Conversations
After the publication of A Manifesto for Patchwork Ethnography, scholars at a wide array of institutions and at various stages in their careers reached out about how patchwork ethnography resonated with their own work and experiences.
Katie Ulrich started interviewing people and writing short reflections to share here as a growing, collective conversation about patchwork ethnographies that have long been part of anthropology but are often obscured or invalidated. Currently, Abha Lal and Keren Reichler are extending the work that Katie began.
We’re continuing to build this collection and will be posting new reflections regularly. We welcome contributions from anyone who found in patchwork ethnography something that resonated with their experiences. Email patchworkethnography@gmail.com to contribute.
We need to patchwork the “being here” part as much as the “being there” part.
Renata Albuquerque
Patchwork ethnography helps shift us "away from a certain unrealistic image of what fieldwork ever was" and towards what it "increasingly can be."
Tyler Zoanni
“I hadn’t given myself the allowance for the stitching to show” in the first book.
Kregg Hetherington
“Recently, I have felt like maybe we should leave behind the field and home binary altogether.”
Cristina Moreno Lozano
Patchwork ethnography is about “allowing yourself to work and learn and flow alongside people in the field.”
Maja Jeranko
Month-long intervals between shorter research trips “gave space for me to breathe, to process everything, and to be safe.”
Seda Saluk
Patchwork ethnography “doesn’t just have to be a story of life circumstances.”
Ramah McKay
“In stitching together the patches for ethnography, what do you do if the patches aren't quite there?”
Kim Fernandes
Anthropology entails “multiple ontological senses of patchwork”—not only at field sites, but also across physical and virtual spaces, temporalities, and collaborators.
Shannon Mattern
“We have to change how we think about the work we’re doing.”
Jeffrey Cohen
“Patchwork is a modality of both method and life,” for a “horizon in the future that is opaque.”
Anne Allison
Patchwork ethnography helps us think about fieldwork not in terms of mere productivity but also for “generating the conditions and exchanges that are meaningful for us.”
Sarah Muir
“We look for the golden rule [when it comes to research ethics], but it has to be situated…. Patchwork ethnography is about this—people have bank accounts, identities, limitations, timelines, and (our) own voices.”
Leticia Nagao
“Anthropology has always been patchwork.”
Jess Auerbach
“The field is never only in one particular place.”
Kristin Eggeling
“Recently, I have felt like maybe we should leave behind the field and home binary altogether.”
Anton Novenanto
“I would have simply not written the book I did had I gone to the field for a year.”
John Hartigan
“There’s the assumption that patching things together is generative, and it can be, but it can also be destabilizing.”
Jessica Caporusso
Patchwork ethnography is about “allowing yourself to work and learn and flow alongside people in the field.”
Rachel Howard
“We need to decenter our own authorship.”
Alvaro Jarrín
Patchwork ethnography reflects “a fairer landscape of who is able to do what kind of fieldwork.”
Ana Ivasiuc
Patchwork ethnography is “helpful for thinking about how to compose a field,” especially when you question where the field is “supposed to be” or your own field “doesn’t feel quite real.”
Nick Seaver
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Amandine Desille and Nina Sahraoui
Patchwork ethnography resists aspirations for fixity and holism in favor of more expansive encounters.
Suneel Kumar