Social Anthropology

Anthropological definitions and demarcations of ‘the field’ remain fundamentally anchored in tropes of location and spatiality, and the association between field and fieldworker is still primarily characterised as being maintained by distance in space. This article argues that ‘the field’ must be regarded as much as temporally constituted as it is normally seen as spatial. By exploring and unfolding the temporal properties of the field (e.g. different tempos, paces, extensions and projections of past, future etc.), it is suggested that the spatially anchored notion of multi‐sited fieldwork can be complemented and extended with one of multi‐temporal ethnography.

This article explores juxtapositions of serendipity and discomfort in methodological and ethical issues raised by my research with a First Nation in Canada, in light of the changing conditions of fieldwork in indigenous contexts. It also offers reflections on the liminal condition of the PhD candidate. Personal narratives on the processes of both entering ‘the field’ and the academy, focused on experiences of discomfort, lead to larger anthropological debates, especially regarding the tensions between applied, activist and academic anthropology. Ultimately, I argue for the use of ‘reflexivities of discomfort’ as a critical tool to produce relevant anthropological knowledge.

What can we learn from a ‘liar’ and a ‘madman’? Serendipity and double commitment during fieldwork

, edited by Gottlieb, Alma

Opportunity, cliché and cosmopolitan politesse

A commentary on Feldman