Abstract

MARTINS, Humberto. “You are not from here… You are only here for a while!”: exploring the shadow sides of a fieldwork experience. Etnográfica [online]. 2012, vol.16, n.3, pp.525-546. ISSN 0873-6561.

In this article I refer to three episodes that occurred during my fieldwork in the Portuguese-Galician border (2000-2004). On the one hand I reflect globally on ethnography as a social and an individual experience, and, on the other hand, I approach methodological and ethical limits that were imposed or exceeded during that period. These episodes, which were an outcome of specific social interactions and relations, kept me in distinct experiential frontiers. Eventually they caused strangeness and functioned as mirrors, reflecting a circumstantial presence that interrupted the “normality” of that fieldwork setting in an anthropology that, apparently, took place “at home”. The text turns to be a significant contribution to fieldwork practicing, not only and in particular considering the study of the contemporary Portuguese rural world but also because it reveals the multiple interactions in which the anthropologist engages with when in the field.

Keywords : ethnography; fieldwork; reflexivity; social interactions; visual anthropology.

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