Understanding Sensorial Litter in Ethnographic Research

The next speaker in this AoIR 2019 session is Kaye Hare, who introduces us to the idea of sensorial litter. This builds on the realisation of how embodied experiences affect the ethnographic research process, which also requires a close sensory attunement to the researcher’s own sensorial context.

This is because experiences of embodiment can be intense (and even overly intense, out of control); they create sensorial litter, and in principle that litter can be picked up – as a product of the research – and processed subsequently. But where does such litter go, and where can it then be picked up from again?

To explore this further, Kaye ‘ragpicked’ her digital media to identify the sensorial traces she generated during her ethnographic research process: her search histories, songs purchased, smartphone app usage, digital communications, and other aspects of her digital activities.

One example of this was Apple Car Play: as ethnographic work took place in the participants’ homes, Kaye played music in her car as she drove to those homes. Another were washroom dynamics with study participants and others she encountered during the ethnographic work; power relations between her and the participants were completely reconfigured during these moments in this third space.

Such sensorial litter can provide deeper analytical entry points into ethnographic analysis, then: they prompt the researcher to reconsider their own embodiment; channel communication of the researcher with themselves; challenge the researcher’s positioning and power as researcher; and exteriorise the researcher’s own experience and thereby make it available for analysis in its own right.