How much should ethnographers involve themselves with the people, places, and processes they study? One answer has become increasingly popular: invert participant observation into observant participation. This talk draws on an ethnography of ambulance work in California to consider the trade-offs between these approaches. I identify three issues at stake between participant observation and observant participation: field positioning, analytic gaze, and data assembly. Where participant observation presents more opportunities for mobile positioning, outward gazing, and inscription, observant participation presents more opportunities for fixed positioning, inward gazing, and incarnation. I also I consider the advantages of mixing these styles into a hybrid approach. 

Josh Seim is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston College where he primarily teaches courses in social theory and ethnographic methods. He is the author of Bandage, Sort, and Hustle: Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering (University of California Press, 2020)