Experimental methods and the collaborative turn: itinerant ethnography in an (im)mobilised society

Abstract

This paper discusses some contemporary transformations of the ethnographic method. More specifically, it addresses experimental ethnographic methods, which feed the ethnographic imagination in changing contexts. In a critical perspective and reflecting on the situated production of knowledge in fieldwork, the paradigm of collaboration is presented as a characteristic sign of experimental ethnographies. Finally, through the analysis of concrete field cases and the review of diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, itinerant ethnography is proposed as a form of spatio-temporal experimentation in the field. The physical displacement proposed by itinerant ethnography, and its relation to (im)mobility, allows us to reflect on the ethical and political transformation of experimental ethnographic methods on the move.