![\"\"](\"http:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ruelamarck1.jpg\" "\\"ruelamarck1\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nExcept that the first time I try to take this picture, the camera focuses on the lines in the the bench where I propped my camera. When we correct for this oversight, we see the long view along the street, creeping up to the horizon and out of sight. <\/p>\n
This walk home, which extends just past the horizon of this photograph, always seems like a terribly long distance, even though it only takes a few minutes. Someone suggested that my apartment is about as far from a metro stop as you can get within the city limits, even though it’s probably only 600m.<\/p>\n Until recently I wouldn’t have been inclined to count this scene as “part of my fieldsite,” which is normally fairly institutionally limited by the boundaries of the university. But I’ve started to notice people I recognize from the campus getting on and off the metro here. Last night as I got off the metro, I saw a group of people whose faces I recognized from the campus squat<\/a> I’d just visited. I hadn’t spoken to them before, but as we passed on the platform they looked at me carefully, and I realized I vaguely recognized them and tried to emerge for a second from my usual not-looking-at-every-passing-person-on-the-metro face, and then we had walked by each other towards opposite exits. <\/p>\n There’s a bit of an ethnographic point here. At first my neighborhood (near metro Guy Moquet, if anyone cares) just seemed to me a random place where I’d happened to find an apartment. But as time passes I’m discovering that it’s not as disconnected from campus as I thought, since it’s also the residence of Paris-8 students and faculty. Not that I feel remotely integrated into off-campus social life. But it’s good to at least recognize little pieces of its existence in the anonymity of the urban crowds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After nights of fieldwork, ethnographers have to make their way home. For me, after I get off the metro, the walk looks like this: Except that the first time I try to take this picture, the camera focuses on the lines in the the bench where I propped my camera. When we correct for this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[486,488,495],"tags":[538,614],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n
\nIf we turn around, we get a glimpse of the intersection and the other avenues disappearing and the hint in the streetlights of spring leaves on the trees on the left-hand street. You wouldn’t have seen that four weeks ago.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n