Tides, Touch, and Care in Collaborative Fieldwork

Abstract

This essay describes the influence of tides and touch on collaborative fieldwork as a practice of care. I draw from collaborations with clamming communities and connect a history of fieldwork with longstanding commitments within environmental communication to use rhetorical fieldwork as a means of witnessing crises and practicing care. This collaborative fieldwork was also shaped by connecting with Édouard Glissant’s critique of knowledge and his poetics of relation as alternative praxis for making knowledge through errant, tidal movements, and touch. I describe how these influences on fieldwork created the context for an evolving digital media effort that has figured how we stay in touch and practice listening to partners and with tides through time.