Alexandru Balasescu

1

On the Ethnographic Subject

Multisited Research, Urban Anthropology and their Methods

In the last 25 years anthropological research shifted its focus from the

investigation of the exotic other to the research on domestic matters. “Otherness” itself

came under the analytical lenses of Anthropology, and multi-sited research became

possible within new theoretical frameworks. However, the methods and techniques of

ethnographic research did not always “keep the pace” with this change, and the

pedagogical process seldom considers new challenges of the field. Students of

Anthropology are taught how to recuperate failure, but they are never taught situating and

adapting the ethnographic tools to the needs of a specific fieldwork, or how to explore the

elements that would lead them to an informed choice when deciding for a multi-sited

research. Starting from my own ethnographic research that took place between 2002 and

2003, this article proposes a “tool-kit” for multi-sited urban fieldwork and its pedagogic

use, without the claim to being exhaustive.

Alexandru Balasescu

2

Introduction: The docile body of ethnography.

“MEANS AND ENDS” by Mahatma Gandhi

“Means and ends are convertible terms in my philosophy of life. The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree, and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end, as there is between the seed and the tree. They say “means are after all means”. I would say “means are after all everything”. As the means, so the end. There is no wall of separation between means and end. Indeed the creator has given us control over means, none over the end. Realization of the goal is in exact proportion to that of the means. This is a proposition that admits no exception.” p. 37 (Mahatma undated)

Reading Gandhi in the light of the material culture theories sheds a new light on

anthropological fieldwork methodologies. Indeed, one may wonder, what is the

importance of methods in the creation of anthropological theory? What is the meaning of

the fact that half of my fieldwork I spent on the phone, trying to get appointments, in

taxis or on the way to my appointments? What is the significance of the fact that I was

not allowed to take pictures in some cases? What is the importance of secrecy for some

fashion designers and how does it influence my work?

And, most importantly, what were the means used by the author for data

production? What were the objects surrounding me, how did they transform me into an

urban anthropologist, how did they create the data, how did they play into my interactions

in the field?

From June 2002 to September 2003 I was engaged in fieldwork in Paris and

Tehran, part of the research for my dissertation thesis. Numerous were the instances in

Alexandru Balasescu

3

which these type of questions haunted me, during and after the fieldwork. The tale of one

of those moments follows:

“On a sunny autumn afternoon two friends invited me to have a tea at the Paris

Mosque. Built in Paris after the First World War in memory of Algerian Muslim

combatants, the Grand Mosque of Paris is not only a place for prayer, but a center that

attracts visitors, hammam (Turkish bath) aficionados, local intellectuals who find a nice

meeting place in the interior court, and so on. The Mosque has a tearoom and a restaurant

where one can taste North African cuisine.

In the patio, in the shade of fig trees, we took a seat at one of the tables and ordered our

teas. While waiting, one of my friends showed me a poster that announced a fashion

show taking place that very evening in the Mosque’s restaurant. The designer is Saliha

Achourane “creatrice de Paris”, and she is launching her perfume “Sally”, a fig’s

fragrance that “sends us towards Middle East” (“qui nous renvoye au Moyen Orient”).

The show is announced for 7:30 p.m.; the models will walk in the two halls of the

restaurant. Fortunately it is only 6 p.m., and I have the time to run to the newspaper stand

in the corner to buy a notebook for the event (I was completely taken by surprise). We

find places inside the restaurant, and wait for the show, observing the public. I ask two

photographers if it is possible to have copies of the pictures they’ll take; they agree to

send me electronic copies. My cell-phone (freshly bought) allowed me to take the

coordinates of both the photographers and the designer’s PR. It was Thursday, October

10th 2002, the middle of the year’s fall fashion week in Paris.”

What afterwards became a central piece in one of the thesis chapters could have

been as well a failure. Were I not present there in that moment, I would most probably

Alexandru Balasescu

4

never know about the event, nor met and interviewed the designer (it was not heavily

publicized). If I would not have had the needed time, I could not have buy the notebook,

thus my observations on the catwalk would have been based only on memory, and on the

photos taken by somebody else.

