Abstract
This paper focuses on the quiet power of fieldwork sketches and on their potential to draw analytical attention to sensuous and atmospheric aspects of everyday life. I take point of departure in sketches made during ongoing fieldwork among Congolese UN quota refugees recently resettled in Denmark.
Thinking along the lines of Michael Taussig (2011) and Ramos & Azavedo (2016) it is the unfinished, fragmentary, and suggestive character of fieldnote sketches and drawings I dwell on here. I argue that it is through their selectivity and pointing away from realist description that fieldnote sketches hold what Martin et al. (2020) term ‘quiet power’: a subtle but powerful potential to carve out new analytical openings by drawing attention to aspects of social life that are sensed and felt rather than explicitly verbalized (see also Kusk 2020). Inspired by Ingold (2011) and Martin et al. (2020), I reflect on the ability of fieldwork sketches to evoke a haptic rather than optic relation to the world. By dwelling on interactions between bodies, space, emotions, and materiality and describing these interactions through hand-drawn lines, colors and shade fieldwork sketches can direct our analytical attention towards the embodied experience of everyday life.
Thinking along the lines of Michael Taussig (2011) and Ramos & Azavedo (2016) it is the unfinished, fragmentary, and suggestive character of fieldnote sketches and drawings I dwell on here. I argue that it is through their selectivity and pointing away from realist description that fieldnote sketches hold what Martin et al. (2020) term ‘quiet power’: a subtle but powerful potential to carve out new analytical openings by drawing attention to aspects of social life that are sensed and felt rather than explicitly verbalized (see also Kusk 2020). Inspired by Ingold (2011) and Martin et al. (2020), I reflect on the ability of fieldwork sketches to evoke a haptic rather than optic relation to the world. By dwelling on interactions between bodies, space, emotions, and materiality and describing these interactions through hand-drawn lines, colors and shade fieldwork sketches can direct our analytical attention towards the embodied experience of everyday life.
| Original language | Danish |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 2024 |
| Publication status | In preparation - 2024 |
| Event | Fieldwork Sketches: Blurring the Lines between Art and Anthropology - Royal Anthropological Institute, London, United Kingdom Duration: 16 Feb 2024 → 16 Feb 2024 https://histanthro.org/news/announcements/cfp-rai-workshop-on-fieldwork-sketches/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cfp-rai-workshop-on-fieldwork-sketches |
Workshop
| Workshop | Fieldwork Sketches: Blurring the Lines between Art and Anthropology |
|---|---|
| Location | Royal Anthropological Institute |
| Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
| City | London |
| Period | 16/02/2024 → 16/02/2024 |
| Internet address |