Open AccessCreating Agency: What Ethnography Can Learn from Storytelling
Author(s) -
ZAVYALOVA ANNA
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
ethnographic praxis in industry conference proceedings
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1559-8918
pISSN - 1559-890X
DOI - 10.1111/1559-8918.2019.01309
Subject(s) - storytelling , agency (philosophy) , ethnography , comics , sociology , visual arts , aesthetics , narrative , media studies , art , literature , social science , anthropology
This PK explores the relationship between ethnography and post‐modern storytelling techniques that shift the locus of agency towards the audience and away from the protagonist. The presentation builds on insights from a project about the future of storytelling, and explores the ways in which various storytelling formats (theater, film, comics) promote creative agency through immersion and interaction. The PK shows how through a deep engagement with the lives of the people we study, and our ability and willingness to take clients along with us, we as business ethnographers assume a sense of ‘creative’ agency, which allows us and our clients to take greater ownership of the story we tell.