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Julio Paulos is Associate Director, Research at the Future Cities Lab (FCL) Global at the Swiss Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich. 

At a time when market logics have become the hegemonic operating rationale of many governments, urban bureaucracies seem to be undergoing a profound process of reinvention: from participatory budgeting or community involvement in policymaking to co-creation competitions and citizen laboratories that expand the range of knowledge and sensibilities in urban governance. These bureaucrats appear no longer as sinister machinic operators of Kafkaesque state violence, but as hopeful and flexible practitioners promoting many forms of public good. In what ways are these bureaucratic reinventions more conducive to the public good than the actions of the market? Also, what do these places mean for the ways in which we might study them?

Ethnographic experimentation is an anthropological response to the epistemic challenges of our contemporary world. Beyond traditional norms and forms of ethnography, there are all kinds of projects that experiment with forms of representation, fieldwork, and analysis. The ‘experiment’ emerges in all these ethnographies as a distinctive epistemic practice, different from observational activities that are the foundation for its empirical engagements. Experimentation is  an opportunity to reconceptualise and transform the empirical practices of anthropology. This summer school brings together a programme exploring the analysis, characterisation, and design of ethnographic experiments, along with opportunities to try them in practice.

La etnografía bordada es algo que se engendra primero como una necesidad empírica de comprender la continuidad entre materialidades textiles...

Las plataformas digitales colaborativas e interdisciplinarias abren novedosas formas de investigación para abordar la producción de datos sobre problemáticas sociales...

Soy una investigadora feminista que trabaja sobre tecnologías y diálogos de saberes. Actualmente enfoco mis intereses de pesquisa en los...

Jorge Núñez (PhD in Anthropology, University of California, Davis) works in the fields of political, economic, and visual anthropology. He...

I am an assistant professor at the department of social anthropology at the University of Oslo. My work moves across...

Carmen Lozano Bright (she/her) is an assistant researcher at xcol. An Ethnographic Inventory and member of the CareNet-IN3 group (Universitat...

¿Cómo sería una exposición que plantee preguntas etnográficas en lugar de presentar categorías fijadas de antemano? Este artículo describe cómo...

Francisco Martínez is an anthropologist dealing with contemporary issues of material culture through ethnographic experiments. In 2018, he was awarded...

Lindsay Smith is an Assistant Professor in Science, Technology & Innovation in the Borderlands at the School for the Future...

Ben Gansky (he/him) is an NSF/NRT Fellow in Citizen-centered Smart Cities and a PhD student at Arizona State University’s Human...

Martín Pérez Comisso (he/his/him) is the Coordinator of Inter and Transdisciplinary Projects in the School of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences...

Octavio Muciño-Hernández is a doctoral candidate in the “Social and Human Dimensions of Science and Technology” program at Arizona State...

The Hybrid Technologies Digital Database (HTDD, also base de datos digital de las tecnologías migrantes, in Spanish), is a work...

María Torres (they/ she) is a postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University, Tempe. They hold a Ph.D. in Philosophical and...

Dan Kabella (they/them) is a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, San Francisco. In their work as a medical anthropologist,...

This book provides an inventory of modes of inquiry for ethnographic research and presents fieldwork as an act of relational invention. It advances contemporary debates in ethnography by arguing that the empirical practice of anthropology is and has always been an inventive activity.

La serie de seminarios ‘La invención etnográfica’ presenta un conjunto de investigaciones que dan cuenta de los esfuerzos de antropólogos y antropólogas de orientaciones muy diversas por ampliar el repertorio de nuestros modos de indagación etnográfica. Cada uno de los proyectos que discutiremos presenta un dispositivo de campo que dispone las condiciones para pensar y construir problematizaciones con nuestras contrapartes. Tras cada una de esas investigaciones encontramos el esfuerzo denodado de antropólogos y antropólogas por formular preguntas relevantes para los tiempos que vivimos.

Through an open letter to my fellow field inventors, I intend to share my inquiries between ethnographic methods and artistic...

