Paper short abstract:

This paper explores efforts to foreground vivid ethnographic accounts for wider audiences through multimodal work in books and journals, and also discusses the challenges of telling historical stories in ways that can enfold contemporary audiences in the process of making meaning.

Paper long abstract:

Classroom text author Jerry Moore posed these questions to students of theory in 2004: “Should anthropological explanation be modeled on scientific theory building or on humanistic interpretation? Will anthropology simply divide into two camps?” It seems that instead of dividing, anthropology has managed to build a bigger tent. It’s a drafty one, perhaps, but one that aims to accommodate professional endeavors, settings, and skills ranging well beyond traditional academic practice. Multimodal anthropology in the 21st century can be compared to Tom Wolfe’s description of how journalists “seized the power” in the 1970s, adopting writing techniques formerly restricted to fiction and making them their own. Then as now, the results of genre bending and the means used to get there have sparked controversy and rethinking, followed by increasingly bolder experimentation. For anthropologists, structural and technological changes have combined with a shifting ethos, or in some cases driven it, blurring the boundaries of discipline and practice in productive ways. This paper pokes into drafty spaces where ethnographic innovation breathes most free, as understood from the perspective of a former journalist who currently edits efforts to foreground vivid ethnographic accounts for wider audiences through multimodal work in books and journals, and also grapples personally with the challenges of telling historical stories in ways that can enfold contemporary audiences in the process of making meaning.