Scenarios and ethnography

Author(s)

Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk, Philipp Budka, Alexandra Meyer, Katrin Schmid, Nikita Strelkovskii

Abstract

Large-scale infrastructures are typically part of development projects that are global in ambition and local in their impacts. While anthropology has a decent track record of using ethnographic methods in the study of infrastructure, it typically lacks the capacity to provoke statements or attitudes regarding larger development plans. Scenario workshops, initially developed by researchers in the field of foresight studies, turn out to be productive tools in eliciting assessments of the present by talking about possible futures. The European Research Council project InfraNorth conducted scenario workshops in two locations in Canada and Norway in 2023, in which four scenarios were presented and discussed. Apart from speculations about what the future might bring, these discussions provided ethnographic insights that went beyond what we had found before through more traditional means of ethnography. We suggest that scenarios and scenario workshops have the potential to offer ethnographic windows into infrastructural presents by talking about the future.

Organisation(s)

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

External organisation(s)

Western Norway Research Institute, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

Journal

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

Volume

55

Pages

14-36

No. of pages

23

ISSN

0891-2416

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416251398488

Publication date

02-2025

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

504008 Ethnography, 504034 Social anthropology, 504017 Cultural anthropology, 509019 Futurology

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Language and Linguistics, Anthropology, Sociology and Political Science, Urban Studies

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/1eccd547-f5ea-4b84-92f6-070f37890109