[Workshop] Documenting the City: Ethnographic Engagements Beyond the Fieldnote

Shuttle bus info (For those who registered for this workshop)
We would like to inform you that the ICAS 13 Organising Committee has prepared a shuttle bus from the Campus B, Universitas Airlangga to the Workshop venue, Kampung Plampitan RT 1. (Please note: Only for those who registered for the workshop).

If you want to make use of the shuttle service, please ensure to be at UNAIR shuttle bus pick-up/drop-off point by 13:40. Please note that the bus will leave to the workshop venue on time. An ICAS 13 Badge is required to board the shuttle bus.

*Shuttle bus only brings participants to the workshop location, after the session, participant can explore Surabaya at their leisure. Find more information about Surabaya transportation here.

Activity or Workshop Details: In contemporary times, the usual tropes of traditional ethnographic engagement have lost much of their prior relevance. With increased global flows, high diversity indices, rapid population movements, and, a severe constraint on time and resource, the scope of long drawn ethnographic fieldwork in an unfamiliar field setting has shrunk considerably. With that, the image of a lone ethnographer taking down fieldnotes and keeping meticulous diaries of days in the field have largely dissipated. In the very diverse field settings of Asia, especially its cities, the ethnographer is faced with multitudinous crowds and a sensorial assault, that often leave them baffled as regards documenting data in the ‘field’. The rapid, shifting, ever-fleeting sensorial landscapes that change through the day, are ephemeral and elusive, and often confound the researcher, as they try to grasp their nuances. On the other hand, developments in technology and peoples’ ease with handling devices, in the least, the smart phone, have opened up new avenues of digital storage and documentation. Researchers, too, have tried to adapt the ethnographic method to the study of contemporary social issues using a variety of tools such as the drawing of cognitive maps, sketching, recording audio clips, creating sense registers, and the like.

In this context, this workshop attempts to explore the various ways in which field data can be documented in the complex settings of urban Asia. It aims to go beyond the written word to construct ‘thick descriptions’ of the field and invites researchers to dwell on complimentary tools of ethnographic record-keeping so that layered, multidimensional and nuanced data can be documented for holistically reconstructing the field. The workshop focuses on the potentially dialogical nature of data generated in the process, whereby meanings are mutually constructed, not only through language but also through a multisensorial orientation of the researcher. The workshop is further interested in uncovering the mnemonic and archival possibilities of these methods in ‘remembering’ and ‘locating’ the field once the phase of fieldwork is over.

The workshop has an ideal capacity of 10-12 participants and will be divided into two sections. After a brief introduction, the first part will comprise of participants taking a short walk around the premises (ideally any micro-locality of Surabaya will suffice, even the conference venue will do for purposes of demonstration). This will familiarise participants with the micro-level social dynamics visible at the level of the neighbourhood, which nonetheless, point to larger issues of community, identity, and change. This will be followed by the second part which will involve an engagement with the various ways in which the ‘context’ is experienced by different participants, who will be invited to communicate the ‘field’ via alternative means. This exercise will throw light on the practical significance of improvisations in recording the ‘field’ and also provide a glimpse into the constraints one has to work with while doing fieldwork in Asian cities. The workshop promises to provide new insights into the ways of data collection and recording while in the field, and aims to build an interconnected communitiy of researchers who can contribute to the expansion of the methodological horizons of ethnographic enquiry in the rapidly transforming milieu of urban Asia.