Table Of ContentCONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHIES
Contemporary Ethnographies is a call to use ethnography in imaginative ways,
adjusting to rapidly evolving social circumstances. It is based on a reflexive
and theoretically grounded exploration of the author’s two main research
projects – the study of the spiritist possession cult of María Lionza in Venezuela,
and the analysis of the contemporary exhumation of Civil War (1936–1939) mass
graves in contemporary Spain. Ferrándiz critically reviews the labyrinthine and
continuous transforming nature of ethnographic engagement. He defends both
the need for methodological rigour and the astounding flexibility of ethnography
to adjust in creative ways to shifting realities in a dynamic world – a world
in which research scenarios multiply, social actors are on the move (physically
or digitally), acts of violence proliferate, new technologies are transforming
the experience and perception of human life, and the demand, production,
circulation and consumption of knowledge is greatly diversified, overshadowing
former well established and more hierarchical patterns of diffusion.
The book is conceived of as a historically grounded open debate, providing
as many certainties as moments of unpredictability and unresolved dilemmas. It
is valuable reading for students and scholars interested in ethnographic methods
and anthropological theory.
Francisco Ferrándiz is a tenured senior researcher at the Spanish National
Research Council (CSIC, Spain). He has a Ph.D. in social and cultural anthropology
from UC Berkeley. He has been actively engaged in public anthropology and
the analysis of both grassroots and institutional memory politics in Spain and
Europe. He is co-editor of N ecropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of
Human Rights (2015).
Theorizing Ethnography
Series Editors: Elisabeth L. Engebretsen, EJ Gonzalez-Polledo,
and Silvia Posocco
The ‘Theorizing Ethnography’ book series seeks to reorient ethnographic
engagements across disciplines, methods and ways of knowing. By focusing on
ethnography as a point of tension between abstract thinking and situated life-
worlds, the series promotes ethnographic method and writing as an analytical
form that is always partial, open-ended and epistemologically querying.
Against this background, ‘Theorizing Ethnography’ employs ‘concept’, ‘con-
text’ and ‘critique’ as devices to stimulate creative ethnographic thinking that
transects lines of analysis and location. It publishes work that reaches beyond
academic, political and life-world divisions, and as such the series seeks to foster
contributions from across socially and critically engaged fields of practice.
Sensing the Everyday
Dialogues from Austerity Greece
C. Nadia Seremetakis
Queering Knowledge
Analytics, Devices and Investments after Marilyn Strathern
Edited by Paul Boyce, E.J. Gonzalez-Polledo, and Silvia Posocco
Being J anana
Language and Sexuality in Contemporary India
Ila Nagar
Contemporary Ethnographies
Moorings, Methods, and Keys for the Future
Francisco Ferrándiz
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Theorizing-Ethnography/book-series/THEOETH
CONTEMPORARY
ETHNOGRAPHIES
Moorings, Methods, and Keys
for the Future
Francisco Ferrándiz
SPANISH NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (CSIC)
TRANSLATED BY NICOLA STAPLETON AND STEPHEN CARLIN
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Francisco Ferrándiz
The right of Francisco Ferrándiz to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ferrá ndiz, Francisco, author. | Routledge (Firm)
Title: Contemporary ethnographies : moorings, methods, and keys for
the future / Francisco Ferrán diz, Spanish National Research Council
(CSIC) ; translated by Nicola Stapleton and Stephen Carlin.
Description: First Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2020. | Series:
Theorizing ethnography | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002280 (print) | LCCN 2020002281 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367483838 (Hardback) | ISBN 9780367483852
(Paperback) | ISBN 9781003039631 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethnology—Fieldwork.
Classification: LCC GN346 .F47 2020 (print) | LCC GN346 (ebook) |
DDC 305.8/00723—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002280
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002281
ISBN: 978-0-367-48383-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-48385-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03963-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
F or Chun, for the tenderness you left behind
For Feli, the light in so many eyes
For Marisa, for all the courage in your endless flight
CONTENTS
Note on cover ix
List of figures x
Part 1 Into the labyrinth 1
1 .1 Starting out 1
1.2 On ethnography 5
1.3 Scientific, hermeneutic and collaborative paradigms
in anthropology 7
1.4 Brief history of fieldwork methods in anthropology
and some classic examples 19
Part 2 Ethnographies in flow 28
2.1 Designing the research 29
2.2 Fieldwork as a methodological situation 34
2.3 Where to go? 38
2.4 Landings 48
2.5 Considering participant observation 61
2.6 On informants or interlocutors 70
2.7 Conversing, listening, interviewing and keeping quiet 86
2.8 Stories and itineraries of the body 105
2.9 Ethnography, audio-visual techniques and media,
and new digital ecologies 117
2.10 Farewell to the field 134
2.11 Writing ethnography 141
viii Contents
Part 3 Ethnographies of the present and the future 156
3.1 Globalisation: evolving research scenarios 156
3.2 W alking the tight rope: transnational research and
“multi-sited” ethnography 163
3 .3 The ethnography of shock: violence, conflict,
and social suffering 169
3 .3.1 From everyday violence . . . 180
3 .3.2 . . . to postconflict research 190
B ibliography 201
I ndex 218
NOTE ON COVER
(Paperback and eBook editions)
Detail of the monument Women in Black by sculptor Óscar Cenzano, located in
the civil cemetery of La Barranca (Lardero, Logroño), where more than 400 bod-
ies of victims of Francoist repression are still buried. It is dedicated to the widows
of those civilians executed in the location at the beginning of the Spanish Civil
War, who protected the location of the mass grave and kept the memory of the
events and their relatives since the killings, at great personal risk. Photo by the
author.
