Over the past decade scholars in the humanities and social sciences have increasingly been pressed to demonstrate the manner in which their research is “useful” to society while simultaneously, funding for their research has been more tightly tied to bibliometric measurements that prioritize high-brow scholarship geared towards publish results in “leading” international peer-review journals. In many ways these are two demands that seem to point in rather different directions – oriented to very different goals and outcomes for the research in question. This paper works to develop an understanding of how the challenge of moving in two directions at once can be approached.

In order to do this it develops the notion of multi-targeted ethnography, inspired by George Marcus’s notion of multi-sited ethnography, but with a different focus. Where Marcus’ multi-sited ethnography constitutes an accumulative mode for acquiring research materials, information and inspiration, multi-targeted ethnography, as we develop the concept, is highly distributive in its orientation to the dissemination of potential results and outcomes of the ethnographic endeavor. In addition to developing the concept of multi-targeted ethnography, the paper provides several concrete examples of how multi-targeted ethnographies can be assembled to meet the joint challenges of social engagement and academic advancement.