The idea of 'ethnography at home' deserves qualification, as all ethnographic work occurs along a continuum between 'home and strangeness' on which adopting the academic stance of the researcher is itself an estrangement (Sarsby, 1984; 132). This project was thus 'at home' to the extent that it was conducted in a cultural setting in which I felt 'at home', and because the 'strangeness' of my presence was largely due to my academic purpose within the space. That said, my queer self-presentation complicates this continuum of home and strangeness, introducing the mode of estrangement I have detailed in my discussion of transgender embodiment in space. Here, I turn to examine the ways in which the notion of ethnography at 'home' complicates the 'field' and interacts with queer estrangement, and the ways in which reflexive
representation of the researcher can act as a point around which ethnographic text is organised.
Ethnography 'at home' necessarily blurs the distinction between 'the field' in which research takes place and 'home' spaces in which the researcher can abandon an ethnographic perspective. However, for urban ethnography in particular this blurring of distinction is exacerbated by the disappearance of the city as graspable object. This is reflected in Frederic Jameson's comments on the difficulty of producing cognitive maps in contemporary urban space:
'distance in general (including “critical distance” in particular) has been abolished in the new space of postmodernism. We are submerged in its
henceforth filled and suffused volumes to the point where our now postmodern bodies are bereft of spatial coordinates' (Jameson, 1991; 48). For Jameson, this dislocation within extensive and unknown networks of capitalist circulation
presents the '“moment of truth” of postmodernism' (ibid; 49). As such, the embodied presence of the researcher must be a starting point not only for learning the field, but also for actively constructing the field in the first place.
In my case some distance between 'home' and 'field' was inscribed in my daily travel across London to the Olympic Park. I also began my research year by making the classically ethnographic move from the academy to 'the field' – as the short journey from Brighton to London. Once situated in London the Park acted as a focal point for my research rather than a boundaried 'site', and I consciously compared my experiences there to other sites across the city (including my 'home' neighbourhoods) and made an effort to understand
London-wide contrasts and similarities. This meant an additive approach to the field in which adjacent, similar, and contrasting spaces emerged and were incorporated into my understanding of the space as it evolved. This resonates with Vered Amit's discussion of the way in which the field is marked by
'instability' and must be negotiated by the researcher, who (particularly in multi-sited research) becomes a 'central agent in the construction of the field' (Amit, 2000; 14).
Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson provide a similar critique of 'the field' as an objective site awaiting discovery and of the ethnographic premise of othering distance that implies. Instead they suggest an approach that highlights a concern for 'location' rather than a reification of 'the local'. Ethnography thus becomes 'a mode of study that cares about, and pays attention to, the
interlocking of multiple social-political sites and locations' (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997; 37). George Marcus provides a framework by which these interlocking sites might be consciously identified in the research process, suggesting a practice of 'following', around which fieldwork might be structured. He writes that the ethnographer should organise their research around 'chains, paths, threads, conjunctions, or juxtapositions of locations in which the ethnographer
establishes some form of literal, physical presence' (Marcus, 1995; 105). This idea of 'following' was influential for my thinking around urban walking, as an
ethnographic methodology in which spaces of similarity and difference are identified, and their related or conflicting production and reproduction is an analytic focus.
These approaches reflect (and often reference) Haraway's 'partial perspective' (Haraway, 1988). She argues for 'politics and epistemologies of location, positioning and situating, where partiality not universality is the condition to be heard to make rational knowledge claims' (ibid; 589). This foregrounding of partiality is a useful connecting concept, drawing together (transgender) embodied methodology and a Lefebvrian understanding of urban space with a critique of the field. It calls for an interrogation of the way in which ethnographic text is produced, prompting the researcher to represent their positionality and active role in constructing the field. Often, the process of writing is a process of removing 'mess' as the contradiction, confusion and non-sequitur of the field notebook is tidied away into a clean argument. John Law calls for an embracing of this 'mess' in research, as a means of 'elaborating quiet methods, slow methods or modest methods' and in order to 'develop methods without the accompanying imperialisms' (Law, 2004; 15).
Ethnographic research itself is an iterative process of writing – of note-taking from existing texts and in the field, transcribing interviews, drafting and redrafting. In order to preserve the embodied presences that are often more characteristic of fieldnotes than final write-ups, Alan Rumsey calls for an
interrogation of the tropes that structure ethnographic writing. Often, this writing presents arrival in a 'strange' place followed by a becoming-familiar that sees the ethnographer recede from the text in favour of an 'objective' stance. The initial truth-claim of arrival only serves to reinforce a later return to Haraway's 'god trick', the 'view from nowhere' that positions the researcher as master subject (Haraway, 1988; 589). Instead Rumsey suggests that 'to advance the anthropological project' it is necessary for anthropologists to develop a 'critical appreciation of other kinds of tropes at play within ethnography, and of their potential for enriching our ethnographic descriptions' (ibid; 288).
