Ethnography is, ethnography ain't

Abstract

Using a notion of “the digital” as one
of its master metaphors, a version of
the term reliant on Kara Keeling’s
discussion of “digital humanism,” this
piece argues that there is something
about the nonlinearities defining
digitality’s difference that might help
us to think about recalibrations in
the ethnographic project itself. From
a discussion of Marlon Riggs’s filmic
depiction of his own death (as one
way to talk about the nondigital) to a
machine that uses digital technology
to play with temporality in broadcast
television, this article wants to ask
what the changing social relations (and
existential realities) predicated on the
ubiquity of digital media might mean
for ethnographic research and writing
today. With the African Hebrew Israelites
of Jerusalem as central ethnographic
subjects, I argue that taking digitality
seriously means redefining some of what
ethnography is and ain’t in a post–
Writing Culture moment. [digitality,
diaspora, blackness, ethnography,
media anthropology]