(Re)constructing the Field through Sound: Actor-networks, Ethnographic Representation and 'Radio Elicitation' in South-western Uganda

This chapter demonstrates that all ethnographic fieldwork involves the mobilization of both people and things into networks of relations that actor-network theorists would term hybrids. It explores the argument through a detailed discussion of the history of 'elicitation' research techniques in ethnographic fieldwork: those interviewing methods in which objects are used as a means of focusing responses around a given topic or issue. Latour's purpose in his essay on the expedition is to examine the ways in which each of the three scientists ~ with his or her own theoretical frameworks and methodological procedures - goes about collecting the evidence deemed necessary for answering this particular research question, of whether the forest is retreating or advancing. All ethnographic fieldwork - all, at least, that is practised within a Malinowskian or Boasian tradition - involves a necessary mobilization of material objects.