ABSTRACT
Even though multi-site studies were already being conducted in the mid twentieth century (see, for instance, Redfield’s 1941 study on the folk culture of Yucatan), classic ethnography – the practice of long-term stays in a chosen field – dominated social research for a long time (Amit, 2000). Marcus’s (1995) article “Ethnography in/ of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited ethnography”, reflecting on the need for multi-sited ethnography, initiated a debate on the design and practice of fieldwork and on the need for methodological changes. The debate continues today. Marcus argued that not all social phenomena can be studied by concentrating on a single site and that ‘multi-sited ethnography’ was particularly well suited to research in late modern times. He encouraged thinking about how we might track social phenomena across space and about how we might map the trajectories of people, things, associations and relationships.
