When considering the ethnographic field, language use has been of continued anthropological concern. Traditional approaches to the field have associated language use with concepts such as place, territory and ethnicity and have tended to bound them within a single site. However, in conditions of increasing globalised mobility, approaches to both fieldwork and language use within the field are changing. Using existing scholarship on minority-language communities in Europe alongside original fieldwork with Somali migrants in Glasgow, this article considers the dynamics of that relationship within the contexts of single-sited, multi-sited and online fields. It finds that, for an inquiry focused on both language use and mobility, established modes of thinking about the field are a methodologically restrictive practice on 'being there'. Instead, the authors argue for rethinking the field as a 'spoken' one where, with language at the fore, emphasis is placed on 'being there'.
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Re-locating the Ethnographic Field
From 'Being There' to 'Being There'
Máiréad Nic Craith and Emma Hill
In Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2015
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 42–62
Lines in the Sacred Landscape
The Entanglement of Roads, Resources, and Informal Practices in Buriatiia
Anna Varfolomeeva
active geological explorations, with geological brigades searching for gold, jade, wolframite, molybdenum, and other natural resources. For many residents of the district, who lived as a closed community, mining explorations in the region meant their
Commoning in New York City, Barcelona, and Paris
Notes and observations from the field
Ida Susser
public rather than community emphasizes the openness of the commons. Stavrides portrays the commons as a set of linked networks in contrast to a closed community. Thresholds emphasize the ways in which people enter through open doors to link with a wider
