Cetonia aurata take off composition, Bernie Kohl. Image source
Multimodality in Ethnographic Research: An Overview
Multimodal methods offer new ways of asking questions and collecting, sharing, and presenting research to extend and rework ethnographic forms. They present through a range of registers – from visual or audiovisual techniques, mapping, and experimental writing – that share the aim of making academic work more collaborative, (self)critical, and accessible. As an expansion of many epistemic turns in the discipline – like crises of representation, deconstruction of objectivity, and the ontological turn – multimodal techniques are dynamic, responsive, culpable, and collaborative (Westmoreland 2022). Importantly, they necessitate the interrogation of core ways of knowing and producing knowledge that the discipline is rooted in, and push to make research more accessible, democratized, transparent, and valuable to those that it represents. This practice often displays the ‘traces of media’ and foundations that research emerges from to reveal the questions, concerns, and complexities at the heart of ethnographic processes which are often eclipsed in the presentation of a final immutable product (Westmoreland 2022; Collins, Durington, & Gill 2017). Multimodality aims to provide critical methodological and pedagogical interventions that are better fit for eras of mass disruption, the saturation of many media, cascading crises, and deepening inequalities. Learn more.
Multimodal Techniques
ETHNOGRAPHIC SKETCHES
Ethnographic sketches and field drawings can be valuable tools for anthropological research and representation, as they offer a way to visually capture and communicate complex cultural phenomena. Learn more.
ETHNOGRAPHIC MAPPING
If used critically and responsibly, maps can help us in our ethnographic research, whether when we take fieldnotes or when representing the findings of our research. Learn more.
DIGITAL ETHNOGRAPHY
By acknowledging digital ethnography as a legitimate approach within the broader field of ethnography, researchers can effectively adapt their methodology to study the digital realm. Learn more.
ETHNOGRAPHIC STORYTELLING
More recent forms of ethnographic representation have more openly embraced narrative forms of storytelling and experimented with engaging means that in the past may have been considered ‘unscientific’ or insufficient for a claim to represent reality. Learn more.
ETHNOGRAPHIC POSTCARDS & LETTERS
The critical role of correspondence and letters in ethnographic research is often underappreciated. Letter writing by anthropologists provides insights into the micropowers of fieldwork and offers closer examinations of methods and research processes. Learn more.
WALKING & Movement
[4] Ocularcentrism, and its inherited risk of admitting an objectifying gaze and drowning out other senses, is followed by physiological divisions of labour and the perceived superiority of the hands over feet. Learn more.
Sound
The sensory turn is in part a push for ethnographies to move beyond representing world “views”, to exploring different perceptions of the world. Incorporating sound, and analyses of sound, into ethnographic accounts may engage a wider sensory imagination and thereby unseat the exclusive certainty of sight. Learn more.