Towards a Bodily Ethnography - HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Article dans une revue Zanthro Année : 2023

Towards a Bodily Ethnography

Résumé

Within the broad category of agrarian fields, this paper focuses on smallholder communities making a living from mountain fields. Based on our three fieldwork experiences with herders in Nepal and farmers in Southwest China, we propose co-laboring as a fruitful ethnographic method to understand and account for the daily lives of farmers and herders dwelling in mountainous environments. We argue that the specificities of mountain environments shape the inextricable relationship between minds, bodies, and environments and thus are crucial for understanding the acquisition, transmission, and life-long refinement of skilled practices situated in mountainscapes. We show how these skilled practices are embedded in the sociality of communities of practice and evolve from daily interactions with domestic and wild animals, foraged plants and cultivated crops, and meteorological and topographical conditions on high altitude grasslands and steep slope cultivations. By presenting three vignettes that illustrate different aspects of co-laboring in mountain fields, we show where and how this method can be applied. In so doing, we intend to address the fact that the body is “not yet something through which research is often done” (Crang 2005: 232). We argue that it is not only possible but crucial to adapt our methodological resources and skills to mountain settings to produce more grounded ethnographies that grasp sensory and embodied ways of knowing.
Loading...
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

halshs-04454465, version 1 (13-02-2024)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-04454465 , version 1

Citer

Tara Bate, Theophile Johnson, Rebekka Sutter. Towards a Bodily Ethnography: Co-laboring in Mountain Fields. Zanthro, 2023, 16, pp.5-16. ⟨halshs-04454465⟩
13 Consultations
0 Téléchargements
Dernière date de mise à jour le 28/04/2024
comment ces indicateurs sont-ils produits

Partager

Gmail Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Plus