University of Manchester’s Research Methods e-festival: Brainstorming on Patchwork Ethnography

For researchers using ethnographic methods, long-term fieldwork is becoming difficult. Neoliberal university labour conditions, expectations of work-life balance, environmental concerns, and feminist and decolonial critiques have demanded a rethinking of fieldwork as a process that entails spending a year or longer in a faraway place. We propose 'patchwork ethnography' to consolidate the innovations that are already happening in ethnographic research out of necessity to balance family and research, for example, but that remain black boxed. Patchwork ethnography begins from the acknowledgement that recombinations of 'home' and 'field' have now become necessities. Patchwork ethnography refers not to one-time, short trips and relationships a la consultants, but rather, to research efforts that maintain the long-term commitments, language proficiency, contextual knowledge, and slow thinking of so-called traditional fieldwork. This workshop will build on the Patchwork Ethnography Webinar from June 2021 to consolidate what patchwork ethnography can mean as a methodology and theory.