Multi-Sited Ethnography: Problems and Possibilities in the Translocation of Research Methods

This collection of essays emerged out of intense conversations on multi-sited ethnography, prompted by a workshop held at the University of Sussex that brought together researchers from different institutional backgrounds and affiliations in Europe, the United States and Africa – including George Marcus himself, the person most associated with the term and the method. These researchers were brought together not only to discuss the shifting meaning of the concept in anthropology, but also to see how it has influenced actual research projects that have spanned the world. The volume that has resulted is not meant to be read as a program but as an extended provocation, an argument that multi-sitedness can be good not only to think, but also to act, both with and through. Arguably, this creation of a dynamic, shifting perspective is not so different from anthropology itself – a discipline dependent on the cultivation of aesthetic, embodied and intellectual sensibilities in relation to the world at large.

Simon Coleman is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sussex.
Pauline von Hellermann is a Research Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Sussex.

1. Introduction: Queries, Collaborations, Calibrations Simon Coleman and Pauline von Hellermann 2. Multi-Sited Ethnography: Five or Six Things I Know About It Now George E. Marcus Section A: Spatialities of the Field Section A Introduction Michael Crang 3. Researching Lives in Motion: Multi-sited Strategies in a Transnational Context Kanwal Mand 4. The Unwelcome Ethnographer, or What ‘Our’ People (May) Think of Multi-sited Research Ester Gallo 5. Exploring Senegalese Trans-local Spaces: Reflections on Multi-Sited Research Bruno Riccio Section B: Challenging Conventions? Multi-Sited Ethnographies of Institutions and Processes Section B Inroduction Andrea Cornwall 6. ‘What do You Call the Heathen These Days?’: For and Against Renewal in the Norwegian Mission Society Ingie Hovland 7. From Boardrooms to Mineshafts: In Pursuit of Global Corporate Citizenship Dinah Rajak 8. Understanding HIV/AIDS in Uganda: Sites and Positions Michael A. Whyte, Susan Reynolds Whyte and Jenipher Twebaze Section C: Multiple Pathways and the Price of Liberation Section C Introduction James Fairhead 9. Migratory Birds, Migratory Scientists, and Shifting Fields: The Political Ecology of a Northern Coastline Werner Krauss 10. The Anxieties of Engaging in Multi-Sited PhD Research: Reflections on Researching Indigenous Rights Processes in Venezuela Kathryn Tomlinson 11. Teaching with George Marcus (and Learning from Michael Fischer): Pedagogy as Multi-Sited Ethnography Kaushik Sunder Rajan 12. Novelty and Method: Reflections on Global Fieldwork James Ferguson