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Paper short abstract

This paper conceptualizes patchwork ethnography aligned with Strathern’s “partial connections.” Drawing on my fieldwork in Spain as a doctoral student and mother of three, I show how research unfolds between singularities and repetitions, shaping relational political life in temporal rhythm.

Paper long abstract

This paper conceptualizes patchwork ethnography as an ontologically grounded method aligned with Marilyn Strathern’s notion of partial connections and an anthropological understanding of life as unfolding between singularity and repetition. While patchwork ethnography is often described as a pragmatic response to contemporary fieldwork constraints, this paper argues that it also resonates with a relational and temporal ontology in which everyday routines and singular moments are mutually constitutive.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork with supporters of a right-wing populist party in Spain as a doctoral student and mother of three, my research was shaped by care responsibilities, limited mobility, and discontinuous access to the field. Rather than framing these conditions as methodological shortcomings, I show how they attuned my research to the rhythmic reproduction of political life across repetition and contingency.

Through repeated stroller walks across politically marked urban spaces, recurring encounters with campaign materials, and singular moments at political events attended with my children, I encountered political support as a practice continually reassembled through everyday routines, material objects, affective encounters, and relational ties. These moments suggest that political belonging is neither a stable identity nor a bounded group position, but an ongoing relational process.

By bringing together partial connections, patchwork ethnography, and attention to the interplay between repetition and contingency, this paper proposes a methodological perspective that moves beyond totalizing or static models of political belonging. Attending to the temporal rhythm of everyday life offers a way to approach politically sensitive worlds without presuming coherence, stability, or complete ethnographic access.