This episode is relevant for the methodological questions that a multi-sited

anthropological (urban) fieldwork raises. In a fragmented environment the assumption is

that not every moment is a field instance. As opposed to Malinowski’s model of intimacy

and quais-continuous contact with a field, an urban setting offers “pockets of contact”

forming a compartimented field between which one moves. Many times those moments

are neither scheduled or pre-determined (despite attempts to keep an agenda) or clearly

defined and separated. And my possible failure itself would have been generated by a

web of interconnected factors. However, among them two are of increased importance:

the objects an ethnographer uses (or their absence thereof) and the movement, the

trajectory in which the researcher is engaged, which, as in any systemic theory, takes

him/her in a succession of states close to and far from equilibrium. The movement, this

constant during a multi-sited research, is an under-explored and definitely under-taught

component of the anthropological fieldwork. The following article contains both an

empirical exploration of the objects and movement, and a pedagogical proposition

generated by this intellectual exercise. In other words the following pages approach two

aspects of capital importance in anthropological research: the formation and the position

of the ethnographic subject within the discipline of anthropology. I chose the following

working definition of discipline: “methods which made possible the meticulous control of

the operations of the body, which assured a constant subjection of its forces and imposed

Alexandru Balasescu

5

upon them a relation of docility-utility” (Foucault 1979:137). The docile ethnographer is

(in)formed not only through the pedagogical process during her/his graduate studies, but

also by the very use of the ethnographic tools that incorporated into his/her bodily

movements will ideally produce the sought for, and indispensable, data.

Objects of (for) Research

The urban fieldwork is quite a challenge, that is, the delimitations are very vague, and one does not know exactly what to consider fieldwork and what not. The contact with the environment is of course continuous, but the environments are multiple, and not necessarily the same for the researcher and the persons in his/her focus. The fieldwork slips through one’s fingers just like (cologne) water, leaving after it a discrete scent, easy to feel but complicated to theoretically grasp as a coherent image.

This is a fragment of a letter I sent to my advisor, Bill Maurer, after my first three

weeks of fieldwork in Paris. It depicts a state of mind quite far from Malinowski’s

(Malinowski 1978) experience sitting of on an empty beach with the image of the boat

sailing away and leaving the ethnographer all alone with his field (and obsessions). I

would say my experience has been quite the opposite of his, because the urban researcher

has to find her or his Coral Gardens among billions of activities taking place in the city.

First one has to find the urban gardeners and approach them.

In my experience, the agreed-upon mode of conversation in the urban space is the

interview. The legitimate activity of the researcher in the public eye is the interview.

Consequently for the first appointments I always asked for an interview. However, even

this formulation can be problematic for reasons to be explained.

Interviewing itself is a method that has been repeatedly discussed and contested

by anthropologists. There are two main critiques concerning this method: one is the

Alexandru Balasescu

6

distance between verbal discourse and action. My objection to this is that verbalisation is

an action itself, and may be analyzed as such. The second critique is concerned with the

form of interview itself. The interview has a meta-communicational level, and it is not

presupposed by all the cultures. It institutes arbitrary norms of communication that are

not universally recognized, and implies sometimes-unshared backgrounds with direct

consequences on an event. Briefly this is the critique that (Briggs 1986) makes of the

interview.

While I agree with most parts of this critique, I would like to point out that in my

experiences conversation is something that easily replaces the interview. I prefer the term

“interviewees” at worse or, better, “conversation partners” to “informants”. Informant is

reminiscent of a unidirectional relation of power, in which the ethnographer is the passive

receiver of the objective information. During my face-to-face encounters I attempted to

create a conversational atmosphere; I would not hesitate to give my own opinion on

subjects discussed, or to share my experience with the interviewees, in order to create a

stress-free environment. I would add these observations to Charles Briggs’ proposed

schema for understanding and interpretating the interview, taking thus a wide range of

variables into account: social situation, social roles (assumed or not) of interlocutors,

message form, channel and code of transmission of the message, and the referent.

This proposition is close to Geertz’s methodological “thick description” (Geertz

1974). In his vision ethnography as practice offers the key for understanding

anthropology; Geertz maintains that the interpretive character of anthropology is

obscured by the way anthropological knowledge is shaped. The fieldwork data “are really

our own construction of other’s people constructions of what they and their compatriots

Alexandru Balasescu

7

are up to.” (Geertz 1974: 9) – a fact often obscured in anthropological writing. This

effacement gives the false impression that anthropology is an observational more than an

interpretive science. Therefore “[a]nalysis[...] is sorting out the structures of

signification” (idem), not the identification of actual, real, social structures. At the

opposite pole of Geertz one has the French circle of pragmatic anthropology, which

embodies the extreme form of methodology derived from these critiques. It proposes the

complete renunciation of the interview method in favor of direct observation.

