The Internet allows ethnographers to deposit the textual materials on which they base their writing in virtual archives. Electronically archived fieldwork documents can be accessed at any time by the writer, his or her readers, and the people studied. Johannes Fabian, a leading theorist of anthropological practice, argues that virtual archives have the potential to shift the emphasis in ethnographic writing from the monograph to commentary. In this insightful study, he returns to the recording of a conversation he had with a ritual healer in the Congolese town of Lubumbashi more than three decades ago. Fabian's transcript and translation of the exchange have been deposited on a website (Language and Popular Culture in Africa), and in Ethnography as Commentary he provides a model of writing in the presence of a virtual archive. In his commentary, Fabian reconstructs his meeting with the healer Kahenga Mukonkwa Michel, in which the two discussed the ritual that Kahenga performed to protect Fabian's home from burglary. Fabian reflects on the expectations and terminology that shape his description of Kahenga's ritual and meditates on how ethnographic texts are made, considering the settings, the participants, the technologies, and the linguistic medium that influence the transcription and translation of a recording and thus fashion ethnographic knowledge.

The Internet allows ethnographers to deposit the textual materials on which they base their writing in virtual archives. Electronically archived fieldwork documents can be accessed at any time by the writer, his or her readers, and the people studied. Johannes Fabian, a leading theorist of anthropological practice, argues that virtual archives have the potential to shift the emphasis in ethnographic writing from the monograph to commentary. In this insightful study, he returns to the recording of a conversation he had with a ritual healer in the Congolese town of Lubumbashi more than three decades ago. Fabian’s transcript and translation of the exchange have been deposited on a website (Language and Popular Culture in Africa), and in Ethnography as Commentary he provides a model of writing in the presence of a virtual archive. In his commentary, Fabian reconstructs his meeting with the healer Kahenga Mukonkwa Michel, in which the two discussed the ritual that Kahenga performed to protect Fabian’s home from burglary. Fabian reflects on the expectations and terminology that shape his description of Kahenga’s ritual and meditates on how ethnographic texts are made, considering the settings, the participants, the technologies, and the linguistic medium that influence the transcription and translation of a recording and thus fashion ethnographic knowledge. Turning more directly to Kahenga—as a practitioner, a person, and an ethnographic subject—and to the questions posed to him, Fabian reconsiders questions of ethnic identity, politics, and religion. While Fabian hopes that emerging anthropologists will share their fieldwork through virtual archives, he does not suggest that traditional ethnography will disappear. It will become part of a broader project facilitated by new media.

This handbook attempts to fill the gap in empirical scholarship of media and communication research in Africa, from an Africanist perspective. The collection draws on expert knowledge of key media and communication scholars in Africa and the diaspora, offering a counter-narrative to existing Western and Eurocentric discourses of knowledge-production. As the decolonial turn takes centre stage across Africa, this collection further rethinks media and communication research in a post-colonial setting and provides empirical evidence as to why some of the methods conceptualised in Europe will not work in Africa. The result is a thorough appraisal of the current threats, challenges and opportunities facing the discipline on the continent.

Experimenting with Ethnography collects twenty-one essays that open new paths for doing ethnographic analysis. The contributors—who come from a variety of intellectual and methodological traditions—enliven analysis by refusing to take it as an abstract, disembodied exercise. Rather, they frame it as a concrete mode of action and a creative practice. Encompassing topics ranging from language and the body to technology and modes of collaboration, the essays invite readers to focus on the imaginative work that needs to be performed prior to completing an argument. Whether exchanging objects, showing how to use drawn images as a way to analyze data, or working with smartphones, sound recordings, and social media as analytic devices, the contributors explore the deliberate processes for pursuing experimental thinking through ethnography. Practical and broad in theoretical scope, Experimenting with Ethnography is an indispensable companion for all ethnographers. Contributors. Patricia Alvarez Astacio, Andrea Ballestero, Ivan da Costa Marques, Steffen Dalsgaard, Endre Dányi, Marisol de la Cadena, Marianne de Laet, Carolina Domínguez Guzmán, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Clément Dréano, Joseph Dumit, Melanie Ford Lemus, Elaine Gan, Oliver Human, Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Graham M. Jones, Trine Mygind Korsby, Justine Laurent, James Maguire, George E. Marcus, Annemarie Mol, Sarah Pink, Els Roding, Markus Rudolfi, Ulrike Scholtes, Anthony Stavrianakis, Lucy Suchman, Katie Ulrich, Helen Verran, Else Vogel, Antonia Walford, Karen Waltorp, Laura Watts, Brit Ross Winthereik

Emergent technologies are pushing the boundaries of how both qualitative and quantitative researchers practice their craft, and it has become clear these changes are dramatically altering research design, from the questions researchers ask and the ways they collect data, to what they even consider data. Gathering a broad range of new developments in one place, The Handbook of Emergent Technologies in Social Research offers comprehensive, up-to-date thinking on technological innovations. In addition to addressing how to effectively apply new technologies-such as the internet, mobile technologies, geospatial technologies (GPS), and the incorporation of computer-assisted software programs (CAQDAS) to qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches to research projects-many chapters provide in-depth examples of practices within both disciplinary and interdisciplinary environments and outside the academic world in multi-media laboratories and research institutes. Not only an authoritative view of cutting-edge technologies and their applications, the Handbook examines the costs and benefits of utilizing new technologies on the research process, the potential misuse of these techniques for methods practices, and the ethical and moral dimensions of emergent technologies, especially with regard to issues of surveillance and privacy. The Handbook of Emergent Technologies in Social Research is an essential resource for research methods courses in various fields, including the social sciences, education, communications, computer science, and health services, and an indispensable guide for social researchers looking to incorporate emerging technologies into their methods and practice.

Why do contemporary art curators define their work as ethnography? How can curation illuminate the practice of contemporary anthropology? Does anthropology risk disappearing as a specific discipline within the general model of the curatorial? The Anthropologist as Curator collects together the research of international scholars working at the intersection of anthropology and contemporary art in order to explore these questions. The essays in the book challenge what it means to do ethnographic work, as well as the very definition of the discipline of anthropology in confrontation with the model of the curatorial. The contributors examine these ideas from a variety of angles, and the book includes perspectives from anthropologists who have set up their own exhibitions; those who have conducted fieldwork on the arts, including participatory practices, digital images and sound; and contributors who are currently working in a curatorial capacity at a museum.With case studies from the USA, Canada, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, India and Japan, the book represents an international perspective and is relevant to students and scholars of anthropology, contemporary art, museum studies, curatorial studies and heritage studies.