Critical Research Spaces as Scholarship

An Ethnography Lab as an Apparatus for the Experimental, the Imaginary, and the Relational

Bibliographic Data

ID19213267
AuthorsFiona P Mcdonald (0009-0000-4591-7363, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume128
Issue3
Pages469-479
Publication date2026-05-25
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/aman.70089
OpenAlexW7162458857
LanguageEN
References cited18

The creation of critical research spaces, such as ethnography labs, studios, and other collaborative research environments, requires attention and attunement in anthropology to focus on the kinds of imaginative and generative spaces where creative ethnographic research can unfold as scholarship . This article reflects on the recent design, construction, and implementation process of the Collaborative + Experimental Ethnography Lab at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan (UBCO), serving as an argument that an ethnography lab is a scholarly apparatus for the experimental, the imaginary, and the relational. While this critical research space situates sensory ethnography as its methodological orientation, as a lab, it also foregrounds how digital and analog tools feature in collaborations with infrastructure and field research through processes of experimentation and prototyping with the lab as an apparatus while attending to policy, people, and the imaginary. This article argues that creating a research lab in anthropology is scholarship

Argument (complex analysis) · Attunement · Ethnography · Field (mathematics) · Generative grammar · Scholarship · Space (punctuation) · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Participatory Visual Research Methods

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Open DOIOpen Access