ABSTRACT
Actor–Network Theory, the approach taken in this book, encourages us to understand classroom and gaming practices in terms of ‘sociomaterial entanglements’ and to notice effects, such as boredom, which may emerge from the different ways that elements combine or assemble. The chapter draws on research which suggests that to achieve the more intimate level of ethnography necessary in this kind of research, the ethnographer needs to be able to sense the flows of affects crossing the body of an assemblage. This chapter describes the reasons for becoming an assemblage ethnographer and how this role might be employed to make practices visible to others by looking more explicitly at the role of affect in everyday practices, recognising the agency of non-human entities but using affects to analyse and intervene in situations being researched and experienced.
