An ethnography of international aircrew, this paper considers embodiment as locus for understanding contemporary experiences of, and anthropology's own ambivalent relationship with movement and fixity.
Paper long abstract
Illumination of the isomorphism of place, identity and culture in traditional anthropology has spawned a myriad of theoretical perspectives and methodological practices - from network theory to multi-sited ethnography - that represent a world in/of movement. These, in turn, threaten to recast the discipline as a nomadology. Ethnographically, this paper focuses on the experiences of international aircrew, a profession characterized by heightened ambivalence, spatially between extreme geographic mobility and physical incarceration, and inter-personally in intense fleeting attachments. Working from Foucauldian thought and Csordasian phenomenology, the paper calls for the study of the body and embodiment as a site and perspective respectively for understanding the ambivalence of this particular experience and anthropology's own ambivalent relationship with movement and fixity.