Marcus (1995) Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography

In this article George A. Marcus reviews the potentialities of multi-sited ethnography contra single-sited methodologies. According to Marcus, mutli-sited ethnography offers an epistemic and methodological palette enabling it to go beyond spatial or conceptual dichotomies usually limiting single-sited ethnography. Marcus discusses some potential criticisms or anxieties multi-sited ethnography might face and provides several "tracking" strategies for potential interdisciplinary researches that are at the heart of such methodological and epistemic posture.

This review surveys an emergent methodological trend in anthropological research that concerns the adaptation of long-standing modes of ethnographic practices to more complex objects of study. Ethnography moves from its conventional single-site location, contextualized by macro-constructions of a larger social order, such as the capitalist world system, to multiple sites of observation and participation that cross-cut dichotomies such as the “local” and the “global,” the “lifeworld” and the “system.” Resulting ethnographies are therefore both in and out of the world system. The anxieties to which this methodological shift gives rise are considered in terms of testing the limits of ethnography, attenuating the power of fieldwork, and losing the perspective of the subaltern. The emergence of multi-sited ethnography is located within new spheres of interdisciplinary work, including media studies, science and technology studies, and cultural studies broadly. Several “tracking” strategies that shape multi-sited ethnographic research are considered. The review concludes with observations about the reflexive persona of the ethnographer as “circumstantial activist” in which methodological discussions about multi-sited research in anthropology are now being developed.