Social science perspectives on climate change and development

University of Copenhagen

Xaquín S. Pérez-Sindín López

Tag: ethnography

  • The Black Swan: Understanding the Power of the Unexpected

    We like to believe the world is predictable. We build plans, forecasts, strategies, and expectations based on what we already know. We look at the past and assume it can help us understand the future. Most of the time, this works well enough. But every so often, something happens that breaks our assumptions completely. This…

  • New Publication: Ethnography as Method, Practice, and Ethical Commitment

    I’m pleased to share my latest publication, which explores ethnography as a vital method within qualitative research. The article examines what makes ethnography so enduring and so necessary: its ability to capture the complexity, depth, and lived meaning of social life through immersive engagement in the field. Rather than treating people as abstract data points,…

  • The Mushroom at the en of the world

    This book tells of travels with mushrooms in order to explore indeterminacy and the conditions of precarity: life without the promise of stability. I once read that when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, thousands of Siberians, suddenly deprived of state guarantees, ran to the woods to collect mushrooms. These are not the mushrooms Anna…

  • Fieldwork in a village in Central Nepal

    I was watching this video as part of a seminar on ethnography at the Comillas Institute at Columbia University, and while taking notes I began to organize its insights around what can be understood as the different stages of fieldwork. What follows is not a rigid model, but a way of presenting the process more…

  • “It’s about the depth of your data”

    Fantastic article (it’s about the depth of your data) on “qualitative data analysis”, clarifying the difference between “quali” and “quanti”, but also providing rich comments on the labour of fieldnotes when doing fieldwork. I want to emphasize this parragraph and then you can read the whole article: Descriptions in fieldnotes need to be precise. Rather than…

  • “Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool” by Kusenbach

    Kusenbach, M. 2003. “Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool.” Ethnography 4 (3): 455–485. doi:10.1177/146613810343007. Abstract This article introduces and evaluates the go-along as a qualitative research tool. What sets this technique apart from traditional ethnographic methods such as participant observation and interviewing is its potential to access some of the transcendent and reflexive…

  • The dark side of Silicon Valley

    California’s booming tech industry has created the most extreme wealth disparity in America. Josie Ensor investigates the tale of two cities By Josie Ensor, San Jose, California 6:00AM GMT 26 Nov 2014 Jimmy hands $2 worth of dimes to the conductor and finds a seat at the back of the bus. He settles himself in…

  • Collective ethnographic experiment in inner city Amsterdam

    Research Network on Qualitative Research (RN20) to organize a ethnographic experiment (based on Mass-Observation project) during the next ESA midterm conference and by the own conference participants. It seems to me a great idea! The observation will focus on diversity performances in inner city Amsterdam. Really, I see this methodology as applicable to other conferences. Here I paste…

  • Mass-observation project

    Mass-Observation was a United Kingdom social research organisation founded in 1937. Their work ended in the mid-1960s but was revived in 1981. The Archive is housed at the University of Sussex. Mass-Observation aimed to record everyday life in Britain through a panel of untrained volunteer observers who either maintained diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires…

  • #ethnography: Trends, Traverses and Traditions

    Call for Papers – deadline extended to 1 May 2014 ESA midterm conference, Research Network on Qualitative Research (RN20) #Ethnography, @Amsterdam #August_27-29_2014 http://aissr.uva.nl/ethnography Ethnography is often seen as one of the principal approaches in qualitative methodology in general. The ESA midterm conference for the Research Network on Qualitative research (RN20) will be on trends, traverses and…