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Paper short abstract

Based on a fieldwork with Duha reindeer herders, this paper examines how ethnographic learning emerges through integration and conflict. It argues that moments of relational discomfort function as learning opportunities, producing knowledge through entanglement rather than linear data collection.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines tensions inherent in long-term ethnographic fieldwork within Indigenous communities, drawing on a year of living and working with the Duha reindeer-herding community in northern Mongolia. It explores the limits of ethnographic knowledge and the conditions under which learning becomes possible in extended, immersive fieldwork settings.

I argue that learning emerges through the researcher’s gradual integration into community life, a process shaped by emotional, moral, and relational dynamics. Rather than facilitating smooth or linear data collection, such integration often generates moments of discomfort that disrupt research expectations and become productive learning opportunities. Knowledge is produced indirectly through uncertainty, conflict, and partial understanding, as the researcher becomes entangled in local networks of obligation, trust, and disagreement.

The paper shows that navigating these moments of discomfort is central to developing a holistic understanding of community life. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and conflicts are not peripheral to ethnographic practice but constitute key sites where relations are renegotiated and understanding deepened.

By foregrounding discomfort as methodologically generative, the paper contributes to anthropological debates on knowledge production and reflexivity, and proposes reconciliation as a methodological practice for sustaining long-term ethnographic engagement.