Paper Short Abstract:

This poster expands on experiments with precarious methods in order to make ethnographic methods more interdependent and vulnerable to the hands of others. It will invite the audience to contribute their perspectives on methods in increasingly precarious worlds.

Paper Abstract:

This proposed poster presentation seeks to expand on my forthcoming book’s experiments with precarious methods. The book “‘You don’t know’: Precarious Methods and Life in a Workers' Hostel” experiments with precarious methods to enable more vulnerable and interdependent ways of apprehending and surviving wrecked worlds. Drawing on ethnographic research in a London hostel for precarious workers the book explores the political, analytical and practical limitations of using traditional methods when researching life in precarious worlds. It argues that in order to better apprehend precarious worlds it is necessary to experiment with precarious methods. This includes: 1)Enacting survivable methods to create room for immediate survival tactics and move towards other ways of being in the world; 2) Making the text precarious and unfinished to open up for more diverse analytical apprehensions, political reimaginings and collaborative potentialities; 3) Unsettling divides between academia and precarious worlds to facilitate a more intra-dependent exchange of methods, tactics and survival skills between people in precarious circumstances; 4) Resisting authoritarian knowledge by bringing forward and exposing analytical uncertainties and inconsistencies to disrupt academic and political desires for certainty and control and beliefs in glorified individual geniuses. Expanding on the book's experiments the poster presentation seeks to engage the audience to talk, write or post (on padlet) their own perspectives on the role of ethnographic methods in precarious worlds. The purpose of this will be to make my experiments with precarious methods more vulnerable and interdependent on the hands of others.