Experimental forms for the expression of norms in the ethnography of the contemporary

Abstract

This article considers the methodological state of ethnographic projects that are situated in the context of complex global assemblages and projects, and of a tradition of critique that has defined the purpose of much anthropological research over the past two decades. How does the recent surge of concern with value as the analytic object of study mesh with the explicit normative concerns in the ways that many ethnographic projects are conceived and narrated? Value is both an object and informing frame of such projects. This article probes experiments in the weaving of longstanding theoretical orientations to value in the mesh of contemporary fieldwork itself.