Unconventional Methods for a Post-conventional Anthropology: Re-Imagining the Social Contract of Fieldwork Relationality

In this article, we describe doing co-creative, filmic anthropology and its novel trajectories as we continued our collaborations beyond fieldwork. We reflect on different situations in which we sought to speak with our interlocutors, rather than about them, which we argue encourages a more outward-facing anthropological practice, one that also remains fundamentally committed to our interlocutors in the research moment. Rather than only an internal contract in which anthropologists speak only to other anthropologists after fieldwork, a broader contract creates opportunities for researchers and the researched beyond fieldwork. We show how we did this in our own projects by using a method of filmic research-creation Epp calls the ‘ethnographic B movie [Epp 2023. ‘The Ethnographic B movie: Centering the uncertain, absurd and low quality in collaborative filmmaking’. DIY, Alternative Cultures & Society 2(1): 75–93]. The ethnographic B movie prioritizes the co-creative process over professional aesthetic, requiring us to set aside our own ethnographic motivations and priorities to leave room for the creativity and desires of our interlocutors. In doing so, the filmic outputs became less our own and something to which our interlocutors could also lay claim. From this, collaboration with our interlocutors extended beyond the temporal frame of ‘fieldwork’—this has included co-writing a peer-reviewed article, guest lecturing and co-presenting a webinar. Opening space for co-expression and interlocutor driven content challenges traditional fieldwork relations. From this unconventional anthropological method, a new social contract emerges between us and our interlocutors, in which accountability to them matters as much, if not more, than the internal contract of disciplinary expectations.