A response by Nathan Wittock to Dara Ivanova's Losing and Finding: On the Curious Life of Ethnographic Object

Wittock, Nathan

English

Ghent University Academic Bibliography

 17  NATHAN WITTOCK A RESPONSE TO DARA IVANOVA’S LOSING AND FINDING: ON THE CURIOUS LIFE OF ETHNOGRAPHIC OBJECTS  It is not often that a researcher who has been asked to comment on a piece by a colleague has had the pleasure of conversing with the author some months before commenting on the work, as well as between versions of the piece to be commented upon. Nor is it often that authors have the freedom to choose the format with which they would like to work. For her contribution, Ivanova chose to write an essay that “is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of the case of the foundling room,” as this has been done elsewhere, “but a personal reflection on working with objects ethnographically.” Contemporary researchers are trained and encouraged to do scientific work in a largely de-personalized fashion. In some cases, therefore, we are likely to forget how – or even why – we should write a personal reflection on our work for people other than our supervisors or ourselves. Nevertheless, Dara Ivanova’s style and wit do not reflect any such struggle. Ivanova’s self-acclaimed field of interest is attuned to “odd places that defy expectations, infrastructural assemblages and caring as (a) way(s) of doing.” It is not difficult to see how the object of her work in this essay fits that defined field of interest. “There is a room in the Netherlands, where one may anonymously abandon a baby and walk away.” Even in the opening sentence, the reader is pulled into an odd place that calls into question moralities and judgments. Ivanova also does not shun the recall of such moral struggle throughout the remainder of her essay. In her writing, there is an explicit tension between judgments of the room as “good” and as “bad.” This tension is also present in her own characterization of the observations. In the first half of the essay, Ivanova refers to the process of child abandonment as “simply leaving a baby (…) and walking away” and to the abandoned babies as “unwanted children.” In an earlier comment to the author, I communicated the uneasiness that I felt with this wording upon first reading the essay:  Be careful with the stance you take toward abandonment of the child, (…) sometimes these children are not unwanted, but the circumstances make parents feel that they can’t raise a baby, and I expect them to consider the options for a long time and cry their eyes out before they even really consider the option of completely losing it. Because when the mother/father gives up the child in the foundling room, not only does the baby lose his/her right to know his/her origins, but the parents too lose their right to know their offspring. This is just a warning to take caution in such wordings.    NATHAN WITTOCK 18  In her reply, Ivanova noted that this was precisely the intent of the characterization. It represented the way in which the room had been presented to her, and she wished to capture the morality, using her writing to make the reader think about the matter. Part of what I find so interesting about Ivanova’s contribution to this volume is the same as what I would intuitively say is lacking in it. As I have communicated with the author, it is interesting for me “to see how we ask similar methodological questions with almost opposite answers.” In general, ethnographers and other qualitative social scientists are advised to let the data inform their analysis, instead of proceeding from “heavy” theorizing. Whereas Ivanova follows this tendency, my own contribution to the volume does exactly the opposite. As eloquently illustrated in Ivanova’s piece, however, it would be a mistake to reprimand ethnographers for relying ‘solely” on their gut feelings. As Ivanova demonstrates, although making sense of one’s object is a struggle, it is one that can be faced through constant reflection, introspective criticism, and observational sensitivity. Regardless of one’s gut feeling, it is hard work (some profanity can be mentally added here in order to reinforce this assertion). Furthermore, regardless of whether it is through theoretical or open sensitivity, the aim of an ethnography of an object is always the same, as beautifully captured in Ivanova’s essay:  To describe an object ethnographically means to follow it and leave behind the contours one had imagined it might fit in; letting it swell and diminish, go back and forth and lead to new objects, which are then devoured and incorporated into it. To do an ethnography of an object, then, is to constantly search for its boundaries and yet always be prepared to go beyond them.  As becomes obvious toward the end of the essay, the lenses that we use in making sense of our objects are not that different. Nevertheless, we take different turns at the start of our respective journeys toward our conclusions. As a final remark, I would like to congratulate Dara Ivanova for her contribution and thank her for allowing me the opportunity to comment on it. As she mentions in the section bearing the heading “A room of curiosity,” she found in her object of the foundling room, “a delightful idea of ‘oddity contained.’” In this essay, she manages to bring to life that oddity, making it interesting to a public of ethnographic researchers, who may recognize these situations from their own research and find inspiration from the ways she dealt with this, as well as to a general audience, who can effectively go along with the tensions portrayed and the struggles experienced in dealing with them.      

