Speculative Realism in Ethnographic Methods
If we consider objects in the light of speculative realist theory we begin to see the possibility for new forms of anthropological method and analysis. In the recent past, anthropology has shied away from analysing landscapes because of fears of flattening our views of the world. However, Tsing states that landscapes can be very Ă«thick.Ă Landscapes encompass the material and the imagined, the past and the present, they acknowledge the potential for change, and they represent political and social realities on an aesthetic and phenomenological level. They allow for the real to be real, and for all things to be intra-related, as each thing thrives or perishes in the life-making project of all other objects. Landscapes also allow for conversation and collaborative research with other specialists; botanists, geologists, physicists, and historians to name just a few, in order to make manifest some of the more subtle connections and entanglements involved in the enactments of the world. Landscapes enable us to reconcile things that flow, such as time, with things that jump, such as technology. This could be seen as the central aim of not only anthropology, but also of the natural sciences and metaphysics. As Harman states, by reconciling things that Ă«flow with things that jumpĂ we bring the world and objects within it onto the mezzanine level, where we can analyse phenomena in context. By doing this we have the opportunity to make manifest individual human experience (which has its own dimensions and functions on an interior level according to its own rules) on the mezzanine level of the world, anchored in a shared reality of spaces, places, and movement.