Public realm ethnography: (Non-)Participation, co-presence and the challenge of situated multiplicity

• Published in: Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) Scotland), 2021-02, Vol.58 (2), p.425-440
• Main Author: Jones, Alasdair
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accounts; Commodification; Culture; Ethnographers; Ethnography; Field study; Fieldwork; Gentrification; Group activities; Heuristic; Methodological paper; Privatization; Problem solving; Public access; Public participation; Public spaces; Securitization; Strangers; Urban areas; Urban renewal
• ISSN: 0042-0980; 1360-063X
• DOI: 10.1177/0042098020904261

Against the backdrop of abstract accounts of a variety of processes associated with the ‘end of public space’ (disneyfication, commodification, privatisation, gentrification, securitisation and so on), the last few decades have witnessed a marked growth in ethnographic accounts of the production, meaning and experience of urban public spaces. Methodologically, studying these dimensions of public space ethnographically poses clear challenges for how researchers design and conduct their fieldwork: practically, how can fieldworkers participate in a socio-spatial context typically characterised by ‘situated multiplicity’ (Amin A (2008) Collective culture and urban public space. City 12(1): 5–24) and co-presence with strangers? Moreover, what do researchers do when there are no core group activities, institutional roles or (sub-)cultural practices to participate in? With these questions in mind, I first seek to review the practical fieldwork techniques used by ethnographers interested in studying the urban public realm. I then use this review to synthesise and distil a set of four interlinked fieldwork heuristics for public realm ethnography. 在与“公共空间的终结”相关的各种过程（迪士尼化、商品化、私有化、绅士化、证券化等）的抽象描述的背景下，过去几十年见证了对城市公共空间的生产、意义和体验的人类学描述的显著增长。从方法论的角度而言，对公共空间的这些维度进行人类学研究，对研究人员如何设计和开展实地调查工作提出了明确的挑战：实践中，实地调查人员如何才能参与到一个典型的、以“情境多样性” (Amin A (2008) Collective culture and urban public space.City 12(1):5–24) 和与陌生人共存为特征的社会空间环境中去呢？此外，当没有核心群体活动、体制性角色或（次）文化活动供参与时，研究人员可以做什么呢？考虑到这些问题，我首先试图回顾那些对研究城市公共领域感兴趣的人类学家所使用的实地调查实践技术。然后，我在本评论中综合并提炼出一套公共领域人类学的四种相互关联的实地工作探索法。