world becomes and is arranged – in ethnographic practice through discussion of three key methodological challenges found in recent ethnographic fieldwork: collaboration, linguistic competence, and temporal immersion. In alliance with posthumanist perspectives and through an interest in the techniques and practices of knowledge production, what at first blush appear as limitations are becoming resources for new sets of questions and approaches. Ethnographic reform requires rethinking the traditional relationships between ethnographer, empiricism and information, and the subjects and objects of data.