ABSTRACT
Worldwide, courses and specialisations on audiovisual and digital methods are proliferating. However, many still rely on textbooks written several decades ago. The time is ripe for a manageable, up-to-date, theoretical and practical guide that addresses in a comprehensive way the methodological connections across established and emergent fields such as sonic ethnography, digital media and visual anthropology. At Leiden, over the years we have developed collective and individual expertise in these fields, as well as a collective stance on how to deal with data management. This book brings together this practical and field-based expertise in a coherent volume. In teaching and field research, students and scholars encounter (audio) visual and digital ‘data’ not as separate entities, but all at the same time; accordingly, we provide a broad but succinct epistemological framework regarding how to sense, mediate and listen while also drawing, videoing and digitally interacting with the field – as modern ethnographers do. In this book we accompany the reader as they ‘enskill’ their senses, learning to see, listen and mediate, whether by drawing, filming or other digital and multimodal methods. We ground our approach firmly in ethnographic field research practice, encompassing visual ethnography, skilled vision, sonic ethnography, skilled listening and digital developments as aspects of current field engagements.
