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Paper short abstract

The role of inaction in anthropological fieldwork is an under-examined condition that permeates most fieldwork situations. Grounded in fieldwork with arts practitioners in Berlin, this paper will explore inaction as an activist affordance, in line with Dokumaci’s theory of the same name.

Paper long abstract

The role of inaction in anthropological fieldwork is an under-examined condition that permeates most, if not all fieldwork situations. As a result of a categorisation of personhood that arose in the social sciences throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the researcher is often assumed to be both neurotypical and able-bodied. These expectations presume immersive data collection and assume that the production of knowledge emerges from a standardised physiological viewpoint.

The reality for the majority of researchers, however, is a patchwork approach that features cancellation, inertia, and rest. Rather than seeing this mode of inaction as a fieldwork failure, it can be seen as a mode that exists in opposition to ableist expectations of academic participation. In fact, inaction can highlight resistance and resilience that expands fieldsite contexts, enriching ethnography by both its inclusion and its intrinsic utility in participants' lives.

Arising in my own ethnographic practice working with participants who utilise crip methods, inaction also features as a necessary part of any research methodology. Grounded in my fieldwork with arts practitioners in Berlin, my presentation will explore inaction as an activist affordance, in line with Dokumaci’s theory of the same name. The conscious rejection of activity in favour of serving the capacity of one’s body-mind is a technique of improvisation that builds a material bridge between uninhabitable and inhabitable worlds. In relation to the theme of polarisation, this paper outlines the benefits of incorporating inaction in the creation of anti-ableist ethnographic frameworks as a fundamental aspect of anthropological knowledge production.