Ethnography, Cartography, Ethnomapping: dialogues and compositions in the field of research

Abstract

From research experiences with homeless people, we seek to discuss the possibilities and challenges of the ethnographic and cartographic method, as they have been used in anthropology and psychology, from the perspective of interdisciplinary dialogues and compositions. The precarious living conditions of people on the street, who hang between exclusion and resistance, continually challenged us and imposed reflections on the relations between the researcher, the participants and the institutions in the research field. In this article, we present the premises of a methodological composition that we call “ethnocartographing” in an ethical and political dialogue about the act of research as an affirmation of life. We emphasize that the proposed approach does not translate into methodological techniques, but corresponds to an immersion into the universe of the other in which writing constitutes an important dimension of knowledge production between research and life.