“You just want to re‐open our biggest wounds, don't you?”: Homeplace ethnography as (polluted) environmental method

Abstract When I was 12, my family told me a story about their community falling apart and coming together, a time when someone tried putting a nuclear facility in their (our?) hometown. Since we moved when I was too young to remember, the story had little significance until I embarked on a “hometown” ethnographic journey for my dissertation. As I returned to this place, it became apparent that heightened tension still permeated the community atmosphere. One collaborator asked (or even accused), “ you just want to re‐open our biggest wounds, don't you? ” Even though this collaborator wasn't alive when the wound first opened, woundedness has been passed down. These deep wounds became central to my ethnographic inquiry, one complicated by the intimacy between myself, my family, and the community. Inspired by these tense, traumatic relationships, this essay articulates ethnographic practices of productive care and reciprocity in which re‐opening wounds bears communal risk—risks that can deeply attune us to the stakes of research and understand the structural inequities that rely on community trauma.