EHESS Seminar / Off-site: reflecting on ethnographic practices in the absence of fieldwork

Should the choice of our research projects depend on the possibilities of access to the field, the availability of data, the blind spots that need to be filled in the field of knowledge, or even on all the connections and affects that build a researcher’s relationship with his or her subject? Is it possible to produce empirical knowledge when access to the field is impossible? And how? Fieldwork and participant observation have emerged as a dividing line between what is ethnography and what is not, and have become a key practice in qualitative research in all social science disciplines. In conflict and post-conflict zones, researchers can negotiate access to the field through an international community of experts and practitioners. But empirical investigation proves more difficult in strong repressive regimes that exercise surveillance over academics and civil society. The mechanisms of power and knowledge are interrelated and mark out the boundaries of what can and cannot fall within the domain of research: we have to negotiate our way through them, in order to gain or retain access to the field. But what happens when we try to cross these boundaries or free ourselves from them, by directly placing our problematic beyond the established ‘red lines’? This question, which until now has been part of a certain form of commitment in the social sciences, has found a new echo in the context of global containment imposed since the spring of 2020. Starting from the case of Iran (based on the ERC ‘off-site’ 2019-25 project) and through a comparative approach with other fields, this seminar will look at concrete ways of adapting our methods and our episteme to the global circulation of norms, data and people. In particular through the ethnography of archives and the use of new technologies, it will explore transdisciplinary methods for empirical studies ‘at a distance’.

Thursday 4 February 2021: Introductory session

10am – 10.30am: Introduction
10.30am – 12pm: Thinking about the field without a physical presence: strategic, political and methodological choices, Chowra Makaremi (CNRS/IRIS researcher)
13h30 -15h : Archives, ‘counter-archives’ and evidence, Natalia Pashkeeva (postdoctoral researcher CNRS/IRIS)
15h -16h30 : Subjectivity, positionality and ethics, Yasmin Nadir (post-doctoral researcher CNRS/IRIS)

Thursday 4 March 2021

10am-12pm: Ethnographing the Syrian revolution on the border of war, Montasir Sakhi (PhD in anthropology LAVUE/CNRS and ATER University of Rouen)
13:15: Political exile and iconography: images as an alternative or complement to fieldwork? Tony Rublon (doctoral student, MIGRINTER/CEPED)
15h30-17h : Investigating the protest of minorities in the face of the possibility of fascism, or how to grasp the event without being there: India, December 2019-January 2020, Nicolas Jaoul (CNRS/IRIS researcher)

Thursday 1st April 2021

10am-12pm: Investigating the repression of Uyghurs in China, Dilnur Reyhan (PhD in sociology, INALCO lecturer)
1.15pm: Extremely far & incredibly close: doing ethnography with militants amid rising pandemic and authoritarianism, Ahmad Moradi (postdoctoral fellow EHESS/CEMS)
15h30-17h : ‘Online, offline and in between’. A remote ethnography of the government of health in Iran, Sahar Aurore Saeidnia (postdoctoral COFUND Marie Curie ULB)

Thursday 6th May 2021

10am-12pm: Presentation by the students
1.15 pm: Presentation by the students
3.30-5pm: Seminar debriefing

Description of the seminar of the EHESS website

Some sessions are available to listen to online:

Speakers

Nicolas Jaoul is a CNRS anthropologist at IRIS (EHESS). He works on the ambedkarist movement for the emancipation of dalits (‘untouchables’) in one of its strongholds in northern India. He has made two documentary films: Sangharsh, le temps de la lutte (2018) and Bariz (Paris), le temps des campements (2020).

Chowra Makaremi is a CNRS anthropologist at IRIS (EHESS). She directs the ERC research programme ‘Violence, State formation and memory politics: an off-site ethnography of post-revolution Iran’ (CNRS/IRIS).
https://soundcloud.com/off-site/penser-le-terrain-sans-presence-physique

Ahmad Moradi received his PhD in Social Anthropologist from the University of Manchester in 2019, and he is currently an EHESS postdoc fellow at CEMS. His PhD thesis focuses on paramilitary members of the Basij in Iran. In his recent research, he explores the struggles of Shi’a foreign fighters and their families to demand state recognition and social welfare in Iran upon their return from the regional conflicts.
https://soundcloud.com/off-site/ahmad-moradi

Yasmin Nadir has a doctorate in the sociology of education and is a postdoctoral researcher with the ERC ‘off-site’ (CNRS/IRIS). She is working on the Iranian cultural revolution and the experience of high school students during and after the 1979 revolution.
https://soundcloud.com/off-site/subjectivity-positionality-and-ethics

Natalia Pashkeeva is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale des Chartes and holds a doctorate in contemporary history from the EHESS. She is a postdoctoral researcher with the ERC ‘off-site’ (CNRS/IRIS).
https://soundcloud.com/off-site/archives-contre-archives-et-preuves

Dilnur Reyhan has a doctorate in sociology, teaches at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Inalco) and is President of the Institut Ouïghour d’Europe. She also edits the bilingual journal Regard sur les Ouïghour-e-s. Her main areas of research are identity and nationalism in the Uyghur diaspora, as well as gender studies among Uyghurs.
https://soundcloud.com/off-site/enqueter-sur-la-repression-des-ouighours-en-chine-dilnur-reyhan-docteure-en-sociologie-inalco

Tony Rublon is a photographer and doctoral student at MIGRINTER/CEPED.) He works on the politicisation of diasporas, migratory routes and politicisation in exile. His thesis focuses on the Turkish diaspora in Europe, examining transnational political and cultural cleavages.
https://soundcloud.com/off-site/tony-rublon

Sahar Aurore Saeidnia is a COFUND Marie Curie ULB postdoctoral fellow. A sociologist of politics and specialist in contemporary Iran, her research focuses on ordinary relationships to politics and social issues in Iran.
https://soundcloud.com/off-site/sahar-saeidnia