Multisited Fieldwork

Este estudio etnomusicológico se centra en el Festival Intercéltico de Costa Rica. En su
primera edición (octubre, 2012) reunió a un público aproximado de más de tres mil personas. El desafío
colocado a esta investigación consistió en estudiar un fenómeno que ocurre (situado) en San José, pero
que hace referencia a una geografía mucho mayor, con músicos de diversas proveniencias (Costa Rica,
España, Irlanda y México) y repertorios asociados a otros lugares. La interrogante inicial pretende
contestar a la pregunta: ¿Por qué un Festival Intercéltico en Costa Rica?
Sustentada en estudios de autores como Martin Stokes, Philip Bohlman, Ulf Hannerz, Tim Creswell
y James Clifford, entre otros y utilizando el método etnográfico, mediante el trabajo de campo
multisituado (Galicia y Costa Rica), esta investigación reveló que el festival ha generado una ebullición
musical en Costa Rica: gran interés entre músicos y público, nuevos grupos y repertorios, aumento de los
músicos en tránsito e introducción de nuevos instrumentos.
Palabras clave: Festival Intercéltico, músicos en tránsito, contraposición global-local, trabajo de campo
multisituado.

Music related to Buddhism, or Buddhist music in general, gains attention only in the recent decades. Mahāyāna Buddhism substantially registers the importance of music, despite a restriction on the monastic involvement in music performance. While Vajrayāna Buddhism and ‘engaged Buddhism’ have emerged as a global trend that increasingly applies a musical context in many religious movements, Buddhist music is rather deemed problematic to Theravādins. To gaze this music with a philosophical perspective, phenomenality is employed as one of the typical Buddhist emphasises that promotes a detachment from the delusion of worldly existence. In this context, music is merely reflected as a perceived phenomenon. The virtual perspective is another access point to the concept of phenomenality since the internet has created a new dimension that transcends the boundaries across time and space. Subsequently, music enthusiasts, knowledge seekers, and Buddhist practitioners in 21st-century Malaysia, who no longer need to overcome the problems of distance and unscheduled absence at a specific location, are allowed to access relevant data conveniently according to various needs.
Malaysians embrace an innovatory ‘tech’ life that drastically transforms urban lifestyle with a newly developed ‘mobile-only’ culture in the 21st century, a time widely regarded as the digital era. However, the adaptation of a ‘tech’ lifestyle brings about a question of existence in virtuality, which is also connected to the online experience of Buddhist music. Spreading fast through a virtual platform, Buddhist music somehow appears in diverse styles but it also perpetuates a possibility for its musical attributes to remain questionable.
This qualitative research explores possible connections of music related to Buddhism with parallel ideas of phenomenality and virtuality, and investigates the emphasis of the contexts of ‘Buddhism’ and ‘music’ as well as aspects that makes music ‘Buddhist’ by considering music seen from multiple perspectives. Employing a contemporary view of virtual ethnography by Hine, this musicology on Buddhist music in 21st-century Malaysia undertakes a combination of qualitative analytical methods in which discourse analysis, hermeneutic phenomenology, metaphorical analysis, ethnostatistics and music analysis significantly operate on data sources as a way of knowing.
This study consciously regards all music related to Buddhism as an all-inclusive genre called ‘Buddhism-related music’, while the term ‘Buddhist music’, which is  adopted to classify or describe this typical music, is employed interchangeably though both terms are not entirely the same in contexts. As the outcomes, it is found out that Buddhism-related music hardly constitutes significant typological criteria based on its sonic and stylistic attributes. Though variously defined, this music can be identified simply through a conceptualised content that interpretatively represents an idea related to Buddhism. With the understanding of ‘emptiness’, a more universal view can be projected in the ethics of the making of Buddhist music. Virtuality as an integral part of reality affects the making of the object in parallel with the causation of phenomenality. Buddhist music can be considered as both a phenomenal and virtual being, therefore suggesting an insight to consider separable contexts of ‘Buddhism’ and ‘music’, as music is deemed secondary to the goal of Buddhist practice. The notion of ‘emptiness’ advocates an undertaking of the ‘middle path’ for composers, musicians and audiences to access Buddhist music. Finally, this leads the study to formulate an idea of the ‘Buddhist being’ in music.

El profesor Ulf Hannerz, antropólogo sueco formado en la Stockholm University, es un destacado estudioso de las culturas transnacionales en las últimas décadas. Algunas de sus obras más notables son: Exploring the city: Inquiries toward an urban anthropology (1980), Cultural complexity: Studies in the social organization of meaning (1990), Foreign news: Exploring the world of foreign correspondents (2004), Anthropology’s World: Life in a Twenty-First Century discipline (2010). Es profesor-investigador en Stockholm University y University of Oslo, miembro honorario de Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

After decades of comparative neglect, there has recently been an increase of interest in the topic of consumption. Some sociologists have made strong claims for the new structural role of consumption practice as a central focus of everyday life, a focus in earlier times provided by occupation. In such a view lifestyle increasingly becomes a basis of social identity, displacing class as the central organizing principle of social life. Most Sociological accounts of consumption, until very recently, implicitly began from a set of materialist premises, considering consumption a matter of survival in the face of unequally distributed resources. The classical sociology of Marx, Weber and Simmel considered consