Where have all the tales of fieldwork gone?†

Notes 1. My statement of these challenges is embedded in Ethnography Through Thick & Thin (1998) but is much more clearly laid out in two more recent papers (2004, 2005), yet unpublished, that are in part responses to the ways in which the multi-sited proposal has been understood in anthropology. 2. For example, Paul Rabinow, who has made one of the most ambitious efforts (Rabinow 2003 Rabinow, Paul. 2003. Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]) to create new terms for anthropological method in its new domains, which he conceives of as an anthropology of the 'contemporary,' eschews the old vocabulary of fieldwork, ethnography, participant observation, etc. In my view, he nonetheless remains true in his alternative scheme of terms to the classic ethos and operations of ethnographic research in anthropology. While I am stimulated by and grateful for Rabinow's effort, I have chosen in my own thinking, which moves in a similar direction, to stick with classic terms like fieldwork and ethnography, even though I admit that these terms would seem odd in themselves if they were not so well established when applied to what anthropologists do in new areas of research. Indeed, Rabinow's terms (as well as his colleagues and students) have inspired the conception of the exemplary collection to which I have referred, Global Assemblages (Ong & Collier 2004 Ong, Aihwa and Stephen, J. Collier, eds. 2004. Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. [Google Scholar]). Still, I am wagering that his neologisms and usages are not as likely to be as successful at growing a new discussion of the distinctive research process in anthropology out of its older terms. Yet, this latter choice would not have much of a chance either if it did not also have Rabinow's effort, and others that might arise, to address.