DR2023 Bec Purser & Sophie Goodman - Bin Chickens, Beavers and Dingos - Re-situating Ethnography Beyond Humans

Transcript

1. 1
   Bin Chickens & Beavers
   Re-situating Ethnography
   Sophie Goodman & Bec Purser
   

   View Slide

2. 2
   cknowl
   ment
   We respectfully acknowledge the Traditional
   Owners of the land on which this event is being
   held. Melbourne has always been a significant
   gathering place for the groups of the Kulin Nation,
   and we acknowledge and respect their continuing
   connection with the land.
   

   View Slide

3. 3
   bout
   About Us
   Because we are easily annoyed, like to follow rabbit
   holes, and don’t know when to stop asking why.
   

   View Slide

4. 4
   Where are we
   and how did we
   get here?
   01
   Malinowski
   & Beyond
   Re-situating Ethnography
   (Fletcher, 2017)
   (Fletcher, 2017)
   

   View Slide

5. 5
   Brief history of
   ethnography
   Ethnographers employ multiple
   research techniques and methods in a
   complex research strategy that matches
   the complexity of the living objects
   under investigation (Bryman, 2004).
   (2010)
   

   View Slide

6. 6
   What is
   ethnography?
   Ethnography.
   An Ethnography.
   Ethnographic.
   (Jung, 2010)
   (LAROUSSE, n.d.)
   

   View Slide

7. 7
   A qualitative research method involves studying and
   documenting social and cultural phenomena in real-life
   settings. Ethnography focuses on observing and
   understanding human behaviour and social interactions
   within their natural environment.
   What is
   ethnography?
   A method.
   

   View Slide

8. 8
   An ethnography informs its reader through narrative
   immersion, often using sensory detail and storytelling
   techniques.
   What is an
   Ethnography
   A noun and
   a style of
   writing
   (Jung, 2010)
   

   View Slide

9. 9
   The term "ethnographic" can be used to describe a range of
   practices that utilise or borrow from the , including writing,
   filmmaking, photography, and other forms of cultural
   representation.
   What is
   Ethnographic?
   An
   adjective.
   (LAROUSSE, n.d.)
   

   View Slide

10. 10
    What makes ethnography
    distinct?
    POINT OF VIEW
    Emphasis on the subject’s point
    of view.
    DESCRIPTIVE
    Rich in detail and interpretation.
    INDUCTIVE
    ANALYSIS
    Not knowing what needs to be
    known.
    SYMBOLIC MEANING
    Explores the symbolic meaning
    of actions and choices.
    IMMERSION
    Focus on the lived experiences
    of individuals and communities.
    SYSTEMIC
    INTERPRETATION
    Makes observations and findings
    of the system, not the subject
    alone.
    

    View Slide

11. 11
    What does it mean
    to be Human?
    

    View Slide

12. 12
    (Morgan, 2010)
    

    View Slide

13. 13
    We're not
    seeing our
    impact on other
    species when
    we call the
    white ibis a bin
    chicken.
    (Wood, 2019)
    

    View Slide

14. 14
    Australia is in the top five for extinction of
    animal and plant species, and the top 10 for
    endangered and threatened species.
    (Wooster, 2021)
    

    View Slide

15. 15
    “Transculturation better expresses the different
    phases of the process of transition from one culture
    to another because it does not consist merely in
    acquiring another culture (acculturation) … but the
    process also necessarily involves the loss or
    uprooting of a previous culture (deculturation)
    ...and it carries the idea of new cultural
    phenomena (neoculturation).”
    Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint, 1945 pp. 102-3.
    

    View Slide

16. 16
    What is lost, gained and
    created when ethnography
    gets (re)discovered?
    CREATED
    GAINED
    LOST
    

    View Slide

17. 17
    How do we
    resituate?
    02
    Knowledge
    & Care
    Re-situating Ethnography
    (2020)
    

    View Slide

18. 18
    How do we resituate?
    Our human-centredness has also been heavily influenced by western
    cultures that tend to be enamoured with exploring what separates
    humans from animals; language, the use of tools, the ability to
    understand their death or consciousness (once again, the focus on
    what makes us human).
    