I would position myself close to Geertz’s (and others’) perspective of

understanding anthropology as an interpretative science. While I agree that fieldwork

does not allow one to collect raw data, as (Willis 1980) also pointed out, but rather to

produce data starting from a grid of perception (the methodology) and using specific

tools (the methods) I am less sure about the multiple layers of interpretations. That is, I

think that social structures are made visible in the process of subjective interaction, and

one can understand social phenomena beyond “structures of signification”.

Since I desire theoretical coherence, I will begin with an extensive list of objects

that constitute the paraphernalia of the researcher in an urban environment. This

constitutes both the indicators of the objectification of the researcher and the

materialization of the field experience. The objects used have an explanatory dimension

in analyzing the subject of research and the subjectivation of the researcher. Along the

lines (and shaped by) my theoretical choice, I place tools, objects, and artefacts at the

core of my interpretation. In different social context, the objects of an ethnographer play

a major role in shaping his/her relation to the field and to the persons s/he interviews. Not

everybody relates in the same way to the objects like the tape recorder. The most telling

Alexandru Balasescu

8

example among these objects is the photographic camera – photography being a delicate

method of collecting images of whose social significance changes drastically with the

context. These objects viewed as tools may be facilitators as well as obstacles during the

fieldwork, depending on the particular configuration of power relations in the specific

moment. Consequently, a better understanding of the methods of urban ethnography is

generated through an ethnographer’s tools. In other words, these objects are my fashion.

The tape (minidisk) recorder comes first on the list. Considering the fetishism

of discourse, from which most anthropologists suffer, this is the first object one is bound

to buy. The smaller the better, because the urban researcher has to cover long distances in

the same day, keeping different appointments and has to record in places that sometimes

do not offer much physical space. Its smallness is also beneficial in interactions with

interviewed persons, making its inhibitory presence less apparent. The recorded tapes or

minidisks are literally the material expression of fieldwork interview. I had to get used to

using the recorder in a most discreet manner, changing the tape in ways that did not

disrupt the conversation (although it inevitably did). Usually, the most interesting things

one hears are after the recorder is off.

Batteries are equally important. During my first interview with the manager of

“Paul Smith” showroom in Paris my batteries discharged. I did not have any spare

batteries to recharge. Not only that this diminished the quality of the data gathered, but

the quality of our conversation itself, because it introduced a sense of uselessness

resented by both of us – I assumed at that time. Ever since, I always had one set of

batteries with me when going to interviews. Similarly, the tapes have to be abundant,

since interviews can last longer than one hour (although in the fashion business they are

Alexandru Balasescu

9

typically shorter, since people are extremely busy). For this reason, again, minidisks is a

much better choice.

The daily agenda allowed me to make appointments with my interviewees, to

take notes, and to make observations on the “regime of time” in the two cities that

constituted my focus of research (I will get back to this point). The agenda, after its

utilization, is a memento of the field, of the rhythm of the meetings, and of the

fragmented character of urban fieldwork. It may become a sort of retrospective temporal

chart of the field. The agenda sets the time of the researcher, and marks the territory of

the field, through the addresses one is supposed to meet the future interviewees. If it is a

little bigger, it can substitute for a notebook. However, the choice of the agenda itself

must be done according to the projected conversation partners and places of encounter. A

too fancy agenda may hurt in modest millieux, and conversely a less expensive, simpler,

brand-less one – unless flaunted as statement – may bring awkward moments when

“studying up”.

A cell phone was indispensable. Even before having a permanent address, the

urban ethnographer is pushed to have a fixed cell phone number. In Paris, although it was

2002, I purchased my first ever cell-phone, after being exposed to constant social

pressure coming from my very future research network. The persons I contacted always

asked for my cell phone number in order to cancel our appointments if necessary. It is the

object that facilitates the illusion of permanent contact with the field. With the cell phone

one can potentially contact future interviewees, the persons that are significant for the

research, or just the new friends one is bound to make in the city. Also, it may be

Alexandru Balasescu

10

important to consider that the communication fees are sometimes elevated, and they may

(or have to) be mentioned in the research budget.

A photo camera is the second eye of the ethnographer, and the main eye of the

field. Like the recorder, it transforms the visual impressions into images on material or

virtual support. The use of a camera can create various problems. Many types of camera

users, from paparrazi to tourists, populate the urban space. Since the object gives the

measure of one’s subjectivity, it is hard to delimit oneself from the other types of users.

