Urban Ethnography Reading Group #3

With the new year, our urban ethnography reading group has started again with much exciting literature ahead. Before going into our most recent reads, we first report on our meetings before the winter break.

As ethnography is an immersive method that can be intensive and emotional at times, we wished to read more about handling your own feelings and emotions in the field. To do so, we read Jewkes (2012), Van Wyk (2013) and emerald & Carpenter (2015). The three papers all argued for emotions as useful research tools. Jewkes (2012) challenges  criminology and, in general, academia’s resistance to recognize researcher’s emotions and experience on the field as relevant intellectual tools for deeper insight, if not data in itself, rather than biases or contaminations. Van Wyk gives a concrete example of this by highlighting that “dislike” or “moral repugnance” that an ethnographer can encounter in the field should be accepted as an analytical tool, not just an ethical failure. emerald and Carpenter (2015), on the other hand, illustrated some emotional risks that can emerge when being a researcher, for instance the extent of emotional labour that might be needed, yet they also point to the potential for emotions to improve one’s understanding of the data. Overall, these papers led to an interesting discussion on one’s role as a researcher and to what extent it is possible to separate your personality and emotions from your “researcher” personality and emotions.

Next, we all read Harassed (2019), written by Rebecca Hanson and Patricia Richards. The authors challenge the idea of the ethnographer as working in solitude as much as possible and going the extra mile for collecting evermore data. They argue instead for an embodied approach to ethnographer, stating that every body shapes knowledge production, not only non-white non-male bodies. We shared how some of the experiences described were immediately relatable to us when reminiscing about our individual previous fieldwork experiences. The book made us reflect on how we might recognise and perceive danger in the field and we exchanged ideas on how we could learn about what uncomfortable or potentially dangerous situations we can expect in our field. We also shared ideas on how we can create support networks in each of our cities and beyond.

Lastly, we started 2026 appropriately by reading a paper from each city that we will be conducting our ethnographies in starting this year. For Kyoto, Shiori suggested a paper on the shift of food value through food banks (Nomura, 2020). Although the paper did not focus much on the particularities of Kyoto, it gave precious insights on the food charities recipients, focusing on the importance of food literacy, and how appreciation should not be one way from the final recipients to donors but should be two ways that the donors should also appreciate the recipients to make use of the food to be wasted.

For Palermo, we read about urban tourism taking place in neighbourhood Danisinni (Giubilaro, 2025). The paper highlighted the double-sided effect of tourism-led requalification of an historically marginalized neighbourhood, fostering both integrating community initiatives and commodifying short-term rentals. This reading, although not about food, deepened our sensibility to urban marginality: visiting Palermo as her now field, the place-inappropriate Maradona socks sold at Ballarò market, full of tourists, just enough lively and chaotic to hide the more destitute residents street vending down the street, reminded Simona of the question suggested by Giubilaro: does tourism in marginal areas sustain communities or accelerate exclusionary, if not erasing, transformations?

Finally, for Rotterdam, we read about youth experiences in deprived Rotterdam neighbourhoods (Visser et al., 2015). The paper presents palpable transcribed and visual ethnographic data. The paper also led to reflections that consider what kind of arguments and claims could be made based on the ethnographic data presented. Overall, the papers made us reflect on how place was present in each paper, how place might be present in our own work, and in what way we might know places depending on whether we have previous familiarity with them.

Next up is “Undoing Nothing” by Paolo Boccagni (2025).

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Boccagni, P. (2025). Undoing Nothing: Waiting for Asylum, Struggling for Relevance. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.233

emerald, elke, & Carpenter, L. (n.d.). Vulnerability and Emotions in Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800414566688

Giubilaro, C. (2025). At the margins of urban tourism: The case of Danisinni, Palermo. Urban Geography, 0(0), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2025.2535786

Hanson, R., & Richards, P. (2019). Harassed: Gender, bodies, and ethnographic research. University of California Press.

Jewkes, Y. (2012). Autoethnography and Emotion as Intellectual Resources: Doing Prison Research Differently. Qualitative Inquiry, 18(1), 63–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800411428942

Nomura, A. (2020). The shift of food value through food banks: A case study in Kyoto, Japan. Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, 17(1), 243–264. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40844-019-00154-0

Van Wyk, I. (2013). Beyond ethical imperatives in South African anthropology: morally repugnant and unlikeable subjects. Anthropology Southern Africa, 36(1-2), 68-79. 

Visser, K., Bolt, G., & Van Kempen, R. (2015). ‘Come and live here and you’ll experience it’: Youths talk about their deprived neighbourhood. Journal of Youth Studies, 18(1), 36–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2014.933196