Critical Ethnography in the Time of Globalization: Toward a New Concept of Site

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide one possible answer to the question of how ethnography can remain useful in the age of globalization in which the assumption of a well-bounded site is harder to maintain than ever. The author bases the answer on the example of research, a historical study of the concept of waste involving the case study of a siting controversy around a planned waste incinerator in Hungary. The author argues that George Marcus's solution to the problem above is limited and instead suggests to redefine the concept of ethnographic site by adopting Doreen Massey's global sense of place. The article tackles two political implications of this choice: the subject position of the ethnographer in multiple fields and the consequences for a critical environmental sociology.

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