ROUNDTABLE

Summary

 

This session focused on a bringing together of the Roundtable’s experiences within the positions of ethnographic research, with discussions surrounding methods and the operation of ‘field research’ for the Summer Semester 2012.

 

Method of ethnographic research (Brainstroming):
*Familiarity/unfamiliarity
*Same/other culture
*Point of view of observation (and changing it)
*Understanding the structure of a system
*Method (alternate forms such as an example by emptying the trash)? When to be silent? When to speak up/intervene? Talking with people? Considerations of note taking and involvement.
*Advantage/disadvantage of otherness/alterity
*Losing preconceptions/unlearning (‘swim with the current’)
*Becoming someone else (‘going native,’ ‘reading the mind of the other’)
*Meta level/Reflexivity
*Saving/collecting: Preserve observed culture, at the same time destroying the event
*Diagnostical gaze?
*Activism (changing the system you are entering)?
*Expectation of institution in gaining (insight?) from an outsider
*Applying rhetoric/art of the interviewer-interviewee
*Reenacting native/past events/tools
*Point of departure for growing interest

 

Image: Juliana Herrero, photos: Alin Cirstea, Juliana Herrero and Rudi Friemel

 

"Roundtable" concept