Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the productivity of thinking coffee in Seoul from changing perspectives—from within and "through elsewhere" (Robinson, 2016)—and discusses its methodological implications for studying the emerging fields of globalised practices and spaces of consumption.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to reimagine the geographic, discursive, and imagined distances by linking on-site fieldwork on coffee in Seoul with the researcher's everyday life 'back home' in Zurich. Engaging with anthropological notions of "doing nothing" (Ehn & Löfgren 2010) and the researcher's embeddedness in the field, the practice of fieldwork is understood as a fluid process (both in spatial and temporal terms) through the ongoing practices of tracing across geographic boundaries (through social media; by continuously keep thinking about the topic). I reflect on these strategies of tracing less in terms of a methodological charter, but rather as a more general research environment and everyday life condition, from which the ethnographer departs to perceive, intellectually engage with, and making new links to generate her fields.

Starting with an anecdote about an unplanned visit to a coffee event in Zurich and the subsequent research through the Internet, I discuss in what way this unexpected encounter off the site (away from Seoul) has challenged the localised understanding of practices surrounding coffee and opened up new perspectives on the spatiality of the field.