Protocol for a Composite Ethnography

Composite ethnography is a methodological proposition developed by the Concordia Ethnography Lab (CEL) as a way to collectively engage with objects that we know to be multiple. By “taking seriously” the proposition from Science and Technology Studies that the world is enacted through our encounters, our collective research endeavour begins from the principle that collective forms of research produce a world of collectives. For the past two years, as part of EMERGE Matrix’s commitment to building the infrastructures for experimental and collaborative ethnography, a heterogeneous group of researchers at the CEL has been trying to turn such a philosophical commitment to research into an actionable ethnographic protocol. The resulting paper, as well as its accompanying zine and video, depicts The Pit, a project whose endeavour was to use composite ethnography to collectively explore a post-extractivist site in Montreal as a space for future-making. In this paper, we describe the steps towards the composite, showcasing the practical, pedagogical, ethical, and epistemological issues that arise when trying to render the tacit explicit in collaborative ethnographic research, including the tensions between normative ideals on what ethnography is and the challenges of making messy research processes travel.