The Wandering Ethnographer: Researching and Representing the City through Everyday Encounters

Abstract

Drawing on fieldwork I conducted in Milan, Italy, in
2004-05 and in 2009, this paper is an open invitation to create
experimental forms of ethnographic representation that could
become part of the unfinished production of the everyday in
urban locales. To this end, I reflect on several fieldwork encoun-
ters - Milanese people's commentaries, everyday incidents, as
well as local cultural and activists' projects - that can provide a
helpful model for such a practice. I argue that these varied inter-
ventions offer insight into complex social processes and dis-
junctures in contemporary Milan because they are small, quo-
tidian, and temporary, and because they can easily travel
through the urban terrain. Learning from these encounters, I
propose that we, too, can produce stories and objects that speak
by circulating: ethnographic interventions that use public space,
activate affect and become companions to people's embodied
journeys in city spaces.