On the materiality of research: a multidimensional and multisensory ethnography of food and migration.

This paper stems from my doctoral research on the culinary practices of a group of Moroccan women living in Milan hinterland (Italy). Through a praxeological approach to subjectivation , I could study the food issues at stake in the definition of the self at the individual level and in the statement of a shared belonging at the public one.
A micro-anthropological analysis of the material culture involved was possible thanks to the combination of some multidimensional and multisensory data. First, the use of audio and video recording devices let me register visual and audio records which were later employed together to reconstruct the environment of the ethnographic set, or separately to break up complex data into different significant parts. Secondly, my own body was the instrument through which I gathered sets of sensory information about my object of study, thus incorporating them to be analysed at a further stage of the research.
The use of devices and of my own body throughout my study was also objet of constant reflexivity, addressing both the relationships set between the actors involved and the ethnographer on the basis of such use, and the interferences occurred between different instruments or different sensory levels of the research. This presentation, which will be supported by visual and audio materials, aims at illustrating this research and analysis approach and at proving its relevance for an unconventional study of food issues related to migration.