Through an open letter to my fellow field inventors, I intend to share my inquiries between ethnographic methods and artistic...

‘How to do it lowkey’ shows a sensorial disposition embraced by the ethnographer in a research about internet vernacular creativity...

Melanie Garland is a professional artist, heritage restorer, and currently a PhD candidate at Humboldt University’s institute of European Ethnology...

Ezequiel Soriano Gómez is an anthropologist and artist. He works about internet, folklore and appropriation through ethnography, artistic experimentation and...

We are seeking to recruit a research assistant for xcol. An Ethnographic Inventory,  We are looking for a person trained in the field of social and cultural anthropology or related disciplines, with knowledge of the practice of ethnographic work and with experience in digital publications, interested in helping us develop our research on the xcol platform. The successful candidate will be awarded a temporary contract (35%) of 18 months, starting September 4. Deadline for applications: April 30, 2023 The person we would hire would work at the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona. 

Buscamos ayudante de investigación para "xcol. Un Inventario Etnográfico", proyecto cuyo objetivo es identificar y documentar proyectos etnográficos experimentales e innovadores. Buscamos a una persona formada en el ámbito de la antropología social y cultural o disciplinas afines, con conocimientos de la práctica del trabajo etnográfico y con experiencia en publicaciones digitales, interesada en ayudarnos a desarrollar nuestra investigación en torno a la plataforma xcol. Se realizará una contratación laboral temporal de 18 meses (35%) y con previsión de incorporación a 4 de septiembre. Fecha límite de postulación: 30 de abril de 2023. La persona trabajaría en la Universtitat Oberta de Catalunya en Barcelona.

The remediation of ethnography involves two interrelated things: putting a remedy to a difficult ethnographic situation by changing the media...

Creemos que inventariar invenciones etnográficas en xcol requiere un género de escritura apropiado que será distinto de los formatos más...

In our first Call for Inventions (CfI) we are particularly aiming to inventory accounts of ‘field devices’: the inventive social and material arrangements undertaken, created, made or repurposed in the course of doing fieldwork with others. What we have in mind are texts of at least 2000 words accounting for these field devices in at least two senses: (1) fleshing out the context as well as the social and material arrangements of particular ‘field devices’ as they are put into practice in empirical situations; and (2) hinting at the particular modes of ethnographic inquiry they enable or make emerge.

Solicitamos textos de unas 2.000 palabras que den cuenta de dispositivos de campo que incluyan dos aspectos: (1) que contextualicen y describan las condiciones sociales y materiales de estos 'dispositivos de campo' en las situaciones empíricas en las que se han puesto en práctica; y (2) que expliciten los modos particulares de indagación etnográfica que esos dispositivos permiten desarrollar. Estamos especialmente abiertos a textos que experimenten con géneros híbridos, entre el formato de recetas (o manuales de instrucciones) y los relatos etnográficos de carácter descriptivo.

We aim to inventory accounts of ‘field devices’: the inventive social and material arrangements undertaken, created, made or repurposed in the course of doing fieldwork with others. What we have in mind are texts accounting for these field devices in at least two senses: (1) fleshing out the context as well as the social and material arrangements put into practice in empirical situations; and (2) hinting at the particular modes of ethnographic inquiry they enable or make emerge. Here you can check the full content of the call, as well as examples and guidelines to prepare your proposal.

The different inventions we aim to inventory in xcol call for particular writing genres beyond established ones. This form of writing can be a complicated task. In this text we have put together our first 'how to' guide to the different genres we aim to inventory: 'field devices.' We believe these are peculiar writing pieces. Here we share a suggestion on how to approach their writing and a proposal with the structure of sections.

La antropología ha consagrado la escritura como práctica paradigmática para la expresión de su conocimiento, pero el texto no es suficiente para dar cuenta de la complejidad del mundo. En tiempos recientes se desarrolla un amplio esfuerzo por experimentar con otros lenguajes y formatos para el conocimiento antropológico, así ocurre con la antropología sensorial y experimentos que se inspiran en los dominios del arte y las culturas digitales.

La colaboración es invocada en tiempos recientes como una figura relacional necesaria para el estudio de nuestro mundo. Las llamadas a la colaboración en antropología no son nuevas, pero sí resultan novedosas las articulaciones específicas en nuestra contemporaneidad, como los ejercicios de colaboración experimental a través de los cuales antropólogos y sus contrapartes construyen problematizaciones conjuntas.

Ethnographic experimentation refers to an ethnographic modality where anthropologists venture into the collaborative production of venues for knowledge creation that turn the field into a site for the construction of joint anthropological problematizations. Invoking the trope of ethnographic experimentation we aim at describing how anthropologists creatively venture into the production of venues of knowledge creation through processes of material and social interventions that turn the field into a site for epistemic collaboration: a site for the construction of joint anthropological problematizations.

Ethnography is formulated here as an infrastructural project, an endeavour whose effort to devise a shared infrastructure composes an ethnographic...

How would an experimental fieldwork exercise look like? The ethnographic experimentation proposed here is a form of engagement that entails field interventions through material and spatial arrangements that enable the articulation of inventive ways of working together. A distinctive ethnographic modality for the production of anthropological knowledge, one that bear witness to an emerging sensibility that takes shape in those field encounters in which anthropologists devise the conditions to problematize the world with their counterparts.

Proponemos concebir la etnografía como un ensamblaje de dispositivos de campo: técnicas relacionales, dispositivos de registro… el concepto de dispositivo pretende llamar la atención sobre la espacialidad y materialidad específicas que demandan las situaciones etnográficas. Los dispositivos de campo son arreglos singulares que hacen posible el encuentro etnográfico, surgen de la inventiva relacional del campo y nos hablan de los mundos sociales investigados al mismo tiempo que dan cuenta del esfuerzo inventivo de las antropólogas por investigarlos.

Open formats are methodologies for thinking and doing together. Despite the relevance of the methodologies used to share knowledge, we usually resort to the most conventional formats: paper presentations, round tables, etc. This offers a collection of experiments with meeting formats as pedagogical spaces for the apprenticeship of ethnographic experimentation and encourages the need to document these ‘experiments’ so that they may travel, be learnt and reproduced elsewhere.

In contrast with more conventional approaches to the uses of theatre for the public engagement with science and technology (e.g. pedagogical approaches to science communication), contemporary forms of participatory, community, interactive or digital theatre have also served as relevant arenas for projects searching to activate publics through agonistic and complex encounters with contemporary technoscientific issues. This was the case of Enacting Innovation, a performance that crystallises a dialogue between social scientists and theatre professionals working in the vicinity of STS in which that seek to 'stage complexity' and the paradoxes of otherwise repetitive innovation scripts.

La antropología multimodal propone un programa a través del cual la disciplina se abre a la invención de formas de expresión y representación, de relación y producción de conocimiento a través de múltiples modos relacionales y representacionales que van más allá de lo textual. A través de ellos, los antropólogos y antropólogas exploran otros modos de indagación, se abren a nuevos lenguajes y formatos para expresar su conocimiento y son capaces de interpelar a públicos amplios y diversos.

A digital mode of inquiry for times of lockdown Here we reflect on the methodological inspiration of ‘Cor on Collaboration’,...

A modality of ‘peer review’ undertaken with care searching to be as inclusive as possible, leaving no one behind: that...

A re-description of my two-fold engagement as ethnographer-cum-documenter in the activist design collective En torno a la silla. Highlighting the importance of note-taking as a ‘fieldwork device’ for the problematizing and relating in the field.

We would like to intimate a mode of collaboration that is neither a constitutive condition of fieldwork nor a deliberate strategy informed by political and ethical commitments: Collaboration as an epistemic figure that describes how anthropologists creatively venture into the production of venues of knowledge creation in partnership with their counterparts in the field. In these situations, the ethnographic method is re-equipped with new infrastructures, spaces of knowledge production, relationship forms and modes of representation.

