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Commentary: Interpretive Risk Ethnography as a Means of Understanding Risk Problems: Encounters with the Ordinary-Extraordinary and What Comes After?

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Extraordinary Risks, Ordinary Lives

Part of the book series: Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty ((CRSTRU))

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Abstract

Ethnographic excursions into risk in everyday life involve reflexivity about epistemological and ontological framings and are useful for studying emergent phenomena. Drawing on anthropological knowledge and interdisciplinarity, chapters in the volume bring richly contextual, highly textured, in-depth accounts center-stage, posing questions about cultural intelligibility. They also account for different manifestations of pragmatism. In this commentary, interpretive ethnography is taken into a space where it is possible to develop practices of problem-focused environmental and risk study. Moreover, consideration is given to how working methodologically in this way can help to make public policy more relevant. Finally, the wider significance of analytic work undertaken by interpretive ethnographies is considered in relation to the so-called post-qualitative turn and growing interest in the new materialisms in qualitative research methodology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Karen Henwood

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  1. Karen Henwood
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Correspondence to Karen Henwood .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Beata Świtek

  2. University College London, London, UK

    Allen Abramson

  3. Independent Researcher, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Hannah Swee

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Henwood, K. (2022). Commentary: Interpretive Risk Ethnography as a Means of Understanding Risk Problems: Encounters with the Ordinary-Extraordinary and What Comes After?. In: Świtek, B., Abramson, A., Swee, H. (eds) Extraordinary Risks, Ordinary Lives. Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83962-8_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83962-8_12

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-83961-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-83962-8

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