Going in, out, through: A dialogue around long skirts, fried chips, frozen shacks and the makeshifts of ethnography

Lancione, Michele ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9018-3562 and Rosa, Elisabetta 2017. Going in, out, through: A dialogue around long skirts, fried chips, frozen shacks and the makeshifts of ethnography. City 21 (2) , pp. 135-150. 10.1080/13604813.2017.1353335

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Abstract

In this paper, we shift from conventional academic writing toward something similar to a dialogue, an encounter, a few hours spent in a virtual café where we chat and systematically try to excavate our respective ethnographic endeavours. Such experimentation in format is needed, we argue, in order to re-approach the questions characterising in-depth ethnographic work from a different, possibly fresher, perspective, and to communicate those more directly and freely. Rather than embedding our doubts, fears and wishful thinking in academic formalism, we spell those out aloud, as a composite and unfinished flow that touches upon relevant literature but is still raw and grounded in our current and respective fieldwork. Relying on our differentiated works with Roma people in Italy, France and Romania (2004–ongoing), in our dialogue we talk about the challenges of positioning; the construction of new (self)identities; the building of relationships of trust, care and affect, and their break; the role of ethnographic knowledge in activist work; the risk and the certainty of failure; the difficulties associated with entering and leaving the field. The aim of our dialogue is not to offer answers to questions that have been at the centre of the ethnographic discipline since the start, but to open a space of incremental and reciprocal learning that may serve as an inspiration for other young ethnographers like us.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
ISSN:	1360-4813
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	17 July 2017
Date of Acceptance:	6 July 2017
Last Modified:	25 Nov 2024 19:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/102511

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