Ethnography and Modern Languages

While rarely explicitly recognized in our disciplinary frameworks, the openness and curiosity on which Modern Languages in the UK is founded are, in many ways, ethnographic impulses. Ethnographic theories and practices can be transformative in relation to the undergraduate curriculum, providing an unparalleled model for experiential and holistic approaches to language and cultural learning. As a form of emplaced and embodied knowledge production, ethnography promotes greater reflexivity on our geographical and historical locations as researchers, and on the languages and cultures through which we engage. An ethnographic sensitivity encourages an openness to less hierarchical and hegemonic forms of knowledge, particularly when consciously seeking to invert the traditional colonial ethnographic project and envision instead more participatory and collaborative models of engagement. Modern Languages scholars are at the same time ideally placed to challenge a monolingual mindset and an insensitivity to language-related questions in existing ethnographic research located in cognate disciplines. For Modern Languages to embrace ethnography with credibility, we propose a series of recommendations to mobilize these new research and professional agendas

The production of chemical worlds: Territory and field science in global agribusiness

This article explores how the marketing practices of an agrichemical corporation can be understood in relation to particular landscapes and soils. Surveying material from a three-year ethnography of farming practices in Sri Lanka, the text interrogates how paddy fields are rendered expressive for farmers. This ‘territorialisation’, the article suggests, is not to be understood as an effort to claim authority over a geographical space, but rather as a ‘worlding’ technique. Thus, the globalisation and agricultural modernisation promoted by the agrichemical corporation co-exists with an affirmation of the uniqueness of particular soils, and with a celebration of site-specific rural knowledges over general physical principles