From co-location to co-presence: Shifts in the use of ethnography for the study of knowledge

Ethnography has been successfully deployed in science and technology studies, and more specifically in laboratory studies. By using co-presence rather than co-location as a starting point to conceptualize and articulate fieldwork, new aspects of knowledge production are foregrounded in ethnographic studies. This research note proposes and discusses co-presence as an epistemic strategy that pays close attention to non-lab based knowledge production that can embrace textuality, infrastructure and mediation, and that draws into relief the role of ethnographer as author, participant-observer and scholar. Furthermore, co-presence as an approach to doing fieldwork generates new prospects for the study of knowledge production. It enables STS to develop the ethnographic study of highly mediated, distributed or non-lab-based fields, such as the humanities, e-research and e-science.