March 11, 2025
University of Southern California

Lisa Messeri (Yale University)

On March 11th the Ethnography Studio hosted Dr. Lisa Messeri (Yale University) for a workshop titled “Place: Real, Unreal, Hyperreal.” The workshop brought together thirteen graduate students from various programs at USC and UC Irvine. The workshop focused on methodological approaches to studying “reality” through ethnographic fieldwork.

Lisa discussed the idea of “cultivating the field,” emphasizing how researchers must analytically and relationally build their field to make it work effectively. She highlighted the unpredictable nature of when one actually enters into action within the field and the importance of attuning oneself to the rhythm of that moment, which often differs from the tempo set during preliminary fieldwork.

She also discussed strategies to consider distinct audiences during research: one’s interlocutors and the broader academic community. She shared her insights into how to act on this dual awareness and how it shapes the analytical approach and presentation of findings.

Lisa also expanded on the notion of “the future” as a cultural category linked to world-building. She highlighted the usefulness of the concepts of the unreal and fantasy, which are often present in the language of interlocutors. Particularly, the concept of the “unreal” proved helpful for scaling from virtual reality to local contexts and broader macro-political issues. Additionally, her discussion addressed the tendency within technological projects to portray tech as timeless, contrasting with the reality of their temporally situated nature.

In the subsequent talk, Lisa presented her new book, In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles (2024, Duke University Press).

Through Anthropological and Critical Technology Studies lenses, she invited the audience to consider what becomes possible when one engages in an analytical exercise of exceptionalizing the moments when historical events intersect with daily life, situations that challenge perceptions of reality and unreality.

Lisa discussed how, beyond creating parallel social worlds, virtual reality offers numerous possibilities to enhance existing communities. Her talk encouraged participants to think critically about the different narratives that connect technology, reality, and the political possibilities imbued in the relationship between them.

Lisa Messeri’s anthropological research focuses on the norms, aspirations, and consequences of work done by expert communities as they forge new fields of knowledge and invention. Her first book, Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds (2016, Duke University Press), considers how “planet” is not only a cosmic concept, but also a humanistic one. Her second book, In the Land of the Unreal, seeks to understand how the recent resurgence of virtual reality hinged on a belief that technology could repair rifts in reality. Through reading, teaching, and writing, Lisa endeavors to link conversations in sociocultural anthropology with other fields of inquiry, including science and technology studies, media studies, cultural geography, environmental humanities, and history of science and technology. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, The Atlantic, Slate, CNN, PBS, and more. She has spoken domestically and internationally at academic institutions, film festivals, and museums.