Schrödinger's Cat and the Ethnography of Law
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: Drawing on research regarding undocumented immigration and transnational adoption, this essay argues that legal and ethnographic accounts retroactively instantiate potential realities that were there all along but are only made visible by official recognition. In this sense, the “field” that is at the center of ethnographic inquiry is brought into being by the activities of the ethnographer, just as the field of (un)documented bodies is brought into being by a judicial decree. At the same time, such authorizations of the real are haunted by the noise that is left behind. This noise makes itself known by its pull on official representations, pointing to the instability of our objects of study, the multidimensionality of everyday life, and the gaps and disjunctions that compel us to return to what was overlooked in order to make our ethnographies real.
Authors: Barbara Yngvesson, Susan Coutin
Institutions: Hampshire College, University of California, Irvine
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2057210289