Creative Practice Ethnographies

(Hardback)

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Description

Creative Practice Ethnographies focuses on the ways in which the collaboration between creative practice and ethnography offers new ways to think with and about the methods, practice and promise of research in contemporary interdisciplinary contexts. How does creative practice inform new ways of doing ethnography and vice versa What new forms of expression and engagement are made possible as a result of these creative synergies In sum, we pay particular attention to ways of being in the world that acknowledges creativity, complexities and multiplicities in research. In this book we seek to map why the intersection of ethnography and creative practice matters for doing socially impactful research. This book is aimed at interdisciplinary researchers from art, design, sociology, anthropology, games, media, education, and cultural studies. As interdisciplinary scholars with divergent creative practices who are constantly engaged in, with, and through the field, we are continuously searching through embodied practice ways of working with and reconfiguring the means and modes through which we do research. As such, our work operates at the intersection of ethnography and creative practice and we examine how they coalesce, overlap and interplay. In this book, we examine the doing of creative practice ethnographies through three interdisciplinary heuristicstechniques, translations and transmissions. It is via learnings from the field, in the form of interdisciplinary case studies, that we seek to provide insights into this productive synergy.

Reviews

Authors Hjorth, Harris, Coombs (all, RMIT University, Australia), and Jungnickel (Univ. of London, UK) assert early on that creative practice ethnography represents a collision of art and anthropology, with artists and creatives (including scholars) using contemporary tools to tell nuanced, revealing, and socially important stories for a broad audience. For scholars seeking deeper meaning in their work, this book lays out concrete examples of a core theme introduced early and often: producing socially impactful research. Interested readers should start with the introduction, as the authors do a spectacular job of providing context for their volume, offering a robust discussion of terms such as "techniques," "translation," and "transmission," which are often contested within academic circles. This reviewer especially appreciated how the text invites readers to more deeply consider core assumptions, examples, and challenges of using creative practice to tell compelling and rigorous stories. Although the subject matter might only be of deep interest to scholars, the book's prose makes this a quick and accessible read for anyone looking to understand the logic and practice of creative practice ethnography. For all scholars, this study is a compelling addition for our methodological toolboxes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Author Bio

Larissa Hjorth is distinguished professor and director of the Design & Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT University. Anne Harris is associate professor and vice chancellors principal research fellow at RMIT University. Kat Jungnickel is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Gretchen Coombs is postdoctoral research fellow in the Design & Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT University.