ABSTRACT
E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s anthropologist, would study the “entire culture and social life” of the people assigned to him. Anthropology’s classic image of field work also includes an assumption about the durability of fields, and the involvement of “natives” in them, relative to the length of the ethnographer’s field stay. In a way, one might argue, the term “multilocal” is a little misleading, for what current multilocal projects have in common is that they draw on some problem, some formulation of a topic, which is significantly translocal, not to be confined within some single place. Multi-site ethnography almost always entails a selection of sites from among those many which could potentially be included. In the field, Evans-Pritchard’s anthropologist would throughout be in close contact with the people among whom he was working, he must communicate with them solely through their own language, and he must study their “entire culture and social life.”
