Paper short abstract:

The Middle East has become increasingly inaccessible to researchers, impacting the ability of young scholars to engage in sustained fieldwork. The study examines the potential insights multi-sited ethnography can offer into the practical evolution of anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

Over the course of successive years, the Middle East and North Africa have become progressively less accessible to researchers. As burgeoning scholars, we were nurtured by the narratives of our mentors, who dedicated extensive periods to fieldwork, thereby illustrating our famous being there in an even more accurate way [Geertz, 1988]. Our academic mentors were traditionally specialized in singular regions or countries. However, over our truncated academic journey, successive closures of research fields resulted in a diminishing pool of young researchers able to commit to a specific geographic space, not without constraint. The paradigm has undergone transformation, particularly within anthropology—a discipline entrenched in a challenging colonial history. The evolution of our discipline and the political context of the region forces us to re-build our tools within our new necessities.

Consequently, this paper aims to explore the viability of conducting fieldwork in a world characterized by pervasive uncertainty. Furthermore, we seek to examine this uncertainty, which we aspire to study in the context that periods of indeterminacy “are ideal moments for investigation, in that they take us back to the modalities and values that emerge from the social logics that underlie the determination and perception of risks.” [Dousset, 2019, p. 44]. We will delve into the existing alternatives to traditional long-term ethnography, such as digital fieldwork, evaluating its suitability as an option. Additionally, we will investigate to what extent multi-sited ethnography, beyond a theoretical perspective, may provide insights into the practical evolution of anthropology.