Peripheral Methodologies: Unlearning, Not-knowing and Ethnographic Limits(Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception)

How does peripherality challenge methodology and theory-making? This book examines how the peripheral can be incorporated into ethnographic research, and reflects on what it means to be on the periphery – ontologically and epistemologically. Starting from the premise that clarity and fixity as ideals of modernity prevent us from approaching that which cannot be easily captured and framed into scientific boundaries, the book argues for remaining on the boundary between the known and the unknown in order to surpass this ethnographic limit. Peripheral Methodologies shows that peripherality is not only to be seen as a marginal condition, but rather as a form of theory-making and practice that incorporates reflexivity and experimentation. Instead of domesticating the peripheral, the authors engage in (and insist on) practicing expertise in reverse, unlearning their tools in order to integrate the empirical and analytical otherwise.

Table of Contents:
Foreword, Paul Stoller (West Chester University, USA)IntroductionPart One: Suspension of Clarity1. Bad Analysis: Peripherality, Leaps of Faith, and Experiments in Anthropological Writing, Martin Demant Frederiksen (University of Oslo, Norway)2. Chemæra, Jason Pine (SUNY Purchase, USA)3. Being In The Periphery, Thinking From The Periphery, Kirsten Marie Raahauge (The Royal Danish Academy of Architecture, Design and Conservation, Denmark) Part Two: Staying and Attention 4. Words Flying Away: Sufism and Fieldwork in Russia, Lili di Puppo (HSE Moscow, Russia)5. Imagining Unknowing Knitting: On the Desired Absence of Knowledge, Lydia Arantes (UCL, UK)6. Peripheral Knowledge: Metis in Ceramic Production, Ewa Klekot (Warsaw, Poland)7. Wounded Margins: Vulnerability, the Conditions of Life, and the Ontology of the Body, Jan Hinrichsen (Tuebingen University, Germany)Part Three: Unlearning 8. Objects of Attention. Experiments with Knowledge in the State Museum, Francisco Martínez (University of Helsinki, Finland)9. ‘Good Enough’ Fieldwork, ‘Good Enough’ Parenting: Recognising Idioms in the Field, Melissa Nolas and Christos Varvantakis (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)10. Isomorphic Articulations: ‘The Barely’ in Collaborative Film-work with Afghan-Danish Women, Karen Waltorp (Aarhus University, Denmark)Conclusion, Mikkel Rytter (Aarhus University, Denmark)BibliographyIndex

About the Author :
Francisco Martínez is Associate Professor at the School of Humanities of Tallinn University, Estonia. Lili Di Puppo is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Martin Demant Frederiksen is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University, Denmark.

Review :
'In a time when positivist pretensions seek to present qualitative work as predictable and controllable, the great asset of this stimulating volume is how it embraces the unknown. Ethnographers almost naturally enter their field peripherally. Always coming from elsewhere, strangers in language and everyday habits, their strengths reside in their potential to keenly observe and, in painstakingly learning, to lay open what is but tacitly present: the multitude of practices that are at the heart of the human condition.' – Regina F. Bendix, University of Göttingen, Germany 'Through sometimes tricky and often tense ethnographic chapters, the book helps to deepen and enliven debate on how to decenter customary epistemological, methodological and institutional practices, habits that have run their course, yet continue to resist unlearning. In these messy times, such efforts to cultivate attention are more necessary than ever, and I applaud the book’s ambition to pursue just that.' – Eeva Berglund, Aalto University, Finland