Anthropology at sea

Abstract

AbstractEthnography remains central as a form and location of knowledge production in anthropology. Given this weaving together of ethnography and anthropology, to ask, what good is anthropology?, is also to ask, what good is ethnography? Taking apart two of the guiding metaphors for ethnography—fieldwork and immersion—allows us to explore a distinction that undergirds them: that between land and sea. While the field in fieldwork has been heavily theorized, immersion often appears as a metaphor to signal anthropological legitimacy. But for those who are at sea, immersion is not just metaphor but materiality. For objects to be immersed at sea requires an understanding of displacement and buoyancy. Beyond dislocation, displacement produces the buoyancy essential to navigation. Thinking through this principle allows for an ethnographic practice attuned not only to the frictions of contemporary life but also to how displacement moves forward, in unequal and haphazard ways, but forward, nonetheless.