Archive for June, 2009

Reading as an ethnographic tactic

Friday, June 19th, 2009

One of the things, totally unsurprising, about the social world where I’m working is that it’s full of texts. Even restricting ourselves to written texts, we find not only books but also articles, dissertations, textbooks, pamphlets, blog posts, media coverage, government proclamations, analyses of government proclamations, activist manifestos, online books, posters, banners, schedules, graffiti, email, [...]

Beginning of fieldwork in France

Monday, June 8th, 2009

I’m writing this from a small white room on the 9th story of an apartment building, comfortably spartan, the shelves still full of the shirts and camera equipment of the previous occupant, the bed sprawled out under a striped duvet. A squadron of black birds are patrolling outside in the chilly rain. This is only [...]