Great ethnographies / ethnographers of *systems*

[Brendan]

Great question from Twitter: “Who are your favorite ethnographers of systems?”

Examples given:

• Jane Jacobs on cities (see: Death and Life of Great American Cities)
• Elinor Ostrom on commons management (see: Governing the Commons)
• Lucy Suchman on human-machine communication (see: Human-Machine Reconfigurations)
• Nadia Eghbal on open source maintenance (see: OSS Research)

Here are some I’d suggest (interpreting both systems and ethnography fairly loosely), with a favorite book from each:

Jenny Odell - attention

How to Do Nothing

Jackie Wang - capitalism & justice system

Carceral Capitalism

Bernd Heinrich - forests

The Trees in My Forest

Keith Johnstone - theater & improv

Impro

Annie Dillard - nature & seasons

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Thomas Kuhn - scientific revolutions

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Steward Brand - time & civilization & the long now

Clock of the Long Now

Douglas Hofstadter - language & translation

Le Ton beau de Marot

[tarngerine]

The one I’m most familiar with is Mary Roach, who feels like a great generalist ethnographer and goes from field to field.

First one I read was Stiff, about corpses/cadavers. Gulp was also an interesting journey through the digestive system.

http://maryroach.net/books-news.html

Caitlyn Doughty is the other I’m familiar with, a mortician who writes about death in a positive way. Has a few books out

From Here to Eternity