Contribution short abstract:

Through our patchwork experiences of accompanied research, we question the concept of ‘field’ in relation to our making of ‘home’. To avoid the dichotomy ‘home’-‘field’, we propose to speak of ‘research experiences’, acknowledging the diverse immersive and intersubjective ethnographic practices.

Contribution long abstract:

Affective ties are central in ethnographic knowledge production and, in recent decades, more and more anthropologists overtly recognize their emotional, social and political positions, involvements and entanglements in the contexts of their ethnographic research. However, the real working and living conditions of anthropologists, as well as their familiar entanglements and accompanied research experiences still occupy a marginal position in anthropological issues, being mainly relegated to methodological discussions. Despite its marginality, accompanied ethnographic research has deep impacts on knowledge production, both epistemologically and in terms of the researcher’s positionality.

Through the practice of herstorying, that is to care for our stories that complexify research experiences and ‘make openings for new kinds of stories to tell’ (Yates-Doerr 2020:240), and the concept of patchwork ethnography (Günel and Watanabe 2024), that recognizes the multiple limits, commitments and entanglements of anthropologists and their research projects, we question the concept of ‘field’ in relation to our making of ‘home’. The practice of ‘fieldwork’ lies at the core of ethnography and builds on the concept of ‘field’ as opposed to ‘home’, a dichotomy that persists also in literature on accompanied research. Following D’Amico-Samuels (1997), we propose to avoid the term ‘field’ and to speak instead of ‘research experiences’. These acknowledge the different immersive, interactive and intersubjective ethnographic practices taking place in anthropological work, without evoking images of difference and locality and escaping the disciplining function of the term ‘field’. ‘Research experiences’ do not dismiss the key anthropological contributions of an immersive, interactive, intersubjective method based on experience.