In this article the author discusses the idea of ‘walking with video’ as a phenomenological research method that attends to sensorial elements of human experience and place‐making. As a simple method this means walking with and video‐recording research participants as they experience, tell and show their material, immaterial and social environments in personally, socially and culturally specific ways. Her aims are twofold. First, in relation to recent anthropological work on sensory experience and on walking, she articulates the theoretical and methodological basis for this idea; why is it that walking with another person should allow researchers to learn empathetically about their experiences? Second, in relation to established and recent work in visual anthropology, she discusses how the integration of video into this method can serve as a catalyst for creating ethnographic understandings of other people's experiences, and representing these experiences to a wider audience.

Walking with video

In this keynote address, the author focuses on what we bring to qualitative inquiry and how we conduct our research. What we do, why we do it, and how we do it remain contested issues. She proposes that we look at our methodological premises anew, revisit our principles, and revise our practices. Throughout this address, she draws on Goffman’s methodological insights to provide a foundation for reassessing qualitative inquiry. She argues that researchers can build on Goffman’s ideas to strengthen their methodological practices and research products. Last, she counters current institutional scrutiny of qualitative inquiry and suggests unacknowledged benefits of this work.

http://www.stes-apes.med.ulg.ac.be/Documents_electroniques/MET/MET-DON/ELE%20MET-DON%207114.pdf

Keynote Address: Fifth International Advances in Qualitative Methods Conference Premises, Principles, and Practices in Qualitative Research: Revisiting the Foundations

Based on extensive fieldwork, this book explores the intimate, material and sensory spaces of the home to uncover how gender roles are performed within our personal private worlds. Pink shows how everyday items ranging from perfumes to soap powder imprint and reinforce daily experience and a sense of identity. How has the home been affected by the fact that more and more women now got to work and increasingly more men spend time engaged in domestic tasks? How do more traditional family-centred homes compare with those belonging to diverse family forms and people living alone? What does a study of domestic gender tell us about how change occurs?"

Home Truths: Gender, Domestic Objects and Everyday Life

Often researchers position themselves in relation to race, age and gender, but the body is less often discussed as an actual ‘instrument of research’. We aim to extend thinking on this point by reflecting on a project we conducted on migrant women and food in New Zealand. We present a vignette as an example of how we used our bodies as ‘instruments of research’ at a ‘shared lunch’ attended by new migrants from a range of different countries. At the lunch some combined on their plates spicy dishes such as kimch’i (fermented vegetables) and sweet dishes such as pavlova (a meringue dessert). For others this combination prompted feelings of disgust. We conclude that the body is a primary tool through which all interactions and emotions filter in accessing research subjects and their geographies.

Using 'the body' as an 'instrument of research': kimch'i and pavlova

Participant observation was created during the late 19th century as an ethnographic field method for the study of small, homogeneous cultures. Ethnographers were expected to live in a society for an extended period of time (2 years, ideally), actively participate in the daily life of its members, and carefully observe their joys and sufferings as a way of obtaining material for social scientific study. This method was widely believed to produce documentary information that not only was “true” but also reflected the native’s own point of view about reality. 1 The privileging of participant observation as a scientific method encouraged ethnographers to demonstrate their observational skills in scholarly monographs and their social participation in personal memoirs. This dualistic approach split public (monographs) from private (memoirs) and objective (ethnographic) from subjective (autobiographical) realms of experience. The opposition created what seems, from a 21st-century perspective, not only improbable but also morally suspect. 2 More recently, ethnographers have modified participant observation by undertaking “the observation of participation” (B. Tedlock, 1991, 2000). During this activity, they reflect on and critically engage with their own participation within the ethnographic frame. A new genre, known as “autoethnography,” emerged from this practice. Authors working in the genre attempt to heal the split between public and private realms by connecting the autobiographical impulse (the gaze inward) with

/pdf/the-observation-of-participation-and-the-emergence-of-public-myv4gf2p14.pdf

Margaret Wilson

Papers

Playing the Field@@@Taboo: Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork.