Paper short abstract

In this paper, first I wish to share experience about the productivity of disappointments in fieldwork. Second, I wish to show how some important clues for understanding local dynamics may be obtained by taking a distance from the field.

Paper long abstract

In my fieldwork on the conceptions of the body in kalarippayatt, the martial art of Kerala (India), and on the way transnationalisation could affect them, I was immediately confronted with the « wrong » location for fieldwork. In fact, the school of martial art that could make me get a visa was not an « authentic » one in my view, because it was attended by foreigners. My attempts to understand what kalarippayatt was before transnationalisation were fruitless, until I realized that that school was an excellent location for my work, since it was at the heart of the transnationalisation process, and that there were no such things as a before and an after. Furthermore, it was by talking to Keralans living in Paris that I could better understand some local dynamics. This too questioned some of my assumptions about being there, and about where the field is.