methodology | Platypus

West African Migration: The Dangers of a Single Story

 Alice Hertzog  October 19, 2021

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The Lagos-Abidjan corridor is one of the fastest-growing urban areas in Africa. It is also a migration route that connects mega-cities, peri-urban sprawl, market towns, and villages. For many people residing along the corridor, there are numerous opportunities to be had by jumping on a packed bus, crossing a land border, and tracking down local contacts. Everyday mobility along the Lagos-Abidjan corridor is a far cry from the tired tropes of African migration. Such tropes often feature trafficking, illegal migration, and perilous crossings of the Sahara and Mediterranean. This isn’t the full story—, in fact, it’s just a tiny part of it, as most migration in West Africa is regional. Indeed, the International Organisation for Migration (2015) reports that regional flows account for 84% of movements within West Africa. There is a false but predominant assumption that all sub-Saharan migrants are heading to Europe; one way to counter this is through telling more balanced stories about trans-local and regional migration. (read more...)

The Messiness of Ethnography

 Leonore Phillips  July 2, 2019

Leaving academia forced me to think more deeply and critically about ethnography than I ever had before. In academic cultural anthropology, my classes, research, and readings all revolved around ethnography. However, my peers and I shared a basic understanding about the purpose of ethnography, the method of ethnographic fieldwork, and its definitions. Talk about ethnography often went largely unsaid, because, as cultural anthropologists, it was just what we did. (read more...)

System, Space and Ecobiopolitics: A Conversation with Valerie Olson About “Into the Extreme”

 Peter Taber  August 14, 2018

Lisa: Into the Extreme is an ethnography of human space flight based on fieldwork at NASA Johnson Space Center most prominently, but then also other space sites throughout the United States. What I think is most significant about this book is that it activates “system” as an ethnographic object. Valerie Olson, the author of Into the Extreme, defines system as a relational technology. To me this is the big picture of the book, so I would like to start by diving right into that terminology. Can you just unpack what you mean when you say that system is a relational technology? Valerie: Sure. So I got introduced to systems thinking and systems engineering through my project because it is the practice, the basic modality, that NASA uses to coordinate vastly different practices and disciplines. People doing medicine, building spacecraft, working on propulsion, doing planetary science, and doing work on (read more...)

A Ludicrous Relationship? A Conversation between Anthropology and Game Studies

 Spencer Ruelos  July 17, 2018

Editor’s Note: This is a co-authored piece written by Spencer Ruelos and Amanda Cullen, both PhD students in the Informatics department at UC Irvine. Most work at the intersection of games and anthropology is centered around how ethnographic methods can be applied to video games, especially those based in virtual worlds. Boellstorff’s (2006) essay in the inaugural issue of Games and Culture was central in articulating the possibilities of ethnographic fieldwork in game studies research. While game studies continues to draw on anthropological traditions of ethnography, this seems to be where the conversation between the two disciplines ends. Many of us who work in both game studies and anthropology find ourselves lacking a sense of academic belonging in either field; this post is, in part, an attempt to build deeper connections between these two disciplines. (read more...)

Data: Raw, Cooked, Shared

 Ian Lowrie  June 23, 2016

(Almost) everyone makes data. People browsing the internet or buying stuff generally do so without knowing much about the data that their activities generate, or even knowing that they are doing so. Scientists, though, are supposed to be a little more conscientious about the data they collect, produce, share and borrow (at least in their professional capacities). They’re lately supposed to be, among other things, data managers. This is largely the product of the funding and institutional environments; program officers, science managers, and university administrators increasingly demand rationalized, comprehensive data management plans (DMPs) from researchers. In many cases, such as those from the NSF, these demands include requirements to store data for a specific period of time—often five or ten years beyond completion of the project—and to make such data publicly available. For some scientists, this is just a formalization of existing disciplinary best practices. For many, though, and for anthropologists who study them, these injunctions raise critical epistemological questions about the nature of data, and by implication, of contemporary scientific inquiry—anthropology included. (read more...)

In the QDA Test Kitchen, or, What Does It Matter Who Barbara Is?

 Marcel LaFlamme  December 15, 2014

2014 was the year that the major players in qualitative data analysis (QDA) software released native versions for the Mac. For me, the timing was perfect: my dissertation fieldwork in North Dakota had drawn to a close by summer’s end, and my advisor was encouraging me to roll up my sleeves and start working through my material. I wasn’t sure which software package would serve me best, though, and most of the guidance I could find around the Web declined to make head-to-head comparisons. Then, too, I was mindful of the critiques charging that QDA software of any stripe contributes to the mystification of method and amounts to an overpriced means of avoiding index cards, glue, and scissors. I have nothing against index cards, but with operating system issues off the table and student licenses available for under $100, I decided to see if one of these tools could help me to organize my data and get writing. After sizing up the available options, I downloaded trial versions of two well-known QDA products: NVIVO and Atlas.ti. I knew I was looking for an attractive and intuitive user interface that would allow me to code data in multiple formats: handwritten field notes, interview transcripts, documents I collected in the field. I had little faith that calculating the frequency and co-occurrence of the codes I assigned would unlock some deep, hidden structure of my material. But, taking a cue from one of the founding texts of software studies, I resolved to approach QDA software as an object that “deserves a reciprocation of the richness of thought that went into it, with the care to pay attention to what it says and what it makes palpable or possible.” How, I wondered, would my choice of software package make some kinds of analytical thinking possible and forestall others? What would my choice commit me to? (read more...)