Somatics Toolkit

A Somatics Toolkit for Ethnographers

Core Practice 

Core Practice 7 — Places: Being in the Unknown

Eline Kieft

Entering the unknown can be anything between and beyond exciting and daunting. Wherever you go, there is however one familiar phenomenon that will always be with you: you in your body. Even though our bodies change throughout the course of our lives and might experience pain or crisis, still they are our familiar bodies, our home-location in the world. This Exploration consists of two different parts. In the first, you become familiar with managing the space directly around your body, as a resilience resource for negotiating the unknown. In the second part, you play with positioning your body in space consciously, to increase your understanding of your body-in-relationship-to-your-surroundings. This adds a different perspective/view points on gathering data.

 

Further Reading

Buckland, T. J. (ed.) (1999) Dance in the field. Theory, Methods and Issues in Dance Ethnography. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Coleman, S. and Collins, P. (2006) ‘Introduction: ‘Being … Where?’ Performing Fields on Shifting Grounds’, in Coleman, S. & Collins, P. (eds.) Locating the Field. Space, place and context in anthropology ASA Monographs Oxford and New York: Berg, pp. 1-21.

Fabian, J. (2007) ‘Preface’, in Goulet, J.-G.A. & Granville Miller, B. (eds.) Extraordinary anthropology. Transformations in the field. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, pp. ix-xii.

Grau, A. (1999) ‘Fieldwork, Politics and Power’, in Buckland, T.J. (ed.) Dance in the field. Theory, Methods and Issues in Dance Ethnography. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 163-174.

Hannerz, U. (2006) ‘Studying Down, Up, Sideways, Through, Backwards, Forwards, Away and at Home: Reflections on the Field Worries of an Expansive Discipline’, in Coleman, S. & Collins, P. (eds.) Locating the Field. Space, place and context in anthropology ASA Monographs Oxford and New York: Berg, pp. 23-41.

Hume, L. and Mulcock, J. (2004) Anthropologists in the field: cases in participant observation.New York: Columbia University Press.

Land, R., Rattray, J. and Vivian, P. (2014) ‘Learning in the liminal space: a semiotic approach to threshold concepts’, Higher Education,67(2), pp. 199-217.

Madden, R. (2017) Being ethnographic: a guide to the theory and practice of ethnography.2nd Edition edn. Los Angeles and London: Sage.

McCormack, D. P. (2013) Refrains for moving bodies: experiences and experiment in affective spaces.Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Melrose, S. (2009) ‘My Body, Your Body, Her-His Body: Is/Does Some-Body (Live) There?’, New Theatre Quarterly,14(54), pp. 119-124.

Okely, J. (2007) ‘Fieldwork embodied’, The Sociological Review,55, Supplement 1(May 2007), pp. 65-79.

Reeve, S. (2008) The Ecological Body.University of Exeter, Unpublished PhD thesis, Exeter [Online] Available at: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10036/90315(Accessed: 20.10.2016).

Reeve, S. (2014) ‘The Sacrum and the Sacred: mutual transformation of performer and site through ecological movement in sacred sites’, in Williamson, A. & Batson, G. (eds.) Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities: Contemporary Sacred Narratives. Bristol: Intellect.

Williams, D. (1999) ‘Fieldwork’, in Buckland, T.J. (ed.) Dance in the field. Theory, Methods and Issues in Dance Ethnography. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 26-40.