Sinne ja takaisin: lähiökenttätyöstä kaupunkietnografiaan

This article is a methodological essay on ethnographic orientations in a context that is far-removed from the conventional settings of anthropological fieldwork. It is based on fieldwork done intermittently between 1985 and 2001 in Pozzuoli, a town bordering Naples in South Italy. The question of location takes many forms in anthropological research, and here three facets of this issue are discussed. Interpretations are patterned, first, by the presence of the researcher in a particular setting; second, by the ground set by the corpus of (regional) ethnographic traditions; and third, by transforming theoretical ideas and conventions of writing. Knowledge is eventually pieced together as an ethnographic narrative from ordinary and even seemingly insignificant minutiae of everyday life. The thickness of ethnographic descriptions is based on encounters where shared meanings open out through varying communicative, bodily and social orientations. The shifting of to a certain extent unpredictable fragments is the basis for understanding. Ethnography as a text and ethnography as a method are related in many ways before, during and after fieldwork.

Authors

• Anna-Maria Tapaninen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30666/elore.78807

Abstract

This article is a methodological essay on ethnographic orientations in a context that is far-removed from the conventional settings of anthropological fieldwork. It is based on fieldwork done intermittently between 1985 and 2001 in Pozzuoli, a town bordering Naples in South Italy. The question of location takes many forms in anthropological research, and here three facets of this issue are discussed. Interpretations are patterned, first, by the presence of the researcher in a particular setting; second, by the ground set by the corpus of (regional) ethnographic traditions; and third, by transforming theoretical ideas and conventions of writing. Knowledge is eventually pieced together as an ethnographic narrative from ordinary and even seemingly insignificant minutiae of everyday life. The thickness of ethnographic descriptions is based on encounters where shared meanings open out through varying communicative, bodily and social orientations. The shifting of to a certain extent unpredictable fragments is the basis for understanding. Ethnography as a text and ethnography as a method are related in many ways before, during and after fieldwork.