    View Slide

19. 19
    (2020)
    

    View Slide

20. 20
    Wiradjuri people,
    Central New South
    Wales
    Yarralin people,
    Northern Territory
    of Australia
    Maori, the Indigenous
    Polynesian people of
    New Zealand
    (Giffiths, n.d.) (Reid, 2012)
    (Rose, 1992)
    

    View Slide

21. 21
    Embrace theory
    The way we analyse our
    findings
    The questions we ask
    The way we design research
    How do things
    move across
    space and time?
    Diffusion
    What is the purpose
    and function of this
    thing/structure?
    Functionalism
    What is the
    underlying logic that
    connects this to other
    things within the
    culture?
    Structuralism
    How do we engage
    and behave as
    members of this
    community?
    Interactionism
    How do people
    understand,
    perceive and
    classify their world?
    Ethnoscience
    If culture exists as
    narratives, what do
    we learn when we
    interpret those
    stories?
    Interpretive
    What is lost, gained
    and created when
    culture interact and
    how does power
    relate?
    Transculturation
    

    View Slide

22. 22
    Where could we
    be?
    03
    Potential future
    of ethnography
    Re-situating Ethnography
    

    View Slide

23. 23
    To recap,
    ethnography is
    in a bit of a
    state
    

    View Slide

24. 24
    What if we
    were more
    intentional?
    (Foucault Pendulum Model, 2023)
    

    View Slide

25. 25
    Multispecies
    Ethnography
    “Multispecies ethnography seeks to
    destabilize human primacy and reveal
    new orders of human-nonhuman
    relations and becomings.”
    (Dennis, 2022)
    “...acknowledges the interconnectedness and inseparability of
    humans and other life forms, and thus seeks to extend
    ethnography beyond the solely human realm. Multispecies
    investigations of social and cultural phenomena are attentive
    to the agency of other-than-human species, whether they are
    plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, or even viruses…”
    (Locke & Muenster, 2015)
    “...attention to lived experiences of and with other species that
    coheres the wide range of research that comes under the
    rubric of multispecies ethnography. The multiple species upon
    whom such ethnography focuses, however, include more than
    just animals. Such ethnographies also attend to plants,
    bacteria, larger ecosystems and the interplay of cultural and
    economic forces with the living world.”
    (McLauchlan, 2021)
    

    View Slide

26. 26
    More-than-
    human
    ethnography
    

    View Slide

27. 27
    What might it
    look like?
    ● Animal-Computer Interaction Lab (The Open University UK) has conducted
    participatory workshops with assistance dogs to design indoor spaces and
    technology from a dog’s point of view.
    ● Anne Galloway’s project Counting Sheep: New Zealand Merino in an
    Internet of Things that studies Merino sheep breeding in NZ, in particular in
    the face of things like climate change and animal welfare concerns.
    Incorporates ethnography and speculative fiction
    ● Sarah Whatmore’s Hybrid Geographies examines the `opposition' between
    nature and culture as represented in scientific, environmental and popular
    discourses.
    ● Swamplife analyses interactions between alligators, hunters and mangroves
    (Laura Ogden).
    ● Research into domestic violence that includes nonhuman animal victims
    (Nik Taylor and Heather Fraser).
    ● Exploring what a more equitable multispecies city could be based on
    penguins and flying foxes (Thom van Dooren & Deborah Bird Rose).
    

    View Slide

28. 28
    Why now?
    Moving away from human-centredness
    ● More-than-human centred design
    ● Post-human centred design
    ● Environmental-centred design
    ● Designing with Country
    ● Speculative Design
    ● EXF (Ethnographic Experiential Futures)
    2 Within Design
    Within Ethnography
    Academic and industry debates
    ● Tim Ingold 2014 That’s Enough about
    Ethnography!
    ● ‘Interviews as Ethnography’ (Seligman and
    Estes, 2020)
    ● ‘Real’ problem in commercial ethnography
    (Nafus and Anderson, 2006)
    1
    (Kombumerri, 2020)
    (Ingold, n.d.)
    

