“Anthropology has always been patchwork.”
Jess Auerbach
21 April 2021
Published: 20 May 2021
Image by Daniel Olah.
Patchwork ethnography puts into language for a specific academic audience what’s been happening around the world for years. Within the South African context in which Jess Auerbach grew up and now works after completing her PhD in the US, patchwork ethnography is the expectation, not exception. It speaks to the idea that you need to have a field, but this field doesn’t have to be removed from your life. And when the field isn’t removed from your life, you don’t have the choice to not confront positionality and the ethics of your relations.
Patchwork ethnography contributes to a discussion of what a relevant pedagogy for students is, which takes into account their personal and systematic positionality. Patchwork ethnography is one tool with which to guide students in producing original research with low fieldwork budgets, and potentially it can also guide them in navigating learning institutions themselves as one patch within broader lived contexts. Patchy research and pedagogy is a way of entering into differentiated realities.
Jess Auerbach is a Senior Lecturer at North-West University. jess.auerbach[at]nwu.ac.za