While tourists are innocent in the eyes of the photographed subject, it is better not to be

confused with journalists or paparazzi. Photography is a delicate matter, to which I often

returned and which created uncomfortable situations in the field (see also Susan Sontag,

1977). One of the most important aspect that need to be remembered is that photography

has a vast array of social significations depending on the spatial and temporal context in

which it is used. A general and ethical rule must require taking permission to photograph

one scene or another (unless one is photographing moments that are usually publicly

exposed, i.e. carnivals, marches etc.).

A detailed plan of the city, with means of transportation is necessary in order to

identify the addresses of appointments, and to create a global image of the urban space

covered during the research. Along with this, if the city has a good network of public

transportation, the weekly or monthly ticket is recommended. In Tehran this was not the

case, and I had to try the whole range of transportation, from buses to common and

private taxis.

Means of Transportation. In Paris I preferred ground transportation, as opposed

to the metro, because it gave me a sense of the geography of the city. The bicycle was a

Alexandru Balasescu

11

healthy alternative, and it proved very useful when strikes in public transportation could

have interfered with an already agreed upon appointment1. In Tehran, an unknown city

for me, it took approximately one month to understand what is the best way to reach a

point in the city, and how to appropriately use the means of transportation. Each of the

transportation systems had its unique particularities. For example, the common taxi in

Tehran is a town car shared by four to five people of both sexes. Considering the relative

segregation of the urban spaces in Tehran, I had to figure out the rules of occupation of

the interior space of the taxis. That is, in no case may a woman passenger sit between two

men. At times, this involved a complicated chess-like movement of the passengers. While

in Tehran women generally chose to travel as separate as possible from men, a general

gender segregation rule is omnipresent in many aspects of life in Iran.

Cities usually have libraries. A library card is something that I have always tried

to procure, for many different reasons: libraries, even if do not always have books related

to one’s research, always give a space for study that recreates somehow the atmosphere

of a campus. Also, I found any book interesting, regardless of the topic; local novels,

when they are not evasion means, gave me the idea of how literary authors look at the

same space I was in the process of observing. The literary sensibility may be helpful in

constructing an appealing narration of the field. In libraries one is also likely to meet

interesting people, who can offer fresh perspectives on one’s approach. Although it did

not happen to me, that does not rule out this possibility. Remark that some research

centers have paying library cards.

1 Business cards might be useful, although I have never understood why. It is true, a business card

gives one the air of seriousness, although the exchange of business cards may not be appropriate in all of the cases.

Alexandru Balasescu

12

A bag for carrying around all these objects, and that offers an easy access to each

one of them was essential. I found it better to have a different bag adapted to the chosen

mode of transportation. A small backpack is ideal for biking, but in bus or taxi it may

cause discomfort each time one needs to take it off or put it on.

A suitcase on wheels, not too big, but not too small either was needed because I

had the habit of carrying books with me. Also, all the materials listed above, and the

papers one is bound to produce during the fieldwork can be particularly heavy. The urban

space has the advantage of being accessible to wheeled suitcases. In none of these cases

did I find a big backpack useful. A backpack can become really heavy and hard to

manoevre in many situations. While it may be useful while visiting remote places, in an

urban settings, wether Paris or Tehran, a big backpack is less versatile.

It took me some time to figure out all the objects I needed. Field situations (like

the one described in the case of batteries) reveal the need for different types of objects.

Also, my tendency to lose pens put me in sometimes-awkward situations, when I did not

have a pen to take notes or write phone numbers.

These tools are not only mediators between the field and the researcher. For, to

treat tools as mere mediators would be to imply the existence of an objective reality of

the anthropological subject that waits to be recorded. The daily manipulation of these

objects in fact creates the anthropological knowing subject (the researcher in the field),

and produces data that objectifies the subject of research. The recorded tapes, the photos,

the notes are all material expressions of the interactions that lead to the constitution of

knowledge, and of the knowing subject. I can say the field has molded me as much as the

field has been molded by me. At the same time, one has to keep in mind that tools,

Alexandru Balasescu

13

both theoretical and material, are as much enabling as they are constricting. The

combination of senses and memory is what we are building on, and both of them are

tricky. The theoretical tools previously acquired help us organize not only the

observation we already made, but also allow us to consider the ways in which we are

observing. Often the tools act as sure guidance, at other times they push us to create

things where there are none, or to overlook highly important details.

