Paper short abstract:

Determining the field is the first step in ethnographic methodology. What is the field (terrain)? Where and when does it occur?

Paper long abstract:

Determining the field is the first step in ethnographic methodology. Where and when does the field (terrain) occur? The field is both an event and a methodological hypothesis. If we are to go by Gramsci and Stuart Hall's formulations, a field is a space-time conjuncture structured by a set of contradictions. What is the nature of these contradictions and how do they operate to determine a moment of human life? After all, this is not very divergent from Gluckman’s famous theory of society as a castle of cards. Methodologically, when and how do conjunctures emerge? Do they vanish? If so, how does the ethnographer work with them as an historian? This paper explores these issues in terms of the longterm history of the proponent as an ethnographer.