Ethnographic fieldwork assumes a researcher who can be simultaneously present and analytical, embodied and observant, legible to participants while remaining reflective about that legibility. Drawing on diary entries recorded during three years of ethnographic fieldwork in France, I examine what happens when the researcher’s cognitive particularity does not conform to that assumption. I develop the concept of rheostatic visibility : the continuous, context-sensitive calibration of self-disclosure and identity expression across multiple audiences, including the self. Like a rheostat regulating electrical current beyond the binary certainty of a switch, visibility can become continuously and agentically calibrated in ways that produce methodological consequences. I argue that neurodivergent adaptation to fieldwork conditions can exceed compensation and generate methodological innovation. The multilingual, cryptographic fieldnote system I developed emerged from coping practices that only became legible after receiving an ADHD diagnosis. I conclude by calling for critical examination of the neurotypical assumptions ethnographic methodology presumes.
This ethnography examines deferred eating among floating day laborers who gather at open-air morning hiring sites ( labor bazar ) across Dhaka, Bangladesh. We define deferred eating as the temporally structured postponement, thinning, or suppression of eating during the hiring window to remain visible and available for work before wages are earned. Drawing on long-term fieldwork supplemented by a background survey of 749 laborers, we show food insecurity is produced not only within households but also through the temporal and social organization of the hiring ground. Workers rely on tea stalls, informal credit, and food sharing to endure waiting, while older workers, recent migrants, less-skilled laborers, and women experience the longest and least buffered deferrals. Hunger is also morally negotiated, as workers avoid expressing need directly and insist they are workers, not beggars. Deferred eating identifies a mechanism through which precarious labor becomes embodied hunger, extending food insecurity research beyond household consumption.
This article proposes the framework and practice of ethnography of/with neighbors, a metaphorical and methodological orientation toward cross-border research conducted in conditions of regional proximity. Drawing on the Tagalog concept of kapitbahay (houses that share a wall or cling together), the article develops ethnography of/with neighbors as a distinct conceptual, methodological and normative intervention. It foregrounds relational proximity, treats neighborliness as historically produced through shared colonial legacies and postcolonial state-making and positions intra-regional fieldwork as a decolonial practice that confronts the structures organizing knowledge production about Southeast Asia. Based on field visits in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, this work examines the unevenness of regional mobility and the forms of recognition and care that shape encounters. It advances five methodological propositions that constitute the ethnography of/with neighbors framework, each illustrated through ethnographic vignettes, and calls for intentional engagement, caring collaboration and institutional support for cross-border scholarship within Southeast Asia.
This photovoice study explores women’s connection to marine fisheries in Kalymnos Island, Greece, how they perceive their contributions, and how the legacy of sponge fishing continues to shape contemporary gender roles and social expectations. Participants in the study described a deep, early connection to the sea that transcended gender. Furthermore, although socio-economic changes, have transformed women’s roles, participants felt constrained and that their contributions were overlooked. Our data shows that historically embedded ideals surrounding the resilient Kalymnian woman continue to influence women’s experiences. Hence, while empowering, this identity to some extent has reinforced traditional gender roles, reducing available time, limiting public participation, and weakening cohesion. Discussions further highlighted how gendered norms and moral expectations generate frustration and anger, also challenging the dominant narrative regarding Kalymnian women’s strength. The photovoice method enabled women to reflect on their lived realities while building common ground among women of varied generations and backgrounds.
In this article we introduce and demonstrate the urban pre-tour: a novel future oriented ethnographic method for engaging with the possibilities of everyday life in future cities. In doing so we contribute to a growing body of scholarship which seeks to contest dominant top-down urban futures narratives. We argue that to responsibly and ethically engage with city/urban futures it is vital that we account for the sensory, embodied and affective experiences, expertise and futures imaginaries of real people, as they emerge from their embodied and sensory experiences in everyday interspecies, technological, weather and built urban environments. As such we advance established mobile video-based urban tour and go-along methodologies in what we see as a necessary step towards creating and activating new knowledge about possible ground-up city futures through attention to urban experiences, multispecies lives and infrastructures.
