The most useful thing I heard anyone say (it was Olivia Harris) about a methods course is that it should never be a discussion of how to, but rather a debate about what and why. Methods in this sense is something we wrangle with – a philosophical, contemplative, political, convivial, agitator-practitioner, collective, considerate set of choices of how to talk with people. If methods were simply to be applied, the study will be too rigid for the varieties and surprises of social life.
In these three “30 Minute Methods” discussions, the sense of debate comes through in short significant sensibilities concerned with process and outcome in a moving, meaningful world. The social sciences, and media anthropology in particular, need to look outside media and anthropology for methodological inspiration, and to be thereby inspired to risk something on method. These talks given to the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Ton Duc Thang University in November 2021 do just that:
16 November 2021. Prof Paolo Favero, University of Antwerp, Belgium:
‘Expanded Ethnography: technologies and the senses’
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23 November 2021. Dr Ken Fero, Regents University, London:
‘Documentary as memory when dealing with national trauma through state violence‘
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November 30 2021. Dr Jack Boulton, Leuven University, Belgium: ‘
TV, film and literature sci-fi as part of the new literary turn in anthropology’
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Thanks to all involved.
Trinketization 