ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the sites and the relationships of the author's fieldwork, on the evolution of her methods of collection and analysis of data, and dissemination of findings since her first stay in India, in Autumn 1995. It describes the notion of data in social science as natural units susceptible to being incorporated into a body of knowledge irrespective of the unique historical experience to which they belong. By making explicit the everyday implications and negotiations of research, it describes the author's struggle to overcome the imbalance of power between the different sources of knowledge related to Hindu divorce. The village has maintained its own social and geographical topography but has at the same time included new acquisitions, sometimes appropriating them in peculiar ways. The pre-eminence of Brahmans and Kirars, which was explained in terms of dominance by professor Chambard, is nowadays still visible in the management of funerary rituals and expiations.
