In this episode I read Chapter 1: “Writing Culture – Recording Culture” from the book Recording culture by Daniel Makagon and Mark Neumann. This book can be understood as one of the most important reflections on the increasingly popular methods in ethnographic field work using recording technology. Besides this it is exceptionally well written. The first chapter sheds some light on the context of the so-called “writing culture debate” as a context for equally important reflexions of recording practices as method and means of the study of culture.

I originally read this text for the seminar “Writing culture – recording culture” I taught in the spring term of 2019 at the university of Bern.