This restructuring of ethnography around alternate tropes offers an opportunity to continually return to the ethnographer, reinforcing a partial stance informed by embodiment within (social) space. Charlotte Davies calls for just such a reflexive integration of the researcher's subjectivity into their text, explicitly positioning the researcher in relation to their subjects (Davies, 1999). Similarly, Ruth Behar suggests that incorporating alternative styles of representation into the unstable genre of ethnographic writing may afford an opportunity to 'insert our participating-and-observing selves into the story so we are embodied as subjects' (Behar, 2007; 150). This presence of the researcher within
ethnographic text renders them a centre-point around which argument and representation turns. In my case incorporating this embodied subjectivity means incorporating the transgender subjectivity which underpins the position from which my research was undertaken and from which I write.
Elizabeth Tonkin positions this presence of the researcher as a prerequisite for the study of the everyday, suggesting that knowledge must 'come from
individual encounters and include a mass of informal background which cannot be acquired without personal involvement' (Tonkin, 1984; 220). Similarly,
Carolyn Ellis and Michael Flaherty call for focus on the 'ethnographically particular' using creative genres of presentation to convey the 'complexity, paradox and mystery' of this subjective lived experience (Ellis & Flaherty, 1992;
5). Situating the embodied researcher within the particularities of the everyday unifies the way in which texts are written and the way in which the field is
consciously constructed in the research process. Foregrounding the researcher as embodied subject can act as a thread by which these disparate elements are linked, presenting 'the field' as a social context that is variously strange and familiar, consisting of multiple connected and contrasting localities.
For this project the question of an approach to writing that faithfully represents the researcher and the field is bound up with my central methodology. Walking practice lends itself to an approach to writing that lies in parallel with
ethnography. Basset argues that 'such an exercise can thus raise issues about how we read the city, but also about how we write and represent the city' (Basset, 2004; 408). Jenks and Neves provide a similar commentary on the flaneur, as a figure that 'stands in a relation: to people; to text; to fact and to tradition' (Jenks and Neves, 2000; 3). They discuss the way in which Benjamin's The One-way Street presents itself as a 'fragmented, invertebrate text in which every section would make sense on its own', a text that attempts to realise Baudelaire's dream 'of a poetic prose, an ideal born in the big city, as a result of the experiencing of a myriad relations' (ibid; 12). This 'fragmented, invertebrate text' inspired by walking practice lends itself well to Marcus' conception of the field as 'chains, paths, threads, conjunctions, or juxtapositions of locations'.
Examples of the city as represented from the particular perspective of an embodied author are available often in more literary than strictly academic contexts. For example, Jonathan Raban's Soft City opens in the first person: 'I come out of the formica kebab-house alone after lunch, my head prickly with retsina' (Raban, 1974; 3). He continues to weave this perspective through his discussions of the contingent and malleable relationship between the city and individual identity. The book is replete with information on the sights, smells, and tactility of the city, alongside affective responses to its various spaces. Ian Sinclair's writing on London presents a similar image of the city organised around the walker, in which 'London's topography is reconstituted through a superimposition of local and literary history, autobiographical elements and poetic preoccupations, to create a highly personal vision of the city' (Coverley, 2006; 122).
In contrast, Georges Perec's An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris contains little information about his own embodied responses to his surroundings,
presenting instead a list of objects, events, and passers by over three days spent in Saint-Sulpice. The majority of this listing is dispassionate: 'An 87 goes by, almost full', 'A man carrying a crate goes by'; 'A man carrying a plank goes by' (Perec, 1975; 26). However, occasional information about his own
experience of this endeavour is introduced, interrupting the flow of the list: '(I'm cold, I order a brandy)' (ibid; 19). Between these interruptions and the single perspective emphasised in listing that which crosses his eyeline, the sense of a firmly emplaced and embodied observer emerges. Perec's singularity of
perspective highlights the way in which knowledge of the city at street level must always be partial and limited.
If this illegibility of the city (and of the capitalist world system that conditions the production of the city) is characteristic of contemporary urban space, then attempts to understand it can only begin from the partial perspective of a situated subject. As such, as well as beginning from the subject and including the subject, text that attempts to represent urban space must also recognise the difficulty of grasping connections at a greater distance. Here, Law's call for the inclusion of 'mess' in social science research might again be relevant. Equally, it is important to represent spaces as in a state of flux and development, rather than as a static reality. Reflexively representing the embodied researcher as a gathering-point around which ethnographic text is organised offers a means by which to achieve this. It allows a making-explicit of the way in which the field itself is constructed throughout the research process. When married to a
research practice based on urban walking, this opens up an approach to space that seeks out similarity and difference within an uneven urban fabric,
incorporating that juxtaposition within ethnographic text rather than relegating it to a 'background' process de-emphasised in the process of writing. Further, it opens up space within the text for other complications of the research process to be recognised and represented – in my case, the impact of a transgender embodiment on an embodied study of space.