Paper short abstract:

Within the context of a research on assisted suicide, this paper concerns itself with designing the field beyond dichotomies such as local and global, online or offline, by designing a specific landscape.

Paper long abstract:

Defining what is "field" in anthropological research is a continuous task that is closely intertwined not only with the way one's topic is constructed, but also with the development of new technologies. From researches in well demarcated localities to the possibility of engaging in multi-sited ones, "field" has nonetheless remained closely associated with "site", implying that locations - be they digital or not - can be easily identifiable either globally or locally. However, through the process of defining where and what is the field in a research about transnational movements associated with assisted suicide, the task of easily defining it through indicating localities has proved to be innocuous: offering a site or sites as answer to the question "Where is the field?" is, in this context, incomplete and, more often than not, misleading. Instead, the field was defined as a landscape enacted by the cooperation and association of heterogenous elements, such as organizations and individuals, practices and knowledge, and not as something easily identifiable geographically or within the strict frame of political borders. A landscape that comprises digital and non digital spaces as parts of the same dynamics. Through this perspective, the aim is neither to ignore the importance of sites nor the possibilities laid out by digital spaces, but to transcend them in a way that shifts the focus of the research space towards the idea of landscape.