Management of Extreme Situations

6Ethnography of the Extreme: Epistemological and Methodological Issues of the Use of Video

6.1. Introduction

Within the framework of the research program “Management des situations extrêmes¹” (Lièvre 2001, 2004, 2016), various methodological issues have rapidly emerged (Lièvre and Rix 2003). To study the modalities and principles of organization, including those of polar ski expeditions, it was necessary to invest actual practices in their specific context, “the organizing as it unfolds” (Van Maanen 2011). Since then, ethnography became a particularly relevant method of investigation (Yanow 2009; Ybema et al. 2009; Van Maanen 2011; Watson 2011; Lièvre and Rix-Lièvre 2013; Rouleau et al. 2014). Indeed, participant observation makes it possible to approach actual practices and their underlying principles without limiting oneself to “verbal, voluntary and intentional communication, [… which] is especially inappropriate to provide information on non-verbal and involuntary aspects of the experience” (Favret-Saada 2009). It is immersion in a community that allows the study of effective practices and promotes their situated understanding. A detailed understanding of the design and unfolding of a particular polar expedition, for example, requires studying it in all its singularity and reporting on its specific course. However, from a more anthropological perspective, it is a question of starting from the understanding of singular practices to a modeling of modalities and organizational ...