Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates how ethnographic filmmaking can take part in connecting (hi-)stories of normality and naturalized ways of consuming in consumer society. In research on consumption it may help enhance the strangeness of normality and the familiarity of living and consuming otherwise.

Paper long abstract:

Audiovisual methods have a long history within visual anthropology dating back more than a hundred years. As a tool for both inquiry and reflection, analysis and conveying documentation of social and cultural life, it collects layers of information documenting the histories of everyday life. Through processes of editing where the audiovisual material transforms into a montage telling specific stories and disrupting common and naturalized ideas it has been argued that film montage has the ability to help us reflect on the world as it is constructed, the perceptions that follow and help us rethink how the world might be.

This paper investigates how ethnographic filmmaking can take part in connecting (hi-)stories of normality and the naturalized ways of consuming in consumer society, drawing on the practice of design anthropological filmmaking as a way to actively propose alternative ethical and cultural narratives and practices concerning everyday life and consumption. It suggests that the stories of research participants connected with socio-technical infrastructures can disrupt and juxtapose common and taken-for-granted narratives and propose new ones. Though under-researched in research on consumption this tool may help enhance the strangeness of normality and the familiarity of living and consuming otherwise.

The research is based on fieldwork in two locations in Denmark, Langeland and Copenhagen, using audiovisual ethnographic methods by working with a camera as a tool of inquiry and documenting everyday practices and conversations about ethical convictions and developments.