Qualitative Methods & Writing
Digital technologies have transformed the tools used by social scientists and these new methods are reshaping perceptions of social phenomena. This workshop on qualitative methods seeks to contribute to the reflection on the links between classical ethnographic approaches and emerging forms of digital-centered analysis. How to study digital giants or small IT entrepreneurs? How to build and deploy fieldwork on invisible infrastructures? How to grasp power relations enmeshed in technical devices and in digitalization processes? How to analyze day-to-day digital usages and practices in contrasted socio-economic contexts? How to write about digital objects in social sciences? How is ethnographic writing transformed (or not) by digitalization?
The workshop will present a diversity of case studies questioning the nature of society, culture, politics and economics in the digital area. The trainers will engage with a selection of key articles on qualitative methods of the digital and will propose fieldwork exercises based on the different research projects of the participants. Using a set of tools and participatory methods, they will also help the trainees to articulate both their qualitative fieldwork and analysis. The workshop will be particularly attentive to the complexity of writing about digital objects and will help the trainees to draw up their results and compose their future scientific production.
Teaching team
Vincent Duclos is Assistant Professor in the Departement of Social and Public Communication at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). Trained as an anthropologist, his research examines the social and political implications of the growing entanglement of digital technology and medicine, including in digital health and disease surveillance. He has conducted research in India and West Africa. His research is conducted at the intersection of cultural anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (STS). His work was published in many scholarly journals which include Cultural Anthropology, BioSocieties, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and The Lancet. He is currently completing a monograph titled Life at a Distance: Medicine, Nation, and Speculation in India’s Pan-African e-Network.
Christine Ithurbide is a research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at Laboratory Passages UMR 5319, Bordeaux. Her research focuses on the social and spatial reconfigurations of cultural industries in India in the context of globalization and digital transition. After a PhD on the geography of contemporary art in Mumbai (ENS Editions, 2022), she has studied the deployment of global technology players and their consequences in the local dynamics of music, audiovisual and craft sectors in India. She is the coordinator of the International Research Network « SOUTH-STREAM » (2023–2027). Her recent publications include articles in Global Media and Communication and SAMAJ.
Loraine Kennedy is a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Center for Himalayan and South Asian Studies (CESAH) at the EHESS in Paris. Her research, at the crossroads of political economy and political geography, focuses on contemporary India and engages with state spatial rescaling, the politics of urban development and metropolitan governance. Her current research investigates the deployment in urban space of economic development strategies conceived at various state scales and analyzes their social, spatial and environmental implications. Recent publications include an article in Regional Studies and a co-edited book, India’s Greenfield Urban Future.
Learning Objectives
- To generate a deeper understanding of qualitative methods of the digital.
- To contribute to students’ awareness about the different tools and approaches to elaborate their research project and fieldwork;
- To help students interpret their qualitative empirical material and formulate their results;
- To provide students with writing tools that will help them to prepare their future scientific