Ethnography as thrownness and the face of the sufferer
Sabry, T. 2021. Ethnography as thrownness and the face of the sufferer. European Journal of Cultural Studies. 24 (4), pp. 816-831. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549421994577
| Title | Ethnography as thrownness and the face of the sufferer |
|---|---|
| Type | Journal article |
| Authors | Sabry, T. |
| Abstract | This article provides a self-reflexive account of ethnographic research conducted on the outskirts of Burj Al Brajneh, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, run by Hezbollah. It focuses on ethnographic research conducted with a Syrian refugee family including the mother, father and three children. The research is well captured, in hindsight, by Sarah Pink’s definition of ethnography as a ‘reflexive and experiential process through which academic and applied understanding, knowing and knowledge are produced’. The article demonstrates how the ethnographer’s experience with the refugee children was marked, regardless of long and diligent preparations, by several dislocations: methodological, sensorial and epistemic. The ethnographer pursued a non-media-centric approach allowing him to explore both the refugee family’s media uses as well as the lived, everyday conditions that marked their media uses. The primary aim of the article is three-pronged: (a) to provide an ethnographic description and analysis of the media worlds in a Hizbullah area in South Beirut, (b) to analyse media uses and aesthetics of violence in the context of war/refugees’ lives and (c) to theorise using the Heideggerian concept of thrownness, the entangled and affective regime that emerges during the ethnographic encounter. |
| Keywords | Children, ethnography, Hizbullah, non-media-centric, phenomenology, spectacle, thrownness |
| Journal | European Journal of Cultural Studies |
| Journal citation | 24 (4), pp. 816-831 |
| ISSN | 1367-5494 |
| Year | 2021 |
| Publisher | Sage |
| Accepted author manuscript | License CC BY 4.0 File Access Level Open (open metadata and files) |
| Publisher's version | License CC BY 4.0 File Access Level Open (open metadata and files) |
| Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549421994577 |
| Web address (URL) | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1367549421994577 |
| Publication dates | |
| Published online | 24 Feb 2021 |
| Supplemental file | License CC BY 4.0 File Access Level Open (open metadata and files) |
| Funder | AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council) |