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CFP: Visualizing Toxic Places

Visualizing Toxic Places (VTP) is a collaborative experiment with new ethnographic methods and modes of expression. The project is designed to explore "toxicity" in many guises (chemical, discursive, gendered, mediated, and others), "place" (as an analytic focus in ethnography, in experience, as site of governance, and so on), and ways "toxic places" can be conveyed and analyzed through diverse modes of visualization (expanding how visualization in ethnography is conceived and practiced). 

Center for Ethnography

The Center for Ethnography supports continuing innovation in the practice, expression and theorization of ethnography, the signature method and genre of cultural anthropology with ever widening uptake in other disciplines and beyond the university. Since established in 2006, the Center has hosted a diverse array of projects and seminars – experimenting with ethnographic “para-sites,” for example, theorizing ethnography after theory, and deliberating the processes and ends of ethnographic collaboration.  

The Lead Zone (La Zona del Plomo)

Submitted by stefanieg on

In 2013, I worked with ethnographic collaborators to visually represent the problematic of lead contamination at the Port of El Callao, Perú. Usually unnoticed in the fray of mining politics, the port presents an unusual but critical site to contemplate the human impacts of extraction through its pervasive condition of toxic exposure. The port is where particulate minerals, mined in the Andes, are transported and stored before being shipped to foreign markets.

VtP Project Schedule

Participating in Visualizing Toxic Places involves these stages

  1. BY FEBRUARY 13: Submit an approximately 250-word project description, two images, captions and title.  
  2. BY FEBRUARY 20: Once accepted, register to work in project’s digital workspace, http://centerforethnography.org
  3. BY FEBRUARY 27: Submit two images (1 & 2) (with extended captions for each). 

VtP Research Questions and Key Concepts

Visualizing Toxic Places is designed to advance five key concepts. The design ethnography process -- moving from place proposals to digital photo essays to a gallery installation -- will provide data for this conceptual work. Cumulatively, the project will address these research questions: 

VtP Research Questions and Key Concepts

Visualizing Toxic Places is designed to advance five key concepts. The design ethnography process -- moving from place proposals to digital photo essays to a gallery installation -- will provide data for this conceptual work. Cumulatively, the project will address these research questions: