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Ethnography
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Ethnography and the Book that was Lost

Ruth Behar

University of Michigan, USA

This article is a meditation on the way ethnography, as a method and form of expression, has informed a range of reflexive anthropological journeys in Spain, Mexico, and Cuba. It uses a poetic sense of reflexivity to explore the embedded nature of personal experience within the ethnographic process. Borrowing the metaphor of `the lost book' from a fictional story by Agnon, the article explores the contradictory dynamic that emerges in witnessing loss and simultaneously wanting to preserve culture. Ultimately, the article urges ethnographers to pay attention to intuition, serendipity, and unexpected moments of epiphany in the quest for ethnographic ways of knowing, while encouraging ethnographers to present their findings in a wider variety of literary and artistic genres.

Key Words: story-telling • witnessing • loss • love • gift • identity • diaspora • reflexive ethnography • ethnographic filmmaking • Sephardic Jews • Cuba

Ethnography, Vol. 4, No. 1, 15-39 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/1466138103004001002
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