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Paper short abstract

Ethnographic journaling is a form of embodied analysis of field experiences through illustration and collage. It embraces aesthetic exploration as an act of deep observation and reflexive knowledge production, leaning into the manifold tensions arising in and beyond field encounters.

Paper long abstract

Creative methodologies have blossomed in the last decades, from arts-based research and visual ethnography, to hand-drawn field notes that stand as anthropological treatises on their own. Art has been positioned as a way for researchers to create reflexive knowledge that is both inwardly aware of its subjectivity as well as outwardly open with it. Each patch of pigment pools into visceral acknowledgment of the shaky hands that pulled them into being.

Ethnographic journaling is one such approach to artistic analysis through illustration and collage. Scribbled notes, quotes, paper ephemera, and thumbnail sketches from shorter bursts in “the field” are meticulously illustrated and arranged into journal spreads largely upon return “home.” These compositions juxtapose encounters and sentiments through embodied aesthetics. Their tensions call us to consider if we are truly living in a particularly polarized world, or rather a fundamentally dialectic reality. The extended process and product alike spark a “reexperiencing” of the field that blurs the boundaries of memory and space between both researchers and audiences. It likewise taps into the individual creative voice and symbolic dictionary of each researcher, toeing the line between personal travel journaling and the research endeavor in an acknowledgement of our patchwork lives. Yet the sheer time needed for this process spurs pertinent conversations on how to embed artistic approaches into academic systems that continue to structurally privilege traditional written texts.