Paper short abstract:

In the context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, this paper examines ethnographer and informants alike as unwilling ‘diplomatic’ representatives. It discusses political neutrality in field relations, indirect communication, and affective states that both facilitate and threaten ‘everyday diplomacy’.

Paper long abstract:

Based on long-term fieldwork in Russia, but focussing mainly on the aftermath of the 2014 Malaysian airliner downing in Ukraine, this paper examines the individual ethnographer and informants alike as unwilling 'diplomatic' representatives in the field. Firstly, I discuss the familiar 'political testing' experience of researchers by informants, and field-relation 'neutrality' (Ergun and Erdemir 2009). Next, I draw on the anthropology of indirect communication to characterise 'everyday diplomacy' after the event as 'silence' (Hendry and Watson 2000) but also civility. Third, I examine attendant affective states of 'tension, disturbance, or jarring' (Navaro-Yashin 2012) that both threaten diplomacy and enable it. Finally, I argue that classic ethnographic rapport building deserves further examination in the light of the porosity of politics, the social environment and the field.