Collecting and combining the data seems to me more like a process of production,

that is, ‘collecting data’ may be an innapropriate term for what an ethnographer activity.

The theory we are producing is highly dependent on what we are precisely doing in the

field. And since I was mainly interviewing people (when I was not running around to

catch them) the theory I will be able to abstract from my data combines movement with

verbal discourse. And movement was indeed a central part of my theoretical and

analytical observations, both bodily movements and the movement within and between

cities. And the two cities I happened to be during my fieldwork had completely different

modes of relating with space and time. In Paris, most of the time people prefer to meet

the researcher in neutral places (call them public spaces) like cafes or bistros and in

their offices. This takes away the possibility of observing the process of creation of

data itself, but it may gain on the side of analyzing the specific areas or places

people chose. On the contrary, in Tehran the interviews took place mostly in

private, this very fact being revealing of a specific mode of spatial organization of

social interaction. Thus, the specific public space of the fieldwork, and its configuration

must be an analytical part of any urban anthropological inquiry.

Alexandru Balasescu

14

Movement

My ethnography is both one of subjects in movement and of dress in movement; it

is about clothes moving with the body, and of clothing moving from the creation desk to

the store and to the client’s wardrobe. It is also about the movement between the two

cities, and the account may be disrupted at places, as was my experience.

Originally I intended to follow the commodity (dress) in its trajectory from the

places of inception to the markets in Tehran. Shortly after starting my fieldwork in Paris,

however I understood that I was not best positioned for this kind of approach. It would

have been much easier to start with the end point of the chain of distribution, that is, with

the place of selling. Influenced by the persons I met in Paris, and through early

revelations of the field (among which was the discovery that, despite of my best efforts, I

did not know anything about fashion creation), my project and the approach soon

changed. It seemed more interesting in Paris to explore fashion creation and distribution

to Middle Eastern clients in general, while Tehran offered a point of comparison for the

social practices of fashion creation, as well as the observation of fashion diffusion in a

geographic location that is imagined in the West to be associated with Islamic practices

(allegedly mutually exclusive with fashion).

My own subject position as an ethographer in movement questioned the

association of space and practices in the disciplinary field of anthropology, or the

disciplinary creation of the field. All of my fellow students, both in France and in the

United States, would ask if I was Iranian upon hearing that the geographic location of my

Alexandru Balasescu

15

field was Tehran. Because of my accent, I was visibly neither American nor French in the

eyes of my colleagues. But what made me Iranian? What prompted this reaction? I will

use again my past practice as a student of anthropology in Romania, and my relations

with French school. I have observed that in the politics of student exchange between

Romania and France, while the French students were studying Romanian topics,

Romanian students were expected to study Romanian topics (with the notable exception

of the Tempra2 exchange program with Rhone-Alps region, 1997-2000). Further along

the way of my studies, during conferences or browsing through references, I noticed that

it is often the case that researchers who are not nationals of Western countries tend to

study topics linked with the place of their national origin. There is an undeniable

hierarchy in this distribution of geographical areas of study among researchers. For

example, while an American researcher is seldomly asked if he is Indian because he

studies India, an Indian researcher studying, say, Patagonia creates a disturbance in the

disciplinary order. It is troubling that, even while arguing for the deconstruction of power

discourses, the disciplinary formation of the social sciences perpetuates the very practices

that create the relations of power it propounds to challenge. Many fellowships or aid for

research are designed specifically in this logic. While they may encourage research

coming from the areas in focus, they discourage the complete dissolution of the

hierarchical relations ((Gupta 1997). In the article “The Shaping of National

Anthropologies” Gerholm and Hannerz extensively develop the specifics of the

disciplinary formation in anthropology, showing not only the divide between

2 This three-year-long program consisted in an exchange of student at Masters or Ph.D. level between University of Bucharest and University of Lyon II. Each year the French student was expected to develop a research project about a Romanian social reality, while the Romanian student was expected to reflect on a subject at choice from French society. I am deeply indebted to the organizers of this program for the opportunity I had to develop the anthropological tools acquired in my student years in Bucharest.

Alexandru Balasescu

16

“metropolitan” and “peripheral” anthropology, but also their historical formations

(Gerholm 1982).

