On “Becoming the Phenomenon”-based Ethnography (BPbE). Towards an ontology of becoming

Starting from the ethnography on the world of dance that I carried out as the basis for my Ph.D. dissertation, I discuss the tacit and embodied dimension of everyday life and interaction, on which common-sense knowledge heavily rely. In addressing the epistemological and methodological problem of the invisibility of common sense knowledge, I propose a research methodology – i.e., “Becoming the Phenomenon”-based Ethnography (BPbE) – aimed to avoid the un-reflexive use of membership knowledge, and consciously, knowingly and reflexively exploit the ethnographer's lived experience as an heuristic tool. Being BPbE based on an ontology of becoming, I discuss the process of acquiring – as an adult ethnographer and in an observed way – an embodied competence, an habitus, and contrast the proposed method with other autoethnographic ones. Finally, I focus on techniques for writing/reporting ethnography able account for the corporeal and tacit dimension of everyday life.