Thinking, Researching and Understanding the World: reflections on the use of i-docs as a tool for (ethnographic) scientific research
Thinking, Researching and Understanding the World: reflections on the use of i-docs as a tool for (ethnographic) scientific research
Based on my own experience in teaching i-docs within a variety of different academic setting the present papers sets off with the idea of exploring the potentiality of this audio-visual form as a tool for thinking about, exploring and understanding the world that surrounds us. It proposes therefore a shift away from conventional reflections on the potentiality of i-docs as communication tools exploring instead the extent to which i-docs can be considered as proper tools for conducting qualitative scientific research.
In my presentation I will pursue a set of different interrelated questions:
• To what extent can i-docs be used to instigate the production of original research data?
• What sort of data can they actually generate?
• To what extent can we look at i-docs as an avant-garde form of participatory research?
• How do i-docs dialogue with other forms of visual and non-visual empirical research?
• Can i-docs constitute an opening to the senses, and hence a phenomenological research technique?
I will offer concrete examples on how to engage with i-docs in the context of research by discussing three main academic experiences/contexts:
• An intensive course on i-docs as ethnographic tools in a department of anthropology in Lisbon, Portugal
• An interdisciplinary summer school in visual methods held in Antwerp, Belgium (in which I taught alongside sociologists, and media and communication scholars)
• A course on documentary practices at the School of Culture and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University, Delhi, India (which merged ethnographic research issues with questions pertinent to contemporary artistic practices).
The diversity of examples will help me also to critically assess the transcultural potential of i-docs.