Ethnography is an act of invention. Anthropological inquiries always demand to invent how to inquire and how to relate to others, this is the central argument upon which xcol-Inventory has been built. But if invention has always been integral to the empirical practice of ethnography, the imperative to care for our knowledge practices should also involve to care for the inventiveness of our modes of inquiry.

How could games redevelop our repertoires of ethnographic representation and intervention? What vocabularies and considerations might allow us to unfold their full potential as relevant ethnographic or peri-ethnographic genres?

In the language of this platform prototypes are open-ended material experiments in anthropological practice at the hinges of the ethnographic,...

The term open formats refers to the experimentation with meeting formats as pedagogical spaces for the apprenticeship of ethnographic experimentation....

Those interested in documenting and caring for ethnographic invention, filling up xcol inventory with content (inventions, xpositions, inquiries and terms...

Gatherings and more or less thematic workshops organised by xcolars where ethnographic invention is celebrated and taken care of by...

Open formats are methodologies for thinking and doing together. Despite the relevance of the methodologies used to share knowledge, we usually resort to the most conventional formats: paper presentations, round tables, etc. This offers a collection of experiments with meeting formats as pedagogical spaces for the apprenticeship of ethnographic experimentation and encourages the need to document these ‘experiments’ so that they may travel, be learnt and reproduced elsewhere.

El proceso de diseño de una infraestructura puede convertirse en el dispositivo que permite el desarrollo de una etnografía. Las infraestructuras son mundos relacionales así que co-construir una infraestructura con nuestras contrapartes en el campo es una forma de desplegar las condiciones para la relación etnográfica.

Experimental collaboration is an ethnographic mode of collaboration (there are others ‘modes of collaboration’) that entails field interventions through material...

Experimentation is a figure invoked in many domains, it is not though so common in anthropology. In the xcol language...

The idiom of collaboration has pervaded anthropology and many other social domains in recent years, capturing the imagination of a...

Intravention refers to interventions inside our own disciplines occurring in collaboration and complicity with our ethnographic counterparts and epistemic partners....

Field devices are the situated and relational expressions of ethnographic modes of inquiry. A field device may have the form...

‘Re-enactment for nothing’ is a recipe for the exploration of possible (re-) designs of research situations, done without wanting to...

Alberto Corsín Jiménez says “we fall” (2017). We fall in what? In anthropological traps, just like we fall in love....

La práctica profesional de las ciencias sociales, desde la investigación a la docencia, se enfrenta en nuestra contemporaneidad a todo...

El dibujo siempre ha formado parte del oficio antropológico pero le ha ocurrido lo mismo que a la fotografía, ha sido una actividad marginada. La investigación antropológica reciente integra el dibujo al menos de tres formas distintas: (1) como formato de representación, (2) como técnica de registro y (3) como un modo de indagación antropológico.

Tomás Criado is a Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow in the social sciences at the CareNet-IN3 group of Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona & co-curator of xcol. An Ethnographic Inventory

Adolfo Estalella is Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology at Department of Social Anthropology and Social Psychology, Faculty of Sociology and Political Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid & co-curator of xcol. An Ethnographic Inventory

La antropología multimodal propone un programa que especula con las formas posibles de indagación antropológica y que a través de gestos inventivos contribuye a renovar la relevancia del oficio antropológico. La reflexión que propone hace uso de la particular condición hipermediada de nuestra época tratando de superar la fijación disciplinar con lo textual para experimentar con las formas de representación, análisis e indagación. A través de ellos, los antropólogos se abren a nuevos lenguajes, formatos y otros modos de indagación.

It seeks to devise a different format of getting together, opening a space for care and complicity

In anthropological training it is customary to learn to value many genres of textual production: indeed, book reviews and review articles set the grounds for empirical and conceptual discussions on a wide variety of ethnographic projects in conventional written forms. However, multimodal projects pose singular challenges for their description. Searching to find ways to learn to appreciate these projects, this section reviews multimodal projects. In it we explore ways to accurately describe them, paying special attention to their multi-media and socio-material arrangements, as well as finding ways to discuss and value what modalities of inquiry they bring forth.