Beneath the Slab

This chapter addresses method in a broad sense: as a way of orienting ourselves to the world around us. In this context, the chapter argues that the methods needed to make sense of a world adrift must embody uncertainty, ambiguity, and fragmentation if we are to avoid making drift into something it is not. Developing this sort of method, however, will require abandoning existing methods that are conceptualized as the solid, foundational slabs on which research is built. As fetishized exemplars of this slab-like approach, survey research and statistical analysis are particularly inappropriate for understanding a contemporary world of drift and drifters. Instead, the chapter suggests that we revisit early ethnographic research in sociology and related fields, and the long tradition of documentary photography and photodocumentary work, both of which embraced more fluid and less formalized methodological approaches.

Slab · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Geology · Geophysics · Participatory Visual Research Methods