10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4686
application/pdf
2239-625X
4686
1
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-27473
Silvia Peirolo
Anuac
Francisco Martínez, Lili Di Puppo, Martin Demant Frederiksen, eds, Peripheral methodologies: Unlearning, not-knowing and ethnographic limits, Abingdon and New York, Routledge, 2021, pp. 199
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/anuac
10
Book reviews
2021-05-29
2021-05-29
2021-07-23
2021-07-23
275-277
1
Silvia Peirolo
2021/05/29
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4686
275
Università di Trento, Italy
2239-625X
1
277
urn:nbn:it:unica-27473
Francisco Martínez, Lili Di Puppo, Martin Demant Frederiksen, eds, Peripheral methodologies: Unlearning, not-knowing and ethnographic limits, Abingdon and New York, Routledge, 2021, pp. 199
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                                        2021 | ANUAC. VOL. 10, N° 1, GIUGNO 2021: 275-277




                                                                          RECENSIONI
Francisco MARTINEZ, Lili DI PUPPO, Martin DEMANT FREDERIKSEN (eds) |
Peripheral methodologies. Unlearning, not-knowing and ethnographic limits,
Abingdon and New York, Routledge, 2021, pp. 199.


   What is the centre and the periphery of what we do? What is the role in
the social sciences for the unfinished, vague and messy and how can we
comprehend modes of knowing that open up to an invisible realm? These are
some of the questions addressed by Francisco Martinez, Lili Di Puppo and
Martin Demant Frederiksen in their book Peripheral methodologies. The Authors
have investigated how the concept of periphery poses methodological and
theoretical challenges, and why it should be incorporated into ethnographic
research. Moving beyond the established approaches in anthropology that
treat reality as a repository of objects readily visible and available for
analysis, Peripheral methodologies is a highly original work. The aim of the
book is to open a conversation about the need to generate different ways of
being attentive to the reality, transcending conventional divides and
pushing methods beyond their traditional disciplinary constraints. The path
toward this objective is filled with provocative insights and arguments that
make this book a significant contribution to anthropology.
   The main novelty of the book is to approach the concept of periphery as a
methodological issue. Dispensing with the established anthropological
approaches that essentialize clarity, fixity and visibility in understanding the
social world, the Authors have examined hidden aspects of fieldwork, such
as the boundaries between the known and the unknown, between reason and
the senses and between analytical analysis and aesthetics. They argue that
peripherality is not a marginal condition, but a form of theory and practice-
making. However,
      while peripheral wisdom is about engaging with indistinctiveness and
      discontinuity – the inherent vagueness of phenomena and field experiences,
      which seem to hang between the known and the unknown – it also brings about
      vividness and sharpness in the mode of attention that results from it (p. 173).



This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Silvia Peirolo
2021 | ANUAC. VOL. 10, N° 1, GIUGNO 2021: 275-277.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4686
276                                 FRANCISCO MARTINEZ ET ALII (EDS) | PERIPHERAL METHODOLOGIES


   Therefore, the book emphasizes the need to develop a mode of being
attentive to the uncontrolled, elusive and opaque aspects of the field that are
constitutive of the knowledge production process.
   Peripheral methodologies is divided into three main sections. In the first,
“Suspension of clarity”, the Authors unpack the concept of ambiguity in field
situations where “there is nothing but vagueness and doubt” (p. 10). For
example, based on her study on Sufism in Russia, Lili Di Puppo describes her
experience of a ritual ceremony that she cannot adequately express in words
and therefore the ceremony escapes her attempts to captured and analyze it.
In a similar vein, Martin Demant Frederiksen attends a Georgian wedding
but chooses to reflect on the importance of “what goes on at the fringes” (p.
42) as he cannot understand some side events. The centrality in
anthropological research of the notion of meaning is questioned as the world
can also be based on not-knowing and non-meaning. This section invites
readers to rethink how the un-articulated can be incorporated into
ethnographic research, as the “elusiveness and incommensurability” of
fieldwork “necessitates practicing a form of ethnography that allows the
unknowable to remain” (p. 10).
   The second section, “Unlearning”, focuses on different artisanal activities,
such as knitting, potting and hammering. While ethnography usually entails
studying a non-familiar phenomenon, Lydia Arantes conducted an
ethnography on contemporary knitting practices, a traditional technique in
her native country. She asks: How to conduct research on knitting when you
know how to knit yourself? What kind of knowledge can you produce?
Questions like these are part of her reflection and account of the difficulty of
distancing herself from a familiar environment in order to analyze it.
Ethnographers, just like artisans, learn by doing and by being led by their
research participants. To embrace the concept of periphery means that the
ethnographer must shift the horizon and include multiple perspectives and
paths. This requires being open to the unexpected, hidden, unseen and
peripheral. After having worked as an artisan apprentice in a Mexican
coppersmith workshop, Michele Avis Feder-Nadoff concludes t h a t “the
wisdom of an artisan is more about reach than grasp, more about extending,
than holding fast” (p. 107).
   In the third section, “Absence of knowledge”, Waltorp in collaboration
with an Afghan-Danish film collective ask how to let knowledge unfold and
to embrace the process of unlearning. Through detailed descriptions of their
work in the collective, they suggest that doing “research-through-
filmmaking” and “making-together” invites collective knowledge to emerge.



2021 | ANUAC. VOL. 10, N° 1, GIUGNO 2021: 275-277
FRANCISCO MARTINEZ ET ALII (EDS) | PERIPHERAL METHODOLOGIES                           277


Her example illustrates how knowledge unfolds between the actors involved
and how it is informed “by the questions pursued as well as the infras-
tructure and media ecology which is part of the assemblage interrogated” (p.
127). The seductive power of periphery lies in seeing things “out of the
corner of one’s eye” (p. 165), in the difficulty to catch it and to be under-
stood through analytical notions or frameworks.
   The moments, memories and floating impressions contained in the book
disrupt the traditional methods of anthropological fieldwork by raising
important questions, such as how to capture the periphery in an analytical
way? How to adopt a methodology that can take into account peripheral
wisdom? These questions resonate in the book, as all of the contributions
relate to how unexpected episodes in the field can challenge research questions,
methodological choices and disciplinary limits. While the contributors have
reflected on these important questions, the book invites even more questions.
How, for example, can researchers grasp the in-between, grayness of living
societies situated at the peripheries? How to conceptualize the periphery at
political, social and territorial margins? And how to conduct research in the
peripheries of our interconnected world? Reflections on the ambiguity and
opaqueness of fieldwork raises the further question of how researchers can
catch a glimpse of “peripheral wisdom” in marginal spaces and develop the
methodologies that will allow researchers to approach it. Nevertheless, the
book provides a valuable and absorbing window into methodological issues
that have rarely been discussed before.
   The book’s reflection on the constitutive presence of uncertainty in the
field and how the undefined areas of fieldwork challenge epistemological
and ontological assumptions and methodologies can be particularly useful
for early-career researchers looking for useful insights to unpack the messy
challenges that arise when carrying out ethnographic fieldwork.

                                                                       Silvia PEIROLO
                                                                  Università di Trento
                                                                 silvia.peirolo@unitn.it




                                         2021 | ANUAC. VOL. 10, N° 1, GIUGNO 2021: 275-277
