Social or cultural anthropology engages with  an array of ethnographic methods, which allow for the immersion of the researcher into a selected group’s shared ‘webs of significance’ (Geertz 1973) in a particular time/space context. In the case of ReSpace these webs were sought and found in particular places of historical, sociocultural, and political significance. We begin with the recognition that ethnography is both a way of knowing and a way of representing people and their practices. Without a methodological preoccupation with relativism, we not only nurture empathy and critical thinking, but also invite curiosity and confrontation with and about uncomfortable and conflicting histories.

The exercises we designed are meant to identify the shifting significance of places and events in order to explore and excavate personal, archival, official and silenced sites, as well as spaces in constant flux (political, social, cultural). As such they are made into sites grounding critical reflection. 

One useful strategy of learning about Self and Other, which combines affective, causal and factual approaches, is the so-called Familiarisation/De-familiarisation strategy. With a long epistemological history rooted in the arts (Myers 2011), on the one hand, this method aims at uncovering what otherwise might remain implicit or taken-for-granted through ‘defamiliarisation’ techniques. On the other, through ‘familiarisation’, it fosters the ‘de-exotisising’ of perceived difference to people other than oneself across time or space, through immersion into their world, be this across generations and into the past; or across different groups or places anywhere, whether in the immediate vicinity near at home, or globally. 

Combined with  the  visceral engagement of sensual ethnography with seemingly ordinary objects or spaces, the defamiliarisation technique can trigger critical insights and discussions about hidden or forgotten pasts and facilitate challenging the ‘politics of impossibility’ when imagining new futures. (Kazubowski-Houston 2020) 

Geertz, Clifford (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Kazubowski-Houston (2020). ‘Pedagogies of the Imagination: Toward a New Performative Politics’. In: P. R. Frese and S. Bownwell, eds, Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom: Engaging the Legacy of Edith and Victor Turner, 135 – 168. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Myers, R. (2011). ‘The Familiar Strange and the Strange Familiar in Anthropology and Beyond’, General Anthropology 18 (2): 1, 7-9.

Soja, Edward W. (1996). Thirdspace. Malden (Mass.): Blackwell, p. 57.