It was striking for me how this matter goes largely unquestioned among young

researchers, the students who are directly affected by it. In her article “You Can’t Take

the Subway to the Field” (Passaro ) points to one of the basic (if not the main)

assumptions of anthropology as a science: the existence of bounded cultures, with

identifiable features. The perpetuation of the “imperial nostalgia” (Rosaldo c1989) of

cultural areas has practical import for academics, as it sustains the “legitimation of

disciplinary authority.” This “nostalgia” is perpetuated through practices of the genre

exposed, through which scientific authority is gained, and legitimacy maintained.

In my research, I did “take the metro to the field” (just like Passaro took the

subway while studying homelessness in New York), and I linked both subjects and areas

through a back and forth movement between sites. Movement and mobility between two

research sites raises a series of questions: multi-sited ethnography, although

recommended by many anthropologists such as Gupta and Ferguson (1997), Hannerz

(1998) and Appadurai (1986), and practiced by some Ossman (2002), remains an

unorthodox approach in anthropology, with a methodology that remains to be developed.

George Marcus proposed a comprehensive analysis of the methodological problems and

theoretical implications that multi-sited research raises. Emerging from the collapse of

the distinction life-world/ world system, multi-sited ethnography poses three major

challenges to the production of ethnographic knowledge: “testing the limits of

ethnography”, “attenuating the power of fieldwork”, and the “loss of subaltern”. In my

Alexandru Balasescu

17

case I have been mainly concerned with the first two aspects of this methodological

approach. My fieldwork design closely follows this definition of multi-sited research:

Multi-sited research is designed around chains, paths, threads, conjunctions or juxtapositions of locations in which the ethnographer establishes some form of literal, physical presence, with an explicit, posited logic of association or connection among sites that in fact defines the argument of the ethnography. ((Marcus 2003), p. 105)

The multi-sited approach is present, logically, in the case of topics related to

movements of people or commodities. I consider my research multi-sited not only from a

national perspective, but also as an urban experience of following designers, fabrics, or

ideas about fashion that traverse neighborhoods, spatial locations, and people’s

imaginaries. During a multi-sited research project, one may find it difficult to

balance the importance attached to movement between the sites, and that of the sites

in itself. I consider that this is not a zero sum game. That is, emphasizing the motion

of people, or objects does not take away from the importance of places, does not

“standardize” the experiences or erase borders. On the contrary, the ethnographic

description of places gains the dynamic character of the objects and bodies

traversing them, whithout compromising their individuality. Simultaneously, borders

become “much more” material, or they materialize through the practices one has to

follow in order to cross them. In fact, the moment of crossing the border is much less

significant for individuals than the preparation for doing it. Borders are objectified by the

practices of the visa, which can be an interesting introduction to the place one is about to

visit or live for a period of time. Applying for a visa could also introduce a death moment

in one’s research, in that it is a moment of suspension, a liminal stage if you will, that in

my case lasted from ten days (my visa for a long sojourn in France) to two months (my

Alexandru Balasescu

18

first visa for Iran). Producing the necessary papers for obtaining a visa is a process of

objectification (mis en objet) of the researcher. The researcher is subjected to

international bureaucracy, and this moment is also part of the subjectivation of the

researcher. During the two months of waiting for my first Iranian visa that I spent in

Bucharest (my attempt to obtaining it Paris previously failed) were lived as a complete

failure by me. Repeated visits to the embassy, constant postponing, new papers I have

been asked to produce, all in the context of the coldest Romanian winter in the last 15

years contributed to at the point of giving up my intention to even go to Tehran. The only

manner to deal with the guilt provoked by the time loss was to try to draft one chapter of

my future dissertation. When on the verge of abandon I received the visa, my enthusiasm

was half.

As Passaro underligned, and my experience showed, the urban fieldwork and its

real heterogeneity renders hard if not impossible to follow a classic methodological

approach that assumes clearly delimited homogenous “fields”. In the strict sense of word,

any urban fieldwork, even if takes part in only one city, is, and must be theorized and

approached as, a multi-sited field. The movement between neighborhoods and social

settings has the same if not more elevated impact and relevance as the movement

between two countries. During my research Tehran and Paris proved to be divided by

different borders… those between neighborhoods and different spaces (strongly

resented in Tehran) marked by clothing, or those between social positions (obvious

in Paris and revealed by the entire paraphernalia, from dress to the brand of the

note book). The object of research necessarily becomes these very borders and the

Alexandru Balasescu

19

manner of instating, negotiating, and passing them, practice by everybody involved, be it

researcher or not.

