Researchers develop new method to document erasure in conflict zones
A new approach called "ghost ethnography" uses researchers' physical and emotional responses to document how violence erases places and identities. For policymakers and organizations documenting human rights abuses, the method offers a framework to capture absences and cultural loss that traditional documentation often misses.
Originaltitel: A ghost ethnography amidst violence: The researcherʼs body as a sensing agent
<p>In this paper, following the Russian occupation of Crimea in March 2014, I present an analysis of the peninsulaʼs wounded semiotic landscapes and develop an approach of <em>ghost ethnography</em>. Building on my ethnographic fieldwork in the region back in 2017 and 2019—after Qırım-Crimeaʼs annexation but before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine—I trace the signs of massive ideological transformation but also instances of erasure that followed as Russia deprived its public spaces of the Ukrainian present.</p><p>By introducing an ethnographic vignette from the field and discussing previous research on absence, place, and affect, I develop an approach to study <em>vibrant voids</em>, affectively charged and haunting traces of violence. Combined with photographs of the semiotic landscapes, residentsʼ insights, and the researcherʼs fieldnote observations, an ethnography of ghosts centres the researcherʼs body that not only records and notices, but also senses the ghosts that outlive vehement acts. In this way, approaching the researcherʼs body as a <em>sensing agent</em> that facilitates ways of knowing in settings where violence enacts absences, a ghost ethnography grasps the phenomena that seem missing, thus shedding light on knowledges that otherwise remain in the shadows.</p>