COUNTERFACTUAL ETHNOGRAPHY: IMAGINING WHAT IT TAKES TO LIVE DIFFERENTLY

Abstract

This essay argues for the value of counterfactual narrative, and more specifically counterfactual ethnography, to anthropology at a time when the unfinished project of decolonizing the discipline has once again come to the fore and the matter of living differently has acquired new urgency in light of the accelerating climate emergency. In what follows, I will discuss some of the characteristics of counterfactual narratives, explain how they might be tailored to take more than a century of ethnographic practice into account, and offer three counterfactual ethnographic scenarios by way of illustration. Toward the end of the essay, which I hope will also serve as a beginning, I offer brief reflections on what sort of distinctive contribution counterfactual ethnography might make at a time when anthropologists have increasingly embraced the notion that a good part of anthropology’s value for the wider society lies in an ethnographic record stuffed with examples of creative possibilities for what it means to be human.