Clemens
- Name: Clemens Driessen
- Affiliation: cultural geography, wageningen university
Procedural starting point
The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: i tend to talk about semi-structured #interviews, maybe #focus_groups, or #expert_workshops. in general: = starting with #literaturereview on a particular topic, associated issue. = then moving into some form of (multispecies) #ethnography, in which I aim to #spend_time with human experts as well as (building on their approaches) seeking to observe the active shaping of environments by #nonhumans. how do #humans and nonhumans make sense of their environment and each other? this can be framed as #cultivating_attentiveness = i would announce different field sites, places defined by somewhat different conditions and experiences = this could be complemented by #archival work or #historical #literature, situating the issue and its associated #context and questions. perhaps i would use the notion of #genealogy here. = the supposed analysis phase i would probably describe as #discourse analysis, and could involve some form of #mapping, #diagramming, or otherwise #making that fits academic outputs, leading to journal publications, speaking back to the literature, and some form of public #outreach
What I actually did was / what I usually do is: = i go some place, e.g. a pig farm, a palace, where probably #something_interesting_is_going_on, and i try to get to know people there and what #motivates and #bothers them, as well as #wonder what i find weird, sad, annoying, smelly, or otherwise #noticable. = i like to think there's a productive role for the threat of boredom (what is actually really interesting here) and panic (ow i promised this thing but what am i actually going to do?) = then i get into a collecting/reading frenzy/stupor, just gather and maybe read everything academic on the topic (as time allows) and meanwhile/earlier also reading just everything nonacademic, following rather random associations. that's also a good way to see what may be actually interesting and would make for a relevant interevention in the moral experience/affective politics of the situation - with a view of actually making something (in collaboration with someone arriving from another logic or background, e.g. farmer, artist) - this could be considered a breaching experiment in the field site, but with a straight face: suggesting this is just a normal response to the situation (e.g. making a game with pigs, or proposing some black box/mcguffin) = based on this i connect abstract questions, big concepts (time, ethics, sovereignty, freedom, play) to open these up in relation to scholarly debates, e.g. on deliberative democracy, interspecies play, sovereign space, human/nature relations - and move across these terms as discussed in literature and done in practice, without privileging either abstract or concrete, theoretical or practical/applied. = then write about the process of making/thinking in a way that does justice to the combination now of course the question is whether the grant proposal or this self mystification is more honest/real. looking forward to this event thanks for organizing