Experimental Ethnography Online

AbstractThis essay describes The Asthma Files, an experimental, digital ethnography project structured to support a collaborative research process and new ways of presenting academic research. While examining ways in which asthma is understood, cared for and governed in varied settings, the project also examines how digital tools can be used to support new research practices, new ways of expressing ethnographic analyses and new ways of drawing readers to ethnographic work. The Asthma Files is an experiment in ethnography, and in science, health and environmental communication. The project responds to dramatic increases in asthma incidence in the USA and globally in recent decades, and to wide acknowledgement that new forms of asthma knowledges are needed. The project aims to advance understanding of the way asthma and other complex conditions can be productively engaged, leveraging ethnography, deep play with interdisciplinarity and deep respect for different kinds and forms of knowledges.Keywords: medical anthropologydigital ethnographyenvironmental communicationexperimental ethnographyinterdisciplinarityasthma Notes on contributorsKim Fortun (Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, Rice 1993) and Mike Fortun (Ph.D. in History of Science, Harvard 1993) are faculty in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Erik Bigras and Tahereh Saheb are students in Rensslear's STS Ph.D. programme; Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn is a recent graduate of the STS Ph.D. programme at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Jerome Crowder (Ph.D. in Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh 1998) is faculty in the Institute for Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Daniel Price (Ph.D. in French and German Philosophy, DePaul University) is faculty in the Honors College at the University of Houston. Alison Kenner (Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 2012) is an assistant professor in the Department of History and Politics at Drexel University.