ABSTRACT
In a time where mass extinction and environmental degradation shapes the face of the planet in unprecedented ways, this chapter offers ethnographic approaches to examine and understand a dramatically changing earth. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Queensland, Australia on the Anthropocene landscape of the Great Barrier Reef, I use coral to retool ethnography. Protected, restored, destroyed, and admired, corals have long been the target of different thoughts and actions, and today they shape the way we think about and address the Anthropocene – they respond to current planetary changes and, during reoccurring mass bleaching events, they reflect our environmental conditions. With coral as a guide, this chapter explores ways to use aspects of coral life to suggest ethnographic approaches to study the Anthropocene. I consider what coral can teach us about conducting ethnographic fieldwork in disturbed environments, and I propose three ethnographic approaches which take their inspiration from different aspects of coral’s life worlds: transcending scale, tracing patchy stories, and studying the ethics of earthly survival.
