Digital Migrating and Storyworlding with Women We Love: A Feminist Ethnography

Abstract

This contemporary feminist ethnography draws on in-depth ethnographically-anchored lifestory interviews with loved ones and uses digital media (such as ArcGIS) to expand the ethnographic collection around the globe. Members of the FRC conceived of the WomenWeLove Project as an opportunity for the lesser-told stories of six ordinary women from different places to take center stage. By digitizing the stories, researchers and participants are able to join in the use of public digitalizations (like the #MeToo movement) to connect through empowering ethnographic efforts. Their stories are contextualized within and across one another as a complex study of women’s lives in geopolitical heterosexism and patriarchy. The name of the project, WomenWeLove, both honors those we are writing about and acknowledges love as methodologically salient. It is unusual to conduct studies of any kind within the context of such close researcher/participant relationships. At the intersection of ethnography and love, emerges the methodological innovation of migratory storyworlding. The paper contributes to our contemporary ethnographic theories and practices by committing to love as a methodologically interesting orientation toward one’s research, examining the migratory and digitized possibilities for ethnography, and by introducing a migratory storyworlding methodology.