Elemental Ethnography:
Encounters with Sensorial Analytics

Instructor: Cymene Howe Date & Time: April 1,8, May 6,13 14:30-17:00 ET

DESCRIPTION: Ethnography has traditionally been understood at the study and documentation of “ethnos” —a group of persons defined in some coherent (or not so coherent) way by the ethnographer themselves, often predicated upon subjectivities and identifications with place, practices, values, or experiential criteria. In the present, when a global climate crisis and pandemic occupy our attention and eroding ecosystems and mass extinctions condition the future, it is increasingly clear that no “ethnos” can be thought abstractly outside of “enviros.” This Seminar proposes that by approaching the study of human encounters through the elements, we might better surface the entangled socioenvironmental processes that comprise our contemporary worlds. Earth, fire, water, and air represent the classical elements found in western philosophy; in the eastern traditions are these, with the addition of wood and metal. Through the abstractions and specificities of technoscience came the periodic table: the irreducible material of everything. Within the elemental turn in the human sciences, still nascent in form, we find the interplay between elements multiplied: from chemical relations to the sweep of storm fronts.

In this Seminar, we explore four case studies that follow the elemental qualities of wind, water, and fire as foundational to shaping and sustaining worlds, human and otherwise. We also think through how we can engage sensorial encounters as a conceptual space to grow our analytic possibilities; participants will be encouraged to bring their own elemental observations to our discussions.

IMAGE: Rodrigo Andrian, Surrounding, 2011

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