Introduction

A central aim of empirical research is to generate new knowledge and new insights (St. Pierre, 2016). Science in general always involves explaining ‘what’s new’. This is also true for ethnographic research, not least considering the field’s own history of investigating ‘the foreign’. Yet even today, the foreign as an ‘alienation of one’s own perspective’ (Hirschauer & Amann, 1997, authors’ translation) remains a central aspect of ethnographic research, as well as being a part of the research process even in supposedly familiar contexts, such as schools or peer groups. In light of current social changes brought on by global crisis phenomena such as pressing social and ecological challenges in the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene (Crutzen et al., 2002), the COVID-19 pandemic, war, terror and authoritarian regimes, the question of ‘what’s new?’ remains a constant focus of ethnography as a strategy for educational research.