An important detail that needs further analysis is the un-predictive-ness of the

urban space. While setting the agenda for the interviews is somehow controllable (much

less in Tehran), the situations in which one may run into his/her “coral gardens” while

strolling in the city may be completely destabilizing. A lack of preparation for this may

easily create situations of failure and frustration (as the case of the Grande Mosque defile

proved it). The elements that need to be negotiated are the dynamic inherent in any

movement within and between heterogeneous sites, the requirement to record significant

observations, details and conversations, and the appropriate mode of interaction in a

given setting, that is the fine tuning of means and tools to the field situations. As a brief

reminder, bodily movements are tools in themselves (Mauss 193…) that need to be

trained prior to field experience. The scope is not that of an imaginary control over the

field context, but that of training a sensitive approach to one’s material presence’s effects

on the field. Even though one is wearing the wrong shoes or have to borrow the evening

dress for an unexpected invitation to a soiree, these are parts of the field experience that

reveal not only material conditions of the research, but actively form the empirical

substance of the fieldwork, contributing to the construction of the ethnographic subject.

In a multi-sited ethnography, the body of the researcher moves in space, forming

an imaginary map, a trajectory that may be the geographical expression of the networks

s/he establishes. I find it very useful to trace a diagram of the persons encountered and

the way they are related, although I did not use this in my analysis yet. The knots of the

networks may be people or events, and the encounters are always taking place in a

Alexandru Balasescu

20

delineated area of the site. The next section is an overview of the ethnographic relevance

of trajectories and mediations between knots of the networks.

Trajectories and Mediations

For reaching possible interviewees, I very seldom, if ever, used a direct means of

contact. There was almost always an intermediary, a second level of communication, a

secondary path one had to use to arrive to the site of research; the first mediators were the

telephone, the e-mail, contact letters, or in my case public relation offices. As underlined

above, the material object mediation is of first importance: it facilitates entering into

contact and at the same time it preserves the impersonality of the first exchange.

I find this an interesting mirror for the impersonality of the urban relations. The

ethnologic trajectory reveals the subject/object of research along with its “materiality”:

both material objects part of the research, and the visible network of relations established

on the field. In keeping with the metaphor of Coral Gardens, one may run into the

gardeners in different situations while in the city. In my research, there were three

different ways in which I found my interviewees.

First, and the most usual, was starting from a person that I already knew, many

times a researcher in the field, who pointed me to a series of other people who became

thus linked through the object of my research. Also, directly writing a letter of

introduction or sending an email was another way of meeting future interviewees. Most

of my appointments were generated this way; alternatively, I met some of my

interviewees only by frequentations of urban spaces or events.

Alexandru Balasescu

21

There were moments of direct unexpected contact with relevant persons or

situations in which one had to improvise, and approach the ‘urban gardener’ informally.

The most telling moment of this nature in my fieldwork was, again, the fashion catwalk I

witnessed at the Grand Mosque de Paris. The sensation may be of panic in the first

moments, and it talks about the fragmented character of an urban multi-sited research:

“the field is ‘jumping on you’ when least expected – such is the case of the fashion

catwalk organized at the Grande Mosquée of Paris. Suddenly, one feels that the tools at

hand are not enough to gather whatever one wants (back to the researcher kit).” The rest

is history.

The third modality, which is less frequent, is ‘to make the field come to you’.

That is, by simply mentioning one’s research topic in a gathering, for example a dinner,

one may encounter people who are interested in it, or who may point to their knowledge

of places and persons directly linked to the topic. The reason I insist on the dismantling

of these trajectories is a methodological one. My fieldwork in Tehran started well before

my leaving Paris. I tried to contact persons from the Iranian Diaspora in Paris who may

have had contacts in my field of interest. A well-known Parisian photographer, working

in Iran on subjects linked to youth and women, proved to be the source of most of my

contacts in Tehran. After we have met several times (once with the occasion of her

exhibit entitled “Being twenty in Tehran”) I found myself in possession of a well

garnished list of phone numbers of artists or stylists from Tehran. Conversations with the

photographers, as well as with different persons familiar with Tehran constituted a

precious introduction to the field, even in its physical absence. The Internet is also a

source of information that contributed to my familiarity with the field, which proved to

Alexandru Balasescu

22

be useful later in my encounters. An interesting observation is that, while in Tehran the

fashion designers are located in a small area of Northern Tehran, the Parisian ateliers are

dispersed through the city, and the mobility of links and interactions in the industry is

even greater.

