Chapter On the benefits of serendipity, hanging out, and nomadology. A self-reflexive anthropological reportage

Overview & Synopsis

This self-reflexive anthropological reportage reveals how serendipity intersects both the anthropological research and the anthropologist`s life. Being open to what is unexpected is crucial for constructing knowledge in cultural anthropology ― fieldwork is not to confirm our assumptions, but to follow the people, the events and the meanings we come across. Ethnography is not about taking interviews ― it is about “deep hanging-out”, especially if we work in mobile fields with mobile people, i.e. refugees, migrants, tourists. This entails the necessity to reconceptualise our methodology, to go beyond the sedentarist perspective towards “nomadology”. My own long passage to anthropology ― from small town in postsocialist Poland, via journalism and fascination with undercover social reportage, and then working as a tour leader ― is a pretext to tell the story of engaged anthropology of the mobile world.