Research Note: From co-location to co-presence: Shifts in the use of ethnography for the study of knowledge

Abstract

Ethnography has been successfully deployed in science and technology studies, and more specifically in laboratory studies. By using co-presence rather than co-location as a starting point to conceptualize and articulate fieldwork, new aspects of knowledge production are foregrounded in ethnographic studies. This research note proposes and discusses co-presence as an epistemic strategy that pays close attention to non-lab based knowledge production that can embrace textuality, infrastructure and mediation, and that draws into relief the role of ethnographer as author, participant-observer and scholar. Furthermore, co-presence as an approach to doing fieldwork generates new prospects for the study of knowledge production. It enables STS to develop the ethnographic study of highly mediated, distributed or non-lab-based fields, such as the humanities, e-research and e-science.