Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book. The book discusses how the speculative can inform inventive approaches to the tuning of research techniques and engagements through some interdisciplinary empirical cases. Engaging with speculative thought entails questions around the tools, instruments and devices that are used in the application of social and cultural research and the nature of the empirical that is encountered therein. Recently, the social sciences have become preoccupied with the constitutive, performative and non-representational dimensions of research methods, including the inclusion of non-human agency. The book aims to invoke the artful kinds and combinations of skills, crafts and technologies, in the broad sense of the word, that are used in the occasioning of speculative research, by using the term 'technique' in contrast to that of method. The notion of given techniques invites the readers to modify practical questions and address methodological problematics.