Paper Short Abstract:

This talk offers a meditation on the practice of coding and the writing of ethnography through a series of poems composed of fragments of codes from fieldnotes. Based on data generated from two years of research on disaster, mental health, and psychosomatic disorders in Nepal, each entry presents a code, such as “waiting” or “dreaming.” The aim of Codebook is to reflect on the process of ethnographic creation, and to explore the surprising and often surreal juxtapositions of fragments and observations prior to their explicit thematization and analysis.

Paper Abstract:

Ethnographic writing, one end point of anthropological research, is generated from a close analysis of data such as fieldnotes, interviews, and other supporting material. While different methods may be used, it is widely accepted that the practice of coding is central to ethnographic data analysis. Through coding, the marking of recurrent themes in the data, it becomes possible to find meaningful patterns and repetitions so that one can begin to compose an ethnographic argument. How do we generate these codes? How do we select the point from which analysis begins? This talk offers a meditation on the practice of coding and the writing of ethnography through a series of poems composed of fragments of codes from fieldnotes generated across 2 years of research on disaster, mental health, and psychosomatic disorders in Nepal. Each entry presents a code, such as “waiting” or “dreaming.” The aim of Codebook is to reflect on the process of ethnographic creation, and explore the surprising and often surreal juxtapositions of fragments and observations prior to their explicit thematization and analysis.