ABSTRACT
Ethnography is a broad methodology that encompasses many practices, approaches, and philosophies. 'Ethnography's central strength is its "potential to reveal the unanticipated loose ends and discontinuities of everyday life [that] are critical to a deeper understanding of social complexity". Ethnography contrasts with other types of instruments covered in research methods courses, such as surveys, experiments, and tests of biometric indicators. Ethnographers' bodies/instruments intra-act with participants' bodies in specific places. The smells and textures and bodily movements are present in any ethnographic site, so the choice is to attend to them, shifting one's attention (partly) away from discourse (which admittedly may be particularly pronounced in my work due to my training in the disciplines of communication studies and gender studies) to include more emphasis on materiality. Sensing and communicating emotions forms an integral component of ethnographer bodies as research instruments. Local experiences of individual bodies are understood within emplaced interactions, but also within global discourses of power, privilege, oppression, and resistance.
