Slow ethnography

A hut with a view

Bibliographic Data

ID2360976
AuthorsLiza Grandia (University of California, Davis, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume35
Issue3
Pages301-317
Publication date2015-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritique of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-275X • E-ISSN: 1460-3721
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0308275x15588616
OpenAlexW2422867747
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited35

Informed by the snail's pace of the Zapatista 'caracol' process and the Slow Food movement, this contribution explores the liberatory potential of 'slow ethnography' over two decades in the Maya lowlands of Guatemala and Belize, oriented from a 'hut with a view'. Against the unbearable lightness of multi-sited imaginaries, I describe the intellectual and personal discoveries gained from following Laura Nader's framework for 'studying up, down and sideways'. This article makes a case for how the slowness of research possessed by place might serve as a critical 'as a point of reference' (in Zapatista terms) on an ever-quickening planet. The analysis also suggests how slower, more ethical and reciprocal processes of research might help heal anthropology's longstanding disciplinary entanglements and conflicts with native peoples

Discipline · Epistemology · Ethnography · Geography · Maya · Pace · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy