Embodied adventures : An experiment on doing and writing multisensory ethnography

Abstract

Sensory ethnography is a reflexive and experiential process, in which the role of the researcher as embodied subject is crucial. It is based on the idea that all human beings are connected to materiality and the physical environment through their sensing bodies. At the core of sensory ethnography are sensory experiences (sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch), and their role in social practices and relations. By studying sensory experiences, one can find nonverbal and seemingly meaningless and self-evident information that affects our everyday life and practices. Although sensory and embodied dimensions are often acknowledged as part of ethnographic knowledge production, textbooks about ethnographic methods often lack information on how to conduct sensory observations and analyze them. In this chapter, we turn our attention to this process of gaining and sharing sensory knowledge. We scrutinize a collaborative process of doing sensory ethnography and sharing the experience in written and verbal forms that took place in an experimental workshop at a conference where we invited the participants to explore how to use our senses to study the conference setting. Our chapter discusses the challenges faced by the participants of the workshop, who were all scholars with varied multidisciplinary backgrounds.