    View Slide

29. 29
    Google Trends analysis
    We have work to do
    

    View Slide

30. 30
    Google Trends analysis
    Google Trends analysis
    

    View Slide

31. 31
    Google Trends analysis
    

    View Slide

32. 32
    Google Trends analysis
    

    View Slide

33. 33
    STEP 1 RESITUATE STEP 2 ADAPT TO OTHER SPECIES STEP 3 BECOME MORE-THAN
    Transitioning ethnography
    What might our proposals and
    sales pitches sound like here?
    What might our research
    designs look like?
    What might our cities look like
    if we considered the needs of
    other species such as rock
    doves (pigeons!)?
    What might an AI of fungi look
    like?
    

    View Slide

34. 34
    What’s
    next?
    Contact us as we’re on the journey also,
    of both un-learning human-centred
    ways and prevalence of Western
    thought and trying to bring
    ethnography’s full richness and value
    into organisational settings/practice
    beyond ‘ethnography-as-method’
    

    View Slide

35. 35
    Credits and
    References
    Artwork by Liam Murray,
    Blankspace Poster Co.
    References
    Bronislaw Malinowski. n.d. Photograph. LAROUSSE. Accessed 2023. https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/personnage/Bronis%C5%82aw_Malinowski/131349.
    Dennis, Simone. 2022. “On the Commonness of Skin: An Anthropology of Being in a More than Human World.” The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human
    Sciences, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4106-3_19-1.
    Fletcher, Katharine. 2017. Malinowski with Trobriand Islanders. Photograph.
    Https://Blogs.lse.ac.uk/Lsehistory/2017/06/13/Bronislaw-Malinowski-Lse-Pioneer-of-Social-Anthropology/. London School of Economics and Political Science. .
    blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2017/06/13/bronislaw-malinowski-lse-pioneer-of-social-anthropology.
    Foucault Pendulum Model. 2023. Photograph. Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations. Harvard University.
    https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/foucault-pendulum-model.
    Giffiths, Ken. n.d.. Bull Ant. Photograph. Fact Files. Australian Geographic. https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/fact-file/bull-ant/.
    Ingold, Tim. n.d.. Portrait of Tim Ingold. Photograph. Tim Ingold. https://www.timingold.com/.
    Kombumerri, Dillon. 2020. Publication. Designing with Country. NSW Government .
    https://www.aidr.org.au/media/7760/designing-with-country-discussion-paper.pdf.
    Locke, Piers, and Ursula Muenster. 2015. “Multispecies Ethnography.” Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets.
    https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0130.
    McLauchlan, Laura. 2021. “Multispecies Ethnography.” Handbook of Historical Animal Studies, 393–408. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110536553-030.
    Morgan, Lewis Henry. 2010. The American Beaver and His Works. Photograph. Open Library.
    https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23272232M/The_American_beaver_and_his_works.
    Photograph. 2013. Travel Guide to Havana, Cuba. CONDÉ NAST TRAVELLER. https://www.cntraveller.com/article/travel-guide-havana.
    Photograph. 2020. ‘My Octopus Teacher’ Is the Nature Documentary We All Need Right Now. Animal Equality.
    https://animalequality.org/blog/2020/09/23/my-octopus-teacher/.
    Picture of Bronislaw Malinowski with Natives on Trobriand Islands. 2010. Photograph. Wikimedia Commons.
    https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wmalinowski_trobriand_isles_1918.jpg.
    Poster for My Octopus Teacher. 2020. My Octopus Teacher. Sea Change Project. https://seachangeproject.com/my-octopus-teacher/.
    Reid, Marian. 2012. Photograph. New Zealand’s Mighty ‘Rhine of the South.’ BBC.
    https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20121107-new-zealands-mighty-rhine-of-the-south.
    Rose, Deborah Bird. 1992. Dingo Make Us Human: Life and Land in an Australian Aboriginal Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Wood, Greg. 2019. The Natural Home of the Ibis Is the Wetlands of the Murray-Darling Basin, but It Thrives and Survives in Big Cities Now. Photograph. The
    Guardian. Getty Images. .
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/14/bin-chickens-carve-a-warm-spot-in-australias-heart-even-as-they-raid-and-thieve.
    Wooster, Martin. 2021. Photograph. King's Researchers Contribute to New Study That Says Australia's 'Black Summer' Should Be a Wake-up Call. King’s
    College London. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/kings-researchers-contribute-to-new-study-that-says-australias-black-summer-should-be-a-wake-up-call.
    

    View Slide