Serendipity in anthropological research : the nomadic turn

Challenging the idea that fieldwork is the only way to gather data, and that standard methods are the sole route to fruitful analysis, Serendipity in Anthropological Research explores the role of fortune and happenstance in anthropology. It conceives of anthropological research as a lifelong nomadic journey of discovery in which the world yields an infinite number of unexplored issues and innumerable ways of studying them, each study producing its own questions and demanding its own methodologies. Drawing together the latest research from a team of senior scholars from around the world to reflect on the experience of research, Serendipity in Anthropological Research presents rich new case studies from Europe and the Middle East to examine both new and old questions in novel and enriching ways. An engaging examination of methodology and anthropological fieldwork, this book will appeal to all those concerned with writing ethnography.

• Introduction
• I: Navigation
• 1: Errancy in Ethnography and Theory
• 2: The Growth of a Conception
• 3: Seductive Communities
• II: Mirage
• 4: Israeli Soldiers, Japanese Children
• 5: Privileged and Volatile Nomadism
• 6: Becoming a Triple Stranger
• 7: Some Cautionary Tales from an Anthropological Romance with Jews from Libya
• 8: Moving Fieldwork
• III: The Journey
• 9: Spiritual Travels, Social Knowledge
• 10: Flying Witches, Embodied Memories, and the Wanderings of an Anthropologist
• 11: The Anthropologist as a Nomad in Dangerous Fields and the Emergence of Cultural Criminology
• 12: The Straw in Anthropologists' Boots
• IV: Wandering
• 13: The Cosmopolitan Movement of the Global Guest
• 14: Social Science under Siege
• 15: The Suspicious Anthropologist
• V: Oases
• 16: The Significance of Colours in Pastoral Bedouin Society
• 17: The Structure of Bedouin Society in the Negev
• 18: Bones of Contention
• 19: Through the Kaleidoscope