Village ethnography and kinship studies: Perspectives from India and beyond

Abstract

This article questions the dichotomy of ‘classical anthropological topics/traditional fieldwork’ versus ‘contemporary topics/multi-sited imaginary’ and interrogates the role of village ethnography in the understanding of kinship among globalising Indian middle classes. The argument is twofold. Firstly, I suggest that the current rhetoric on the dismissal of village ethnography in contemporary South Asian studies does not adequately address possible continuities between anthropological studies developed in the 1980s and 1990s and more recent multi-sited approaches. Secondly, I argue that village ethnography might constitute an integral part in a larger multi-sited research agenda, the latter aiming at understanding shifting kinship relations and related politics of identity among highly mobile middle classes. If we understand villages as a field of relations, an important connection is seen to emerge between villages’ importance in middle-class trajectories and imaginations and their role as research locations.