Days in Field
Tiny green oval gems sway in clusters on the branches. They sway in plentiful on some plants, almost none on others. Most likely, at least insofar my knowledge at this point reaches, the difference correlates the biennial bearing phenomenon of olive plants — the occurrence of them yielding a high amount of fruit one year, to be nearly void thereof the next. In a couple of months, ripened as it will have become, the fruit will be deemed ready for harvest. It will in various ways be collected from the branches and by various means processed into oils. Based on various procedures and perceptions, these oils will feature different properties, bearing different characteristics and labels. The oils will be classified in kind. They will be so according to certain standards and regulations, as well as with reference to the processual character of their becoming. Collectively, the tiny green oval gems of today, will in moments of time become the green gold of Apulia tomorrow. Importantly, they become so based on legacies of yesterday.
October and harvest season, approaching as it is, is still a couple of weeks away. Farmers and olive oil producers are in the process of preparing the fields, as they engage in practices of cleaning the grounds from vegetation, so to smoothen the upcoming collection of olives. I am in the process of revisiting already established contacts and establishing additional ones, in arranging for an intense period of doing fieldwork through participant practice – the main methodology of this research project – during the season to come. With that part of my research weeks away, I yet engage fieldwork. I do so each and every day, as I spend hours in the field – literally – walking through the orchards, taking note of that which surrounds me. I practice the arts of noticing, following the eloquent quest of Anna Tsing (2015), in experiencing the multiple presences, histories, and existences, encountered and entangled, as I find myself wrapped-up in during these daily walks. I am keen to think with, to make use of yet another inspirational thinker, namely that of Donna Haraway (2016), as I engage my noticeness. I think with temporalities and liveabilities, with matters and socialites, with species and multispecies, with presences and absences, with occurrences and relations, with boundaries and flexibilities, with my senses and imaginations.
SIDE NOTE. Within theoretical debates, this emphasis is commonly regarded a sort of new materialism and more-than-human thinking, and while such categorical labeling sometimes are of more or less relevance, it is always pertinent to consider why expressive categories are relevant and of value to be mentioned. To think with here is for whom, from what perspective, with what purpose, in what context, and with what outcome that any given category gains value (in binding some things together while keeping other things apart). I have always been a sensible being, attentive to and curious about my surrounding, human and beyond-human alike. Thus, me engaging noticeness is at once a backbone characteristic of my persona and a theoretical interest. END SIDE NOTE.
It is of ethnographic, analytical, and methodological relevance to think through what I take note of as well as what I not take note of at any given moment. I am intrigued to challenge myself, prone to question how and why I have come see what I see when I observe, hear what I hear when I listened, feel what I feel when I touch, taste what I taste when I savor, and scent what I scent when I smell (Van Ede 2009; see also Pink 2015 and Stoller 1997 for writings concerning sensuous scholarship, as well as Grasseni 2014 and Ingold 2000 for works on skilled vision and apprenticeship, all of which I take methodological inspiration from). I challenge the trajectorial becoming of others too. Notably, I try to understand the relations and contexts which have come to shape the situated being of both me and the people — and matters — that I conduct research with.
As the anthropologist that I am, eager to make familiar the unfamiliar and make unfamiliar the familiar, equally well, keen to critically engage taken-for-granted matters and to twist-and-turn perspectives, I am curious to explore what may emerge if considered from another angle. What may be noticed from a standpoint other than the one that is habitually inhabited? If matters are approached from a different direction, literally and positionally, what may be encounter? Let me provide a personal reflection, for it happens all the time as I practice this boundary-shaking-arts-of-noticing-familiarizing-defamiliarizing-thinking-with curiosity of engagement: perception expands and other things are noticed, sometimes new things and, at other times, dimensions of things already known. Realizations in time and space occur. Concurrences and coexistences materialize. Particularities in generalities appears, and vice versa. The world widens. At least in my experience.
During my walks, I have noticed lots of things and correlations, and I have become more aware of the range of things occurring in the field(s) that my research explores. The images, framed as they are, in scope and scale, also in thought and standpoint, convey some noticed things of mine. Without any further guidance on my behalf at this point, the gallery is in the being of the beholder to explore and partake.
References
Grasseni, Cristina. 2014. Skilled Visions: Ecologies of Belonging and Sensorial Apprenticeship. [online]. YouTube.
Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. London and New York: Routledge.
Stoller, Paul. 1997. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Tsing, Anna L. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
van Ede, Yolanda. 2009. Sensuous Anthropology: Sense and Sensibility and the Rehabilitation of skill. Anthropological Notebooks 15 (2): 61-75.
