Paper short abstract:

Ethnography is the narration of the ordinary. As such, ethnography potentially belongs beyond the remit of academic anthropology, to encompass multiple forms of knowing, narrating and acting

Paper long abstract:

As Anna Tsing put it, our ability to generate and tell stories is central to living in a dying world. “To listen to and tell a rush of stories is a method,” she wrote. Storytelling is a way of staying with the trouble, to borrow Donna Haraway's phrase—a way to uncover the multiple ways we are connected and related, while also reshaping those connections and relations that render our present world unsustainable.

Sharing stories that generate more stories can be both a practice and a profession—one that thrives not only in magazines or workshops but also in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and within struggles for a more just present and future.

Ethnography has an important role to play. It is the narration of the ordinary. As such, ethnography potentially extends beyond the remit of academic anthropology, encompassing diverse forms of knowing, narrating, and acting.

In this presentation, I will draw on my experience with OtherwiseMag to reflect on how ethnographic storytelling can serve as a practice for questioning entrenched positionalities of authorship and representation. This practice, I argue, has the potential to generate journeys of struggle, empathy, and solidarity. It is a method too vital to be left to the whims of the neoliberal university or confined within the narrow grids of academic anthropology.