Paper short abstract:

Ethnography is how anthropologists know and write the world. In the Covid-19 pandemic, flash ethnography emerged as a genre responsive to this moment. Flash ethnographies are 750-word essays complete unto themselves. Why write such short texts? What communicative power might we find in brevity?

Paper long abstract:

How shall we know and write the world? In socio-cultural anthropology, ethnography is our unique way of knowing. It is also both how and what we write. Over the decades, ethnographic writing has shifted content and form. Sometimes experimental, sometimes conventional, we are able to recognize ethnography across different genres. We know it when we see it, hear it, witness it. In the 21st century, new digital technologies offer us new ways to write as well as to share our writings. Our audiences grow, our styles grow, but this expansion is not only technological. It is also a response to the current political moment and to new senses of ethics in the discipline. One important new ethnographic form is the short essay, usually 1,000-2,000 words. Anthropologists use this form to respond in the moment as events unfold, drawing on ethnographic knowledge to speak to the present. If this form is now well-developed, an even newer form is still emergent: flash ethnography. Building on longstanding genres of flash fiction and nonfiction, flash ethnographies are 750-word essays complete unto themselves. That is, they are not snippets or excerpts from longer works, but instead are brief but whole ethnographies. Why write such short ethnographies and why now? In my presentation, I will discuss the sort of ethnographic potential flash ethnography holds in relation to what it is the world might need. As we continually work to transform the discipline and also the world, what communicative power might we find in brevity?