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.