"...analysis-as-craft is not invention out of thin air, nor is it flat reproduction of the already known. It cannot be reduced to developing better observational skills, precise data collection techniques, or more accurate abstractions. Nor is it enough to write evocative texts. It is not about choosing a theorist in advance or claiming to have no theoretical preferences. Analysis transpires at the intersection of many of these and according to the specific problems and questions at hand. ... Each of the techniques you will encounter is an experiment to wonder, a process that depends on a “certain duration so that doubt and confusion can endure long enough to allow qualitative leaps and contradictions in our sense-making” (Ballestero 2019, 32). This kind of wonder is possible when conditions for structured play are put in place (Fortun 2009). Furthermore, we understand these conditions as ways of “staying with the trouble” (Haraway 2016) and directing our analytic movement athwart (Helmreich 2009). They are the conditions of possibility for finding companion concepts (Winthereik 2019), embracing unwanted afterlives (Murphy 2017b), and experimenting with kinky forms of empiricism (Rutherford 2012). Each technique offers an opportunity to co-labor (De la Cadena 2015) with what peers and interlocutors share with us."
Once all participants have completed their sketches, we will now complete a round of elaborative peer review, that is to say, engaging each other's work to elaborate and develop new collaborative ties. This kind of friendly "review-for-building-new-relations" is intended to serve a generative function rather than a disciplining function.
Choose one or two of your peer responses from the below list of submissions (will be available after Sept 27th). Review your peers' material. After reviewing, click the "Annotate" button under their artifact and select the "6S Elaborative Peer Review" questions to provide feedback on their responses.
[These instructions can also be viewed in a google doc here.]
This sketch can be used -- either quickly or more comprehensively -- to draw out an ethnographic research design -- for your own project or just for practice. Do this sketch many times for different kinds of possible projects -- thinking of it as calisthenics for ethnography.
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1) For the 6S 4021 workshop, select one of the sites|initiatives|problem-domains below to design a project for -- thinking first about different types of projects that could be done for the site|initiative|problem-domain you have selected, then about a specific project design, filling in the graphic to the right.
- Don't describe your own primary project. This is an exercise in rapid research imagining that you should spend about three hours on -- honing your capacity for “analysis as craft.”
- The sketch can be done individually or collaboratively (the latter is more fun).
- Responses can be roughly drafted and in bullet points.
- Fill in as much as you can in the allotted time, purposely working fast.
- Prioritize work on “Overview / Research Questions,” “Methods and Data Resources” and “Theoretical Frames and Data Analysis.”
All of the sites|initiatives|problem-domains we’ve listed as options somehow relate to climate change. We fully understand that climate change is not a central focus for many of you (though it is context for all). We chose options within the climate change problem space so that the collection of proposals the group comes up with points to an array of STS research possibilities within any particular problem space.
2) By Sept. 24th, complete the sketch draft and submit as a PDF via this form. You are encouraged to find a partner (another student you know who is participating in the 6S workshop or someone else entirely) with whom to work on this. If questions arise as you work on this, please feel free to email them to aokune[at]uci[dot]edu.
Troianovski, Anton and Chris Mooney (photo and video by Michael Robinson Chavez). 2019. “Radical Warming in Siberia Leaves Millions on Unstable Ground,” Washington Post. October 3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-siberia/
Struzik, Ed. 2020. “How Thawing Permafrost Is Beginning to Transform the Arctic,” Yale Environment 360. January 21. https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-melting-permafrost-is-beginning-to-transform-the-arctic
WHO, UNDP, UNEP and UNICEF have partnered to create a new compendium of 500 actions aimed at reducing death and diseases driven by environmental risk factors, the first such resource to unite this expertise from across the UN system.
Make sure to come up with a title (though this is hard and always feels -- and is -- reductive).
The abstract should describe your project significance, aims, methods, expected findings/contributions (intellectual merit) and expected societal implications (broad impact). Describe each in a sentence.
In the Overview / Research Questions, try to articulate the scales, systems or objects that will be foregrounded in the project, and its context|location (geographic, ecologic, geopolitical, discursive, etc). Include both theoretical and empirical questions, and a description of the types of data you will generate and mobilize. End with a few statements about what the project will push against (methodological nationalism or essentialist constructs of identity or place, for example).
In the Literature Review section for a literature review, describe two to four topical literatures that you will build on and contribute to through this research. See Annual Reviews for ideas but reach for bibliodiversity.
In the methods section, describe what you will do, where and with whom -- and the different kinds of data and insight these activities will produce. Consider, for example, how you might include multisited ethnography (Marcus 1995, a tale of implosion (Dumit 2014), tactile analytics (Patricia Alvarez Astacio 2021), drawing as analysis (Rachel Douglas-Jones 2021), or archive ethnography (Fortun et al. 2021).
In the section for theoretical frames, describe the basic theoretical insights that you can mobilize in your study design, data collection, analysis, and writing. You could mobilize understanding of “the subaltern,” for example, or Foucaultian ideas about discourse and subject formation. This can be a long list with very cursory descriptions. Note that this section is not usually included in a proposal submitted to funders -- but should be part of your thinking and dialogue with collaborators.
In building your references, reach for bibliodiversity and a transnational field of reference.