Etnografías de lo digitalremediaciones y recursividad del método antropológico

  1. Adolfo Estalella 1
  1. 1 Universidad Complutense de Madrid
    info

    Universidad Complutense de Madrid

    Madrid, España

    ROR 02p0gd045

Journal:
AIBR: Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana

ISSN: 1578-9705

Year of publication: 2018

Volume: 13

Issue: 1

Pages: 45-68

Type: Article

DOI: 10.11156/AIBR.130104 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

More publications in: AIBR: Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana

Abstract

Digital worlds have posed anthropologists for the last two decades a whole set of methodological challenges that according to the traditional tale of the field has forced ethnography to adapt, transform or renew. In this paper I reframe this question to argue that the key issue when we study digital worlds is not just how to proceed but how to find the appropriate account to describe ethnography in these particular encounters. Drawing on three of my fieldworks focussed on different expressions of digital cultures, I describe how one of my ethnographies on digital media is re-mediated, and how other ethnography on prototypes is prototyped. Two instances leading me to argue in the encounter with digital worlds anthropology has the opportunity to re-learn its methods in the company of others and re-describe it drawing on the conceptual vocabularies that discovers in its empirical encounters. I will call it a relation of methodological recursivity in which the ethnographic object turns into the source to re-describe the ethnographic method. Methodological recursion evinces a twofold effect: The incorporation of vernacular practices as part of our method, and the re-description of ethnography drawing on the conceptual vocabulary of the field.

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