That time of year again!

VKS Postdoctoral Fellowship Fall 2009 Applications are invited for three-month fellowships within the VKS, Fall 2009 in Amsterdam. Deadline for applications: 15 May 2009

More information on the VKS website.

“Lying is done with words and also with silence.” –Adrienne Rich

The March meeting of the ethnography reading group will deal with lying: the (sometimes necessary) constitution of false statements, deliberately presented as being true. Why and when do ethnographers fib? What do we do when we think the interlocutor prevaricates? And who can tell?

Two texts will provide the academic framing of this discussion. One is the text ‘ten lies of ethnography’, by Gary Fine, published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, but also posted on the web as the text of a keynote address to QUIG Interdisciplinary Qualitative Studies Conference in 1992.

Along with this piece, Peter Metcalf’s book will be grounds for discussing lying in ethnographic relationships and in the presentation of the ethnographer.

Along with writing culture?

One of the discussions at the working papers day last  year was sparked by the material provided by Marianne Franklin. Her submission sought to transfer her work on the constitution of fields from an conference performance, involving image, video, sound and talk, to a multi-media, hyperlinked text on a pdf support.

This discussion raised many issues: norms of communication, writing styles, linearity, modes of disciplining knowledge, and the rules we impose on ourselves and each other with regards to what counts as academic output.

This is an important topic, and one which might well be worth revisiting in the course of Collaboratory work. Formulating the issue(s) will be a challenge, since the vocabulary of scholarly work tends to emphasise text, writing and authorship… all elements we might seek to question or transcend or maybe even ignore. Yet, terms are needed to set the debate. I propose: ‘along with writing culture’ as a phrase to label these efforts at ‘doing things differently’.

There are several ways into this debate besides using new tools for mediation of our work–but that is definetely a part of it. A tip I received along these lines is a tool called Sophie, from the Annenberg School. Anyone heard of it or used it? And what are other trails to follow?

ps
This post had been dormant since last June, but was revived partly through our discussion of Coming of Age, in which Boelstorff affirms that writing a book about an object like a virtual world is an important statement.

Next book…

will be ‘Partial Connections’, by Marilyn Strathern. Supplemented with a delicious piece by Anna Tsing, presented at the annual meeting of the Danish Association for science and technology studies, and brought to our attention by Dina Friis.

In The Game: Ethnographic relationships, mediation and knowledge

A pre-conference workshop was held in conjunction with the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, in Copenhagen, Denmark. The workshop was set up around work in progress on the topic of ethnographic relationships, as articulated in the call for papers (see VKS website).

names mosaic

Contributions were structured around the way research relations in ethnography are being reconfigured in terms of the themes of contiguity, accountability, affectivity & embodiment, and scholarly practices. All participants had submitted papers in progress, and these were circulated ahead of the workshop. Hanna Wirman acted as reporter for the event, setting up a blog and documenting it textually and photographically. Each paper was discussed for half an hour, beginning with the comments of an assigned respondent, followed by general discussion. The exchanges that ensued were marked by a high level of engagement, and participants enjoyed the detailed and in-depth feedback they each received from the respondents and participants. The discussions of papers were critical, yet the mood was very supportive, and debates around several themes that cut across papers evolved over the course of the day. The workshop ended with a wonderful dinner in town for all participants, where conversation continued.

Much more about this event can be found at http://inthegameworkshop.blogspot.com

Ethno Reading Group Meeting

Although it’s been quiet on the blog, rather a lot has been happening lately, ethnography-wise, and I’m hoping to write some more about these many developments in the coming days.

But looking ahead for now… A few of us will be meeting on 20 November to pursue the ethno reading group activities we started last spring. We’ll discuss Coming of Age on this occasion.

Interestingly, this social science book was reviewed in Nature, (review provided courtesy of Tom Boellstorff).

why is this so irresistible?

http://www.wordle.net/.

PhD position in Utrecht

A position for a PhD researcher is currently open in the Wired project, at Utrecht University. This is the project about which Mariette presented, some months ago. More information can be found on the Wired project website. Deadline for applications is 5 November.

Human Technologies

Human Technologies: Techniques and Practices from the Social Sciences

You are cordially invited to join us for an afternoon of discussions around the theme of ‘human technologies’. Human technologies are a significant social form in contemporary culture, and as such, deserving of attention from artists as well as scientists. On this occasion, we will consider recent and ongoing artistic and scholarly explorations of the following questions: How can we understand human technologies as a distinct form? How do human technologies rely on and create particular kinds of subjectivities? What roles are played by the human sciences in the creation and deployment of these technologies?

Still from the video 'Fired' by Marianne Flotron

Tuesday 7 October 2008, at the Department of Theory & History of Psychology, Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, University of Groningen.

Speakers and artists featured: Marianne Flotron (artist in residence, Rijksacademie) Maarten Derksen (University of Groningen), Anne Beaulieu(Virtual Knowledge Studio).

This event is part of the project human technologies.

Countdown to ‘In the Game’!

In two weeks, we will be meeting in Copenhagen to discuss ethnographic relationships and knowledge–and to exchange about a whole slew of articles and chapters ‘in progress’. The workshop is closed, but we will have two active ‘reporters’ walking around and mediating the proceedings, so some of the day’s insights will also be made public in various forms. Here is a link to the poster: inthegameposterbig.

Bikes, originally uploaded by Alfred Nerstu.