Writing Space, Ethnographically

Undergraduate / Graduate

Ethnographic renderings of spaces, surroundings, place, setting, and location have clearly always functioned as more than narrative set dressing. Critical perspectives on ethnographic research and writing have pointed out the authorization, exotification, and material conditions of mobility that undergird the 'where' in 'being there'. However, contemporary anthropologists are writing space and place in ways that push ethnographic methods and writing past prior problematics and paradigms of comparison, localization, and totalizing description. How does space become an ethnographic doorway into questions of history, power, infrastructure, and affect?