Conference Agenda

Ethnography is traditionally seen as an approach to gaining knowledge of and about uncertain situations, as apparent in ethnographies of war, postwar or violence (Ellison 2021), illness (Jenkins et al. 2005), or migration (Fitzgerald 2006). Consequently, ethnography has developed strategies for methodic openness and for maintaining an explorative point of view to attend to uncertainties, grey zones, and ambiguity (Atkinson 2015). Similarly, education is inherently risky (Biesta, 2020), as all education is an open process of negotiating intentions and meaning that cannot be performed out of technical rationality. In this sense, the riskiness of education and ethnographic approaches to navigating uncertainty seems to be a good match. However, the methodological strength of ethnography to deal with uncertainty comes with some dangers, as it results in ethnographies taking quite different forms (Hammersley 2017). This panel discussion provides a space to enter a conversation about these different forms, and how they enable us to leave the methodological safe zone and embark on the uncertainties of educational ethnography.

As ethnographers have dealt with uncertainties for some time, we meet diverse local practices of dealing with uncertainty in ethnography, as well as a good number of ethnographic textbooks that provide us with frameworks for dealing with not-exactly-knowing-how. As Hammersley and Atkinson (2019) point out, reflexivity is one of these fundamental frameworks. Without reflecting upon the personal theoretical grounds on which we settle as researchers and our positionality in the field, our practical and methodical practices are prone to disable our “participant listening” (Forsey, 2010), flawing our awareness of the perspectives that we can meet in the field. Despite the healthy body of ethnographic literature on which we rely for our methodological choices, we can only find limited refuge in these when embarking on ethnographic adventures. These adventures themselves often lead us away from safe, established forms of doing ethnography, and into the “darkness” (Barker, 2020) of uncertainty in which we have to start finding our way. In times of change and uncertainty, the flexible and adaptable strategies of ethnography to develop situated awareness offer a lot to work with. This panel discussion is dedicated to reflecting on our ways of meeting and addressing uncertainties in ethnography, starting with some reflections from the network convenors, but ultimately aiming to give voice to your experiences to enable a conversation amongst all network participants.

Entering a conversation with all participants in the session, we want to exchange experiences of dealing with uncertainty and reflect on how it is enabled through the different ethnographic approaches that we are using: Ethnographies that engage in getting lost, in different types of communities, auto-ethnography, more-than-human ethnography, or new materialist ethnography. Ethnographies that engage with time, emotions, life histories, particular spaces, difficult knowledge, or with creating change. Together with you, we want to reflect on the different approaches to ethnography and how they enable us to deal with uncertainty. We want to invite everyone in the ethnography network to join this conversation and share your thoughts about dealing with uncertainty, aiming to foster exchange between everyone participating in the network, and providing an opportunity to get into conversation with colleagues.