Peripheral Methodologies: Unlearning, Not-knowing and Ethnographic Limits

✍ Scribed by Francisco Martínez, Lili Di Puppo, Martin Demant Frederiksen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 198
• Series: Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

How does peripherality challenge methodology and theory-making? This book examines how the peripheral can be incorporated into ethnographic research, and reflects on what it means to be on the periphery – ontologically and epistemologically. Starting from the premise that clarity and fixity as ideals of modernity prevent us from approaching that which cannot be easily captured and framed into scientific boundaries, the book argues for remaining on the boundary between the known and the unknown in order to surpass this ethnographic limit. Peripheral Methodologies shows that peripherality is not only to be seen as a marginal condition, but rather as a form of theory-making and practice that incorporates reflexivity and experimentation. Instead of domesticating the peripheral, the authors engage in (and insist on) practicing expertise in reverse, unlearning their tools in order to integrate the empirical and analytical otherwise.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of contributors
Foreword: Between village and bush
Introduction: Welcome to the corners of the peripheral
From fringes to knowledge
Suspension of clarity
Ex-centricity
Locating wisdom
Invent your own periphery
Notes
References
Part I: Suspension of clarity
Chapter 1: At the core, beyond reach: Sufism and words flying away in the field
Rediscovering Sufism in the Volga and Urals
Words flying away
Parallels
Epilogue: The comfort of mystery
Notes
References
Chapter 2: Shadows of meaning: Rethinking social dramas through absurdist theatre in a Georgian wedding
Introduction
Brotherhoods
Roma at the wedding
Emil and the tombstone
Reasonable doubt
Roma’s return as a social drama
Shadows of meaning and shadows of doubt
Note
References
Chapter 3: ‘This parenting lark’: Idiomatic ways of knowing and an epistemology of paying adequate attention
Introduction
Paying attention in parenting and fieldwork in late modernity
The spaces and rhythms of young family life
Unpacking the idioms of young family life: ‘this parenting lark’
When ‘Makaronia me kima’ is much more than just a plate of spaghetti with mince meat
Of ghosts and other sprites
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Part II: Unlearning
Chapter 4: Desiring the absence of knowledge: On knitting ethnography and navigating diaries
Researching knitting
Teaching the known
Contrasting the known
Ethnography along the way
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Chapter 5: Acquiring mētis in ceramic production: Patterned changes and peripheral participation
Eccentric knowledge
Peripherality of mētis
Crafty intelligence of mētis
Mētis : The propensities of ten thousand things
Notes
References
Chapter 6: Hammering on the edges: Thresholds of un-knowing in Santa Clara del Cobre, Mexico
Lessons in skilled practice: An introduction
Learning by un-knowing
Peripheral wisdom as body politics
Peripheries: Mistakes and shame
The pitfalls of flow
Metal modalities in the family forge
Entangling flow
Ecologies of perception
The geography and (mole)ability of bodies
Tools, peripheries and memory
Shaping actions and words
The dance of agency 32
Against concluding
Notes
References
Part III: Absence of knowledge
Chapter 7: Isomorphic articulations: Notes from collaborative film-work in an Afghan-Danish Film Collective
How it all began: Methodology and the politics of inviting
“Where’s the conflict?” Pitching the ‘gray’ at the Danish National Broadcasting Corporation
Example of rundown
Transmutation as soundtrack and the flow of images
Outro
Notes
References
Chapter 8: Here, there and nowhere in provincial outskirts and haunted houses 1
Remoteness
While seen through the corner of the eye
Defocused
Far-away perspectives
The peripheral as ambiguous: Between imaginaries and displacement
The peripheral as a focus: The Moebius band
The peripheral as empirical evidence: Veiled ethnographies
Epistemological problems: On the limits of anthropology
Peripheral problems? Unfocusability, seductiveness and desire
Notes
References
Chapter 9: Fooled into fieldwork: Epistemic detours of an accidental anthropologist
Epistemic de-centring
Half-consistency
Robbed into the field
Missed chances
Accidented anthropologist
Conclusion: Remaining on the way to knowledge
Notes
References
Conclusion: Catching a glimpse of peripheral wisdom
Out of the corner of one’s eye
Intimacy, the invisible and the expanding field
Preserving the unknown
Knowledge by subtraction
Note
References
Afterthought: Notes on the peripheral, in a plague year
(Un-)Index