with Max Jack (Max Planck Institute for Human Development)
In this first event of the SoSe 2024 program, Crowd / Methods offers a space to think through the analytic and ethnographic possibilities afforded by the fleeting lifeworlds of crowds. Defying more normative parameters of organization and subjectivity, crowds do not function as a group of distinct individuals, and yet, neither are they a fully unified collective. Moreover, crowds exist as a sensory-rich multitude reliant upon varying degrees of collective purpose and affective cohesion, which raises distinct questions about how to ethnographically study these urban congregations. Beginning with a foray into Jack’s fieldwork on hardcore football fans at FC Union Berlin, this event will explore the possibilities and tensions inherent in field methods and analytic approaches to crowd-based research. For example, because they operate upon an experiential terrain equally reliant on the sonic and the haptic dimensions of human being and action, crowds exceed their representation via writing or digital media. With this in mind, how might ethnographers engage with a patchwork of personal experience and participant perspectives in their writing to retain a viscerality of experience which is key to understanding the energy and charge of crowds? Or, shifting levels and objectives, how can we contextualise the formation of crowds and their relationship to the politics of late capitalism?
When: Monday, 6 May
Time: 16:00
Where: Institute for European Ethnology, M*hrenstrasse 40/41
Room: 212
Also stay tuned for the next installments of this summer 24 term´s Stadtlabor multimodal event series:
- 10 June, “An N of 1: Multimodal Experiments in Ethnographic Portraiture” with Jenny Chio (University of Southern California)
- 1 July “Testing the Kit for Multimodal Appreciation” with the Multimodal Appreciations Research Group
For more information contact: andrew.gilbert@hu-berlin.de
