Ethnographic fieldwork is a balancing act between distancing and immersing. Fieldworkers need to come close to meaningfully grasp the sense-making efforts of the researched. In methodological textbooks on ethnography, immersion tends to be emphasized at the expense of its counterpart. In fact, ‘distancing’ is often ignored as a central tenet of good ethnographic conduct. In this article we redirect attention away from familiarization and towards ‘defamiliarization’ by suggesting six estrangement strategies (three theoretical and three methodological) that allow the researcher to develop a more detached viewpoint from which to interpret data. We demonstrate the workings of these strategies by giving illustrations from Machteld de Jong’s field- and text-work, conducted among Moroccan-Dutch students in an institution of higher vocational education.
According to the essayist and memoirist Rebecca Solnit, to be lost is 'to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.' Solnit considers being lost 'a psychic state achievable through geography'. The flip-side is that geography can also prevent one from getting lost. It is easier to find one's way in the grid-like cities of the new world than in the swerving cobblestone streets of the old. A similar evolution of efficiency is happening on the web. The new world, in this analogy, is Web 2.0, and its shape is neither grid- nor weblike. Increasingly, it's a point of convergence.
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Human beings are, above all, narrative creatures, extremely sensitive to good stories. The (implicit) stories of futurologists have their own characteristic structure, when they outline what our future full of technology will look like. One element of their narrative structure is often that the speaker, through an important (personal) life event, has come to understand the deeper meaning of how we as humanity are moving from the still imperfect present to a perfect future. A classic, Saul became Paul, or Ebenezer Scrooge an enlightened and fine man, after his encounter with the spirits. However, a good story that moves an entire room does not make it true. Right now, when our entire future is at stake, stories from futurologists who get it all are very welcome. Who would not want a happy ending told by an omniscient prophet? Unfortunately, they are even more misleading than welcome. It is argued why.
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