This article by Andrea Cornwall, Telma Hoyler, Emma Crewe and Cristiane Bernardes relates our experience of collaborative ethnography. Developments in qualitative research have increasingly recognized the value of collaboration. Some examples involve parallel enquiries in which ethnographers come together around frameworks, share data and collaborate in analysis – rather than working as a collective throughout the research process, including fieldwork. Less has been written on doing what we refer to as ‘collective ethnography’. Through a series of vignettes, we tell the story of a research experiment in collective ethnography, focusing on politicians and their social worlds in São Paulo, Brazil. We suggest that an engaged process of collective enquiry offers sources of insight that usually lie beyond the ethnographic gaze: including into our own conduct and the choices we make in our ethnographic encounters and interpretive avenues.