Paper short abstract:

A collaborative multimodal ethnography based on photography and digital storytelling workshops with residents of a therapeutic community in Lisbon. By promoting shared trajectories and identity reconstruction, this study proposes new inclusive and transformative directions for anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

This study investigates a collaborative multimodal ethnography conducted through photography and digital storytelling workshops for residents of the Ares do Pinhal Association Therapeutic Community in Portugal. The collaboration created in the workshops reflects the possibilities and challenges of a shared ethnographic practice, where the anthropologist serves as a mediator and the participants are active in the research process. Each session involved the participants in creative processes through multimodal ethnographic recording techniques, promoting an exploration of their trajectories and future perspectives with a direct impact on mental health.

The research questions the hierarchies of knowledge in anthropology, suggesting ethical and epistemological alternatives in which anthropologist and interlocutors act as co-explorers of new directions. The themes addressed - ‘Recovery and Treatment’, ‘Social Reintegration’ and ‘(Re)Construction of Identity’ - illustrate the transformative potential of this collaborative ethnography for reorienting anthropological practice.

By expanding the role of participants beyond research subjects, this approach investigates the limits and possibilities of an Anthropology focused on social reintegration and identity transformation, contributing to the future of ethnography with an innovative and engaged perspective.

This research questions the ‘prescribed routes’ of conventional anthropology by proposing an alternative path, where the anthropologist and the participants emerge as co-explorers of new epistemological and ethical directions. This practice proposes an anthropology guided by principles of empathy and inclusion, promoting the construction of collective and ethnographically aware horizons that promote social reintegration with an impact on the mental health of people in the process of treatment and recovery.