Enactments of a new materialist ethnography: methodological framework and research processes

Abstract

Materialist process ontologies, often subsumed under the term new materialism, such as the Deleuzian materialism of Rosi Braidotti, the agential realism of Karen Barad or the posthumanism of Donna Haraway, are becoming increasingly recognized in qualitative research. In this article I argue and illustrate that these theories allow for a reconfiguration of analytical research tools without using the representationalist epistemological framework these tools are often embedded in. Karen Barad’s concept of ‘exteriority within’ is of particular help for this task. I illustrate the research practices of two research projects, which included multiple methods of data collections (interviews, observations, re-enactments), a process of analysis I call referencing and a writing technique I call rebuilding worlds.

How to Define Situated and Ever‐Transforming Family Configurations? A New Materialist Approach

“…In these three strategies, it is also important to transgress traditional forms of academic writing. A fourth strategy is to make use of the concept of exteriority within (Barad, ) by using rather analytical research methods without creating a representationalist argument (Schadler, forthcoming). Research methods become apparatuses (Barad, ), which create specific diffractions and boundaries.…”

“…In my own work I consider ethnographies that include multiple methods of inquiry (e.g., interviews, observations, web analysis) to be a suitable way to research family processes and boundaries. In a process I call referencing, I analyzed manifest and latent intracontextual or posthuman processes and intraconnected or transversal entities (Schadler, forthcoming). To disseminate my research in articles or presentations, I rebuild worlds in written words or visual data.…”

Material-aesthetic collaborations: making-with the ecosystem

“…Research through the arts has been acknowledged as a way that anti-dualist materialist theories can be transformed into a methodological framework to guide practical research (Vannini 2015;Schadler 2019). Our research was practice-led, recognising that creative practice enables alternative forms of understanding through artistic experimentation and aesthetic production.…”

‘Overflown bodies’ as critical-political transformations

“…Changing our question from what a body is to what a body can do, from meaning to significance, from essence to relation and from positivism to agential realism (Barad, 2007) are some of the movements that I consider necessary for approaching gendered bodies in a multi-faceted, complex and (micro)political way. 2 These movements allowed me to re-enact (Schadler, 2019) the three ethnographic situations that follow.…”