Media assemblages, ethnographic vis-ability and the enactment of video in sociological research

Abstract

Video recordings offer great opportunities for qualitative social science research; their epistemological status, however, has not been left unchallenged. The paper picks up on this methodological debate, sounding out the specific potential of this research medium. Yet instead of primarily participating in methodological debates, we particularly want to inquire into the underlying empirical notions, settings, actors, and sceneries, which inform methodological debates on video. Reviewing research on ‘professional vision’ in Science and Technology Studies we try to raise awareness of the constructive nature of the practices, which manufacture and transform visual traces into evidence. We then look at our own research practice and ask about epistemic topologies which enable video to become a research medium. We will thus try to identify the resources, practices, and things – epistemic mediators – that make other things (video recordings) act like epistemic objects, and, with the help of concepts by Hennion and Law, we look at these networks of mediators and their respective ways of mediation as ‘media assemblages’.

Keywords:

• communication
• ethnography
• mediation
• methodology
• Science and Technology Studies
• social practices
• video analysis

Notes on contributors

Michael Liegl (Dr.) is Senior Research Associate at Lancaster University. In his research he investigates the interplay of technology, spatial organization and social relations with a focus on the layering and hybridization of online and offline collaboration using (video-)ethnography and STS. He pursued this interest in research on digital urban art collectives, freelance nomadic work practices and location based social networks such as the GPS enabled smartphone dating app grindr. Currently, he engages in domain analysis and participatory design as well in the exploration of social, legal and ethical implications of IT supported emergency response in EU 7FP funded Bridge project (Bridging resources and agencies in large-scale emergency management) http://bridgeproject.eu/en. Recent publications include: ‘Digital Cornerville’ (Lucius & Lucius 2010), and ‘Nomadicity and the Care of Place’ (Journal of CSCW forthcoming).

Larissa Schindler (Dr.) is Assistant Professor at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. In her research she focusses on Mobility, Sports, Body and (Tacit) Knowledge. She pursued this interest in ethnographic studies on the embodied transfer of knowledge in Martial Arts and on the Ethnomethods of Sociology. Currently, she is engaged in a research project on movement and mobility in air travels. Recent publications include: ‘Kampffertigkeit’ (Lucius&Lucius 2011), and ‘Visual Communication and the Ethnomethods of Ethnography’ (Austrian Journal of Sociology 2012).

Notes

1 The notion that images can be decoded as long as they are correctly theorized and analysed with the right method was challenged among others by Regula Valérie Burri (2008a, 2008b). She criticizes the isolated observation and thus ontologization of the image in this analysis process and developed a contrasting perspective whereby ‘it is image-constituting practices, which first make images into images’ (Burri 2008a, 346, our translation).

2 This view of found or naturally occurring data distinguishes video hermeneutics from recent positions that argue that data are always reflexively constituted (Mondada 2009; Speer 2002; Lynch 2002).

3 It is, however, also the area of conversation analysis (CA) and ethnomethodological studies of work where we find for our argument important reflexive research. Charles Goodwin (1994, 607) for one points out that the practices he studies are at the same time elements of his own scientific practice. Dylan Tutt and Jon Hindmarsh (2011) describe practices of re-enactment within the context of CA data sessions. Unlike Helen Lomax and Neal Casey (1998), however, they do not move on from these findings to methodological reflections.

4 On the foundation of video-interaction-analysis in conversation analysis, cf. Knoblauch and Tuma (2011).

5 In the same vein, Lorenza Mondada, in a study on video-making practices, points out that ‘technical and formal features, their materiality, their editing, the choices that make certain details visible or invisible are ignored by analyses focusing exclusively on what they make available’ (2009, 68). This transparency is what media philosopher Sybille Krämer makes out as the central feature of a medium: it is to become invisible while displaying its message (2008). Yet, for some purposes keeping visible the traces of mediation might be crucial in order to preserve and reflect its constructed nature. Here, a ‘seamful’ (Chalmers and MacColl 2003) rather than an immersive viewing experience could be called for.

6 As Bohnsack (2009a, 135 ff.) rightly criticizes, it is indeed remarkable that in most qualitative studies intelligibility is produced primarily from the spoken part. As we will continue to demonstrate, whether images strictly speaking can actually be analysed must be regarded as questionable, at least when one is interested in the analysis of situations.

7 The problem of missed beginnings has been repeatedly pointed out e.g. by Monika Büscher (2005, § 5.7). It is also a challenge dancers and musicians face: dancing or making music requires anticipation, for if one simply ‘follows’ the music, one will fall behind.

8 Amann and Hirschauer (1997) point out that ethnographers do not simply perceive but that they subject their own sociologically trained person to a controlled and continual (also through writing) reflective gaining of knowledge. Somewhat provocatively, their formulation is that ethnographers act as ‘recording instruments in the form of persons’ (1997, 25). Thus, a study, for example, on learning processes in a martial arts club (Schindler 2009) requires of the ethnographer that she must first learn to recognize, and so see, the martial art movements demonstrated in order that she can practise them by reconstruction. The acquisition of this vis-ability, however, is based conversely on the repeated practising of the movements. Thus, both skills are learnt step by step in the course of participation in the training sessions.