Complicity and dissonances in the fieldwork

Journal title MONDI MIGRANTI
Author/s Riccardo Cruzzolin
Publishing Year 2015 Issue 2014/3
Language Italian Pages 14 P. 79-92 File size 52 KB
DOI 10.3280/MM2014-003005
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The article aims to offer a reflection on the difficulties encountered by the author in the course of an ethnographic research he has done from 2010 to 2013, inside the Peruvian community of Perugia. Inspired by the anthropology of Geertz, but also by the suggestions of Holmes, Rosaldo and Duranti (particularly on the issues of reflexivity and complicity), the author wishes to comment on two critical moments in the history of the relationship with his informants. First of all, he wants to offer a reflection on the expectations embedded in the relationships he has established with informants, expectations betrayed by the manner in which these informants turned to him and called him. Then he wants to explain the difficulties he encountered when he wanted to involve his informants in his work. Starting from the desire to make his work more dialogic, he had, instead, to face the disappointment of some informants, who would have preferred a more upright and less dialoguing posture, as a more open attitude was destined, for them, to undermine the reliability of his work and to compromise the complicity that the informants had established with him.

Keywords: Complicity, Reflexivity, Peru, Migration, Fieldwork

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Riccardo Cruzzolin, Complicità e dissonanze nella ricerca di campo in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 3/2014, pp 79-92, DOI: 10.3280/MM2014-003005