The network one builds while creating the research became visible to me. As

mentioned, I draw it on a A4 white paper… the fact I never used it may be telling… This

type of map may be considered a sort of genealogy of the fieldwork, and I will return to it

in the conclusion. While moving between spaces and people, I came into contact with a

great variety of persons from different social categories. All of them seemed interested in

other interviewees I had met before, or conversely often I had an obligation – almost a

moral constraint – to tell them about my previous trajectory; a trajectory that in fact

created the knowledge I had about their field of work and their persona.

Most of the people I met were introduced to me by others. That is, every call I

made would begin with me saying: ‘I am calling you at the recommendation of...’. After

this moment s/he would already had placed me in her own network of affiliations and

somehow formed an idea about who I might be or what I might ask for, what were the

fields of my own interest. Her/his previous knowledge of the persons who made the

recommendation shaped the interactions I had with my new interviewees. The trajectory

is a measure of the homogeneity of the field that indicates in what manner persons and

situations are interrelated and introduces coherence in one’s approach.

Alexandru Balasescu

23

Instead of Conclusion

The urban multi-sited ethnography approach needs a special and increased

attention in the pedagogical process; more and more anthropologist chose the city as their

fieldwork location and sometimes two different cities interrelated through their similar

social practices, or linked by commodity chains. The classic methods of anthropological

research that emphasize homogeneity, proximity and intimacy may not be fully adapted

to the challenges of urban and/or multisided ethnography. The ethnographic subject is

informed by material choices, be it those of tools or those of movements and trajectories

of the researcher. In this spirit some recommendations for a future pedagogy may be

drawn from the fieldwork experiences presented above.

Realistically one may not speak of any “virgin” field site therefore the imperative

of informed choice is justified during the process of discipline training. When designing

one’s project, the choice of the field sites must take in consideration the entire aspects of

the research focus. Depending on the focus, in a multi-sited research it is not only

important to carefully chose the two or three places of research, but also to chose the

temporal sequence of research. This choice may be made based on the logic of the

practice in focus, and also on the practical matters that would facilitate or constraint the

movement. It is important to understand how this choice may influence the entire

research. The urban researcher (and not only her/him) would develop a series of maps

that are the geographic expression of the network established during the research. Ideally

there should be at least two maps, one describing the human network, and the other the

social practices network, with the linking modalities marked on the trajectory between

Alexandru Balasescu

24

two network knots (be them persons or significant places). The temporal sequence would

be marked on the maps, indicating the moment of conception for every link and knot, and

also the time spent to cover the trajectory. This will form both a geography of the

network and a genealogy of the ethnographic research itself (Ideally the networks would

be marked on a geographical map of the sites). The map may constitute a graphic

generator of analytical insights into the fieldwork, view the importance of movement in

any multi-sited ethnography.

The prior knowledge of the sites, with their local specificity, may contribute to

informed choices regarding the practicality of living and developing the research activity.

The basic “tool-kit” may be developed in conjunction with this knowledge, for example

one may already know if a bicycle is necessary or not in a certain urban environment.

The list of objects contained in this text is not exhaustive but may form a good starting

point for any aspiring ethnographer. Accordingly, the budget of the research project may

be adjusted in a more realistic and informed manner, a very important detail considering

the pressure to obtain grants while in graduate school, and in the academic career in

general. An anticipation of the kind of contexts in which the researcher will evolve would

also be benefic for the shaping of the bodily presence to meet the expectations of the

persons to be encountered. Those, after all, form a type of public that judges the

researcher’s performance and responds – verbally or not – to the type of presence

projected by the researcher. The objects surrounding him/her, from dress to the pen, are

constitutive parts of the message sent out, and convey greatly the responses and

information that return to the researcher. Understanding the mode of constitution and

subjectivation of the researcher may contribute to the understanding of the message itself

Alexandru Balasescu

25

as an active response to it. It is not about the appropriate dress, but more about

developing the sensitive approach that would explain why a certain body movement (or

shirt-brand) received a certain answer in a certain context…

Objects, trajectories, movements and mediations are methodological aspects that

need to be given a particular emphasis during graduate studies and in the process of

producing any research project. Exploring these ethnographical aspects in courses that

combine theory with practice must be a requirement of future anthropological pedagogy.

This equally requires the extension of temporal borders of a fieldwork to the preparative

moments that shape the individual methodology. In their turn, those need to be analyzed

and integrated in the theoretical framework of the research.