A response by Nathan Wittock to Dara Ivanova's Losing and Finding: On the Curious Life of Ethnographic Objects

A response by Nathan Wittock to Göde Both\u27s Accomplishing Autonomous Driving: An Unfinished Descriptio

Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB): Open Journal Systems

A response by Nathan Wittock

A response by Nathan Wittock to Dara Ivanova\u27s Losing and Finding: On the Curious Life of Ethnographic Object

36  NATHAN WITTOCK  A RESPONSE TO GÖDE BOTH’S ACCOMPLISHING AUTONOMOUS DRIVING: AN UNFINISHED DESCRIPTION   Moving in and between worlds is never easy, as doing so always entails the risk of letting down one side of the debate or the other. As a skilled equilibrist, Göde Both walks between the skyscrapers of the Computer Sciences and the Social Sciences, seeking “to combine sensitivities from both worlds to understand what is going on when computational enhanced cars are moved from the laboratory to real-life traffic.” Such is the challenge for most scholars working in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Both’s “unfinished description” thus provides an entertaining and inspirational tale to be told. In a sense, Göde Both’s confession – so to speak – that his description is “unfinished” is a realization common to ethnographers working in STS. When studying objects that are characterized by an entanglement between multiple epistemological fields, who are we to decide where the boundaries lie? Who are we to say where a description ends, or should end? It nevertheless strikes me as a sign of honest doubt in Both’s contribution to this volume. Instead of withdrawing at the sight of this difficulty, however, Both formulates five answers to his research questions: “What is autonomous driving (or fully automated driving)? What is an autonomous car (or a self-driving car or a driverless car)?” Whereas the tales told by Both appear fragmented at first, it is exactly the fragmented nature of the object, which oscillates between “a good old-fashioned automobile and an experimental driverless car,” that he wishes to convey – and he succeeds in the endeavor.  In his first response, Both argues, “Whatever this is that I am writing about, it is not just in one place. It is distributed.” To show that it is indeed distributed, he takes us along on a walk through the project’s physical locations. Starting from “the office,” he zooms out from the location where he “is sitting” to include a mental blueprint of “the computer science department” of the university. He also invites us to go with him to see the “Doomsday Devices” in the physics department of the same university. I found this notion very insightful. The term refers to “apparatuses” in the physics lab where the “autonomous car” is located. The members of the project in which Both does his field work “do not know what they are for, but [feel] they look as if they belonged to mad scientists.” Both’s respondents, however, do not belong to the latter group. Their autonomous car, and thus Both’s object, routinely becomes normalized. The autonomous car, which is standing in the same laboratory with the other “Doomsday Devices,” is referred to as das Auto: “the car.” The model of the car is one of the more popular ones in Germany, we are told, and thus the self-driving car is not a “Doomsday Device,” but a car. The tendency toward A RESPONSE TO ‘ACCOMPLISHING AUTONOMOUS DRIVING: AN UNFINISHED DESCRIPTION’  37  normalization does not stop at the car’s appearance. It extends to the inside as well. As Both argues in his observation of a test drive, the car contains “red emergency switches,” which “can disconnect the additional ICT systems (this includes the laptop) from the rest of the car. I have never seen them used, but they seem to have a symbolic value,” which he delineates as “the desire for automation and the need for human control.”  As I observe Both walking the cable between the skyscrapers of the computer sciences and the social sciences, I am overtaken by an uneasy feeling. In his fourth response, Both notes, “Autonomous driving is volatile technology. Control oscillates between the driver and the laptop.” In this, he once again discusses the oscillation between the desire for automation and the need for human control: “The research vehicle may be driven just like a regular car. In fact, despite of all the modifications, it is still a regular car. (…) The modifications (…) can be turned off and on. In fact, the safety driver often switches into autonomous mode in mid-drive or resumes control in mid-drive.” I wonder, however, whether “it is still a regular car.” Even though it is possible to drive the car without it being synced to the computer, it is also possible for it to be driven by the assemblage of human engineers, sensors, GPS, track, and computer. When Both arrives at his conclusion, however, I find myself fooled once more, for it seems that the provocation toward unease was precisely his intention. As he argues: To talk about an “autonomous car” is misleading if you think of it as a stable and permanent identity. When the “autonomous car” exists, it exists only for limited time in situated practice. It oscillates between manual and autonomous driving. It is also misleading to think of it as autonomous in the sense of self-sufficiency. The car has to be pushed out of the garage, driven to the test-track and constantly cared for. The car is a precarious assemblage that has to be re-animated each time the project members take it to the streets. It is therefore not “a regular car,” although it is part of the “precarious assemblage” that he portrays in this piece.  To conclude this commentary, I would like to pose several questions. Is it not the trademark of an equilibrist to incite in the crowd watching from below a blend of awe and unease – a sense of making them wonder whether they can do the same, while simultaneously leaving the audience feeling worried for the person balancing on the cable above? Is this not part of the fascination that one has for the balancing individual? Studying objects that are characterized by a state of constant “trans” is characteristic to work in STS, and part of the difficulty involves breaking down the normalization of these objects from all aspects of the spheres that they transgress, allowing readers to grasp the complex nature of the object under study. In this “unfinished description,” I believe that Göde Both has found a way to do so. 

A response by Nathan Wittock to Göde Both's Accomplishing Autonomous Driving: An Unfinished Description

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8521591/file/8521594

A response by Nathan Wittock to Göde Both's Accomplishing Autonomous Driving: An Unfinished Description

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Ghent University Academic Bibliography

Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB): Open Journal Systems

Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB): Open Journal Systems

Ghent University Academic Bibliography