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UPSC Optional 2025Question 15AnthropologyResearch Methods in Anthropology150 words

Multispecies, Multi-sited and Critical Ethnography. (Answer in 150 words)

Model answer & approach

- Multispecies, Multi-sited and Critical Ethnography. (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
Each abandons a different assumption of classical ethnography — that the subject is human, that the field is a place, and that the observer is neutral.

Body
1. Multispecies ethnography: named by Kirksey and Helmreich in 2010, it treats animals, plants, fungi and microbes as participants in social life rather than as resources or symbols. Haraway's companion species and Tsing's matsutake supply chains are its exemplars; the method follows organism and human together.
2. Multi-sited ethnography: George Marcus (1995) redefined the field by its object rather than its location, instructing the researcher to follow the people, the thing, the metaphor or the conflict across sites. It captures commodity chains and migration; the standing objection is loss of depth at each site.
3. Critical ethnography: an explicitly political stance drawn from the Frankfurt School and Freire, which studies structures of domination, takes up Laura Nader's call to study up, and treats writing as intervention rather than report.

Conclusion
Together they mark ethnography's shift from a bounded village to a mobile, more-than-human and openly positioned enquiry.
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