Paper short abstract:

The aim of the presentation is to show how expert phenomenologies related to haptics in rehabilitative environments reformulate the ethnographer's reflexivity and sensitivity to fieldwork.

Paper long abstract:

In a recent study on ethnographic practice, Holmes and Marcus note that “our subjects are themselves fully capable of doing superb ethnography in their own idioms” (2021: 26). In the same study the project of “para-ethnographic epistemic partnerships with expert interlocutors” (Marcus and Boyer 2021: 13) is evoked. Drawing on my experience of having conducted ethnographic sociological fieldwork in a variety of centers and labs in robotics in which medical technologies of motor rehabilitation such as exoskeletons were developed, I argue that within this type of research the resulting knowledge was fundamentally based on epistemic alliances with fellow experts. Especially, haptic competence and skills essential in these sociotechnical landscapes asked me to rethink how experts, users but also myself as ethnographer engage in partnerships that forged my object of study. The fact of having interviewed engineers specialized in robotics, but also physiotherapists, ergonomists or neuroscientists besides users engaged me in modes of knowledge production that were essentially relational and that allowed me to theorize specific phenomenologies of expertise. The experts’ analysis and critical perspective on the technology they were actively contributing to design forged my own ethnographic reflexivity and compelled me to include additional phenomenologies than those of the users within these epistemic collaborations.