Contribution short abstract:

Considering ethnographic practice as relational and intersubjective and deeply intimate, the presentation addresses methodological challenges in relation to positionality and ethics in a fieldwork with young people living with the virus of HIV in zones of marginality and social exclusion.

Contribution long abstract:

Drawing on my fieldwork with young people living with the virus of HIV in zones of marginality and social exclusion in Maputo in Mozambique, the aim of this presentation is to discuss the methodological challenges in medical anthropology research to better understand people’s experiences of illness, body and care. These questions arises from a methodological consideration of my PhD thesis, in which I examine the politics of adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy and how they affect seropositive teenagers. The arrival in the field, its extended timeframe and the first encounters, led me to a slow but constant reformulation and reflection of possible new methods and tools to implement.

The presentation addresses the challenges encountered in relation to positionality and ethics in the field. Considering ethnographic practice as relational and intersubjective, I will show how, while working with vulnerable people, detachment and neutrality lose their meaning. Central instead are the sense of ethics and political responsibility that I will discuss during the presentation. I’ll then analyse the use of creative methodological tools and the possibility of co-creation and participation in the research by the young people I met. Therefore, I will show the challenges I faced in setting up a support group for young HIV-positive people and in the use of visual techniques, such as photovoice and bodymapping, which enabled to get in touch with aspects of their emotional lives that were hardly accessible in words.

Contribution short abstract:

the photo eliciting technique is introduced to cover the gap between researchers and interlocutors in fragile settings covering refugees' encampments, and indigenous communities

Contribution long abstract:

When we interact with fluid, changing and fragile communities – in terms of composition, roles and positioning – like it is often the case with refugees’ urban encampments and indigenous minorities we are challenged to adjust both our expectations and methods to such specific settings. Ethical questions as well as political sensitivities push us to explore alternative means of approach and communication with our research subjects with the specific aim to give them voice. The introduction of the photo eliciting technique is often able to serve this goal: in the course of our conversation we introduce images urging our interlocutors to share with us reflections, and memories generated by the images themselves. In other situations, we may invite our interlocutors to propose us self-produced photos and videos or make use of internet through our or their devices in order to explain the theme of enquiry. While helping to overcome the linguistic gap and the cultural distance the use of photo-eliciting had at least two important fallouts for research: it may highlight participant voices through their choices visuals and words activating unexpected paths and encourages the creation of a comfortable space for discussion even in the absence of a deep prior knowledge between respondents and researchers.

Contribution short abstract:

This presentation will show how poetry can be used both as an emotionally supportive analytical tool to make sense of fuzzy data. This presentation will be based on extracts from notes of research, lecture, analysis, as well as finished writing to question the limitations of normative storytelling.

Contribution long abstract:

My research takes a critical look on the global value chain of organic chocolate produced from organic cocoa plantations in the department of San Martín in Peru. Even if cocoa beans are the main ingredient in chocolate, the final price paid to the producers stays very low in comparison to the consumer price. This income stays relatively low even in agrarian development project supported by sustainable ambitions. Furthermore, the lower price paid to cocoa farmers contrasts with the higher salary of cooperative managers, agronomists, resellers and, also, researchers whose careers are based cocoa cultivation. This difference of income reveals a highly hierarchical industry and access restriction to social and geographical mobility as well as too financial, educational, and material resources.

These discriminations and the effects of structural violence are felt, lived, and experienced by the cocoa farmers and can be felt and seen directly or indirectly by researchers. The emotions that emerge during and after research experiences can be analyzed through poetical attunement to the world and to oneself. Listening to the researcher’s and to other’s emotions through this poetical attunement can help to reveal unseen power relations through creative perception of human encounters.

I will take examples of the notes taken during research, analysis, and writing on cocoa cultivation in Peru, where I faced important neocolonial tensions around the differences of life quality of these different actors within the cocoa value chain.

Contribution short abstract:

This reflexive account encompasses my reflections on the role ‘touching’ and ‘being touched’ played in my understanding of the field as well as in establishing and sustaining a connection to field and the ones who constituted it.

Contribution long abstract:

As an ethnographer who cannot rely on her eyesight to perceive the surroundings, this reflexive account seeks to elucidate certain aspects of the embodied approach that I have subconsciously developed over time and continued to exercise during the course of my fieldwork. Doing ethnography with the Afghans who migrated to Pakistan following the Taliban coming to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, my (dis)ability often played a significant role, from establishing the initial contacts to being connected to prospective interlocutors. It was frequently demonstrated how my research partners catered to these ‘special’ circumstances and adapted accordingly. Moreover, my ‘(im)partial’ sight facilitated me in sharing a more intimate (physical) space with many of my research partners. Coming into physical contact, which was often not necessary, altered the notions of (in)tangibility in our routine interactions. Hence, the performativity of touch not only contributed to strengthening my relations with my research partners through their depiction of empathy towards me but also was indicative of the depth of our relation(s). Additionally, going into the field as an ‘embodied ethnographer’ allowed me to acquire some material details through perception by the skin, in the form of active as well as passive touch. This also enabled me, at instances, to feel and know beyond the visual. In a nutshell, my discussion encompasses my reflections on the role ‘touching’ and ‘being touched’ played in my understanding of the field as well as in establishing and sustaining a connection to field and the ones who constituted it.

Contribution short abstract:

Works of fiction, poetry, and visual essays allow ethnographers to contribute to the communication of the possibility of an otherwise. The online lit mag Otherwise gives ethnographers a platform to open up a world, life or perspective that challenges what is to an audience beyond academia.

Contribution long abstract:

The online indie lit mag Otherwise Magazine gives ethnographers a platform to open up a world, life or perspective that challenges "what is" to an audience in and outside of academia. The stories published by Otherwise feature narrations free from the constraints of jargon, theoretical frameworks and standardised formats. Storytelling opportunities of this kind remain limited in so many areas of life and work. By questioning established positionalities of storytelling, Otherwise creates a space for the researcher as much as the researched to tell their stories. Transformation is possible when everyday encounters are recounted in a way that other possibilities can be envisaged: other ways of living, of understanding, of imagining the past, present and future. Three editors from Otherwise Magazine will explore how the magazine fosters conversations on the power of storytelling as a means of turning the ordinary into a space for imagining and pursuing an otherwise. These editors include:

Eleni Kotsira, a poetry editor with Otherwise Magazine, who holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of St Andrews and since 2021 works in the area of public policy. Her work focuses on environmental disasters, psychological anthropology and reflective research & writing methods;

José Sherwood González, an artist investigator whose PhD research explores the contemporary Mesoamerican cultural heritage and the revivification of museum objects through the use of film, digital and comics; and

Emily Kennedy, a Canadian journalist and researcher, challenges traditional journalistic methods of writing and researching by creatively blending methods from ethnography in reporting.