TITLE: Let’s Play! An Antidote to Solitary, Serious, Unsurprising Fieldwork
AUTHORS: Kassandra Spooner-Lockyer, nick smith, Jean Chia, Noha Fikry Ismail

[DESCRIPTION]
A component of ethnographic fieldwork consists in noticing empirical phenomena through a range of documentary and sensorial modalities. What gets noticed, and the manner of its documentation, is the result not only of what is available to the fieldworker occupying a particular positionality in the field, but of choices made about what counts as notice-worthy and what documentary forms best translate empirical phenomena into evidence. As a primarily individual enterprise, ethnographic fieldworkers forgo the benefits of collaboration that is a feature of work at other levels of disciplinary engagement. For example, anthropologists are very likely to discuss the results of their analysis in journals or at conferences, but far less likely to seek dialogue on the choices they are making while in the field itself. Enabling such dialogues allows ethnographers to reflexively attend to their practices of noticing, and helps to unsettle the field of notice-worthy phenomena at the time of research. As a set of instructions for collaborative fieldwork, where participants help shape each other's actions and engagements with/in the field, this protocol is structured as an iterative game capable of being played by fieldworkers spread out around the world. In being collaborative & playful, this game fosters intimate relations that operate during our otherwise often lonely & solitary fieldwork experiences. In the game, a set of specific and limited fieldwork instructions circulates amongst players. In the spaces for provocation and discussion which are opened up between fieldworkers as a result of these circulations, the protocol allows ethnographers to attend to the formation of their empirical habits in situ, to make explicit the means by which their habits of noticing give way to evidentiary data, and to nurture shared relations between ethnographers. 

[BEFORE_START]
Our guiding principles to playful ethnography;
Playful ethnography understands play as a modality of action that responds to the contingency of the world (and fieldwork) through “a readiness to improvise in the face of an ever-changing world that admits of no transcendentally ordered account” (Malaby 2009:206). 
Playful ethnography facilitates collaboration across space and distance. A critical goal of our collaboration is to build a support system between researchers through which they can address ethical, practical, and methodological concerns in the field. This support system is also a means of engaging in deeper analysis while in the field, “as a concrete mode of action” (Ballestero and Winthereik 2021:1).
Playful ethnography interrogates and/or supplements the basic assumptions or tenets of ethnography. For example, how/why are we always alone as ethnographers? How do we think through and share moments of embarrassment, failure, errantry, and uncertainty during fieldwork? What kinds of conversations, bonds, and networks with other researchers/ethnographers can we nurture during fieldwork? How can we sustain these bonds despite space & time differences? 
Playful ethnography generates fieldnotes that are shared and built upon. This is a fundamental premise of our collaboration insofar as shared fieldnotes are critical to the generative nature of the next set of instructions and the next round of play. Our understanding of fieldnotes here include scribbles, failures, striked-throughs, and what we describe as 'shadow notes'. Here, we draw attention to the supplementary nature of 'shadow notes', where each iteration of shared fieldnotes becomes a 'living' document through scribbles at the margins in the form of memories, comments, added media, etc.  What gets deleted or added to the shadow notes is integral to the delineation of our field 'site' - if our research outcomes, along with the data we generate and parse, is a consequence of uncredited 'shadow notes', our collaboration draws attention to the often unacknowledged mechanisms through which research sites and outcomes materialize. 
Playful ethnography reflects on & sustains the shared social terrain through which our ideas for this project transpired. This project largely grew out of a desire to nurture meaningful connections with other researchers & like-minded individuals, especially after the isolation of COVID-19. These connections became one of the foundations of our protocols, which are largely nurtured through the playful nature of this collaboration. As such, we regard playfulness, collaboration, and the desire for connection as key to the design & implementation of this project.

[STEPS]
SECTION: Broken Telephone
1. Draft a “Call to fieldwork” & circulate it in your trusted circles of researchers & ethnographers (on Threads, Instagram, listservs)
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2. Assemble your players; 3-5 researchers engaging in fieldwork. 
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3. Meet over whatever platform is most suitable, zoom, teams, discord, etc. 
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4. Unmute.
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5. Open a shared document.
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6. Brainstorm an initial set of instructions or use those supplied in Appendix I.
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6.1. These instructions should help the players enter their field site and engage with it sensorially and critically. These are prompts at the observational level, and as such should be transferable across sites. Their purpose is to allow players to approach their fieldsite in new ways with intention and structure. They should also be fun, inviting, and capacious enough to fit your diverse themes and settings.  They may disrupt the normal order of things in the site, but they should be sensitive about causing others to be bad guests.
SECTION: Broken Telephone
7. Assign the order of play, who goes first and who is next?
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8. The first player must then go into the field with the initial set of instructions and carry them out. 
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8.1. Each participant is free to choose/follow any of the shared instructions at any time, even if it is not their turn.  
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9. The first player, and each player thereafter, must take something with them from the fieldsite to send along to the next player. This can be anything that you think would inspire, invite, or push the next player to embark to the field in new ways. It might be a material object found in situ, it might be a sound clip, a video, a memory, a poem inspired by the site etc.
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10. The player must then make field notes and summary thoughts/analysis as per the instructions after their outing, which they share on a collaborative platform. Unlike conventional and personal fieldnotes, these shared notes preferably involve photographs, audio clips, memories, challenges, and any “irreverent” feelings that might have arisen during fieldwork.
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11. The player must then adapt/tinker with the instructions they used to make them new and send them along to the next player along with the object. 
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12. Once the first round is done, organize a general debriefing meeting to share thoughts, feelings, and plan for the round to follow. 
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11.2. Each player has a pre-determined amount of time to follow their instructions, adapt them and send them on, along with their object. See Appendix II for how we made and remade our instructions. 
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11.1. The player must also include a description/rationale for including their object. 
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12.1. If possible, debrief over snacks, a meal, coffee, or dessert. 
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13. In pairs, schedule casual “interviews” to debrief and reflect more closely on each of your respective experiences. Record these interviews and share them among the rest of your group. See Appendix II for sample questions.  
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13.1. These interviews are a chance to create deeper relationships with your collaborators/interlocutors, to reflect intimately on your fieldwork as a shared discourse, and to interrogate shared and individual fieldwork experiences. 
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14. Because fieldwork (and everything in life, really) always needs recess, reconvene after a few weeks/months for a round #2 of shared fieldwork. Develop a new/refined set of instructions, change the order of your participants, and follow the same plan as round #1.
SECTION: Reading Groups - Creating Connections Between the Players
15. Working with your already assembled players, schedule another meeting to choose a common research interest that you are all keen to dig into collaboratively. These meetings will occur alongside your fieldwork endeavours. They are essential for fostering more intimate relations with your collaborators, and they also invite opportunities to collaboratively reflect on and analyze your area of study in surprising ways. 
SECTION: Reading Groups - Creating Connections Between the Players
16. Meet over whatever platform is most suitable, zoom, teams, discord, etc. 
SECTION: Reading Groups - Creating Connections Between the Players
17. Unmute. 
SECTION: Reading Groups - Creating Connections Between the Players
18. During your first meeting, get to know each other; what is everyone studying, where are they in the world, what scares them about fieldwork, who have they met so far in the field, etc.
SECTION: Reading Groups - Creating Connections Between the Players
19. Open a shared document, brainstorm your common research interest. 
SECTION: Reading Groups - Creating Connections Between the Players
20.1. These are readings you will read and discuss once a month. You will add to this literature throughout the game, but you must begin with at least two readings to assigned for your next meeting. 
SECTION: Reading Groups - Creating Connections Between the Players
20.  Now brainstorm a literature around your shared research interest.
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22. 
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21. Decide a future meeting time, one that you can return to every month, Friday mornings, Monday afternoons, etc. a set time will make it easier to remember and carve out the time in your schedule. 
SECTION: Reading Groups - Creating Connections Between the Players
19.1. This could be a field of study, like infrastructure, religion, labour, etc. or a method, like walking methods, mapping, multi-sited ethnography etc. or a concept, like porosities, trailing, recursion etc. but try to ensure that what you land on is broad enough to sustain and include all players interests. 
SECTION: Reading Groups - Creating Connections Between the Players
19.2. Don't afraid to axe the subjects that don't light up your interest. This is an idea/object of investigation you will be thinking about for a while, make sure it's something everyone is excited to return to, month after month.  
SECTION: Monthly Meetings
23. Meet over whatever platform is most suitable, zoom, teams, discord, etc. 
SECTION: Monthly Meetings
24. Unmute. 
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25. Begin with a debrief, where every player checks in; how are they finding fieldwork, what’s difficult, what’s fun, what’s frustrating? 
SECTION: Monthly Meetings
25.1. This should take up a large chunk of the meeting, it's a time to vent. 
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26. Discuss the articles; what drew everyone in, what put them off, what is one aspect of the readings you can see relating to your fieldsite. 
SECTION: Monthly Meetings
27. Choose the next meeting’s articles. 
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28. Repeat. 
SECTION: Interluding Game - Never Have I Ever
29. Write three confessions, confessions related to fieldwork or simply to work in your chosen discipline (be it singular or many). Preface each of these confessions with the saying ‘never have I ever’ at once admitting to while also denying these actions, thereby creating a space where you can both confess without going on the record. See Appendix III for examples.
SECTION: Interluding Game - Never Have I Ever
29.1. 
Someone must make the choice to send out this prompt, it cannot be planned, it is an opportunity for vulnerability and as such is unpredictable.
SECTION: Interluding Game - Never Have I Ever
30. Circulate these confessions with the other players silently, don’t let the other players know they’ve all been sent the same prompt.
SECTION: Interluding Game - Never Have I Ever
31. Request each player either match a confession to one of yours, or create a new confession category, which they must then post on your shared field note board. 
SECTION: Interluding Game - Never Have I Ever
32. These confessions don’t have to go anywhere, you never have to discuss them amongst yourselves again, but do ask that everyone reads everyone else's. The purpose is to come to know, through sharing, that we are all imperfect ethnographers, imperfect in different ways, and those moments of strife, guilt, and shame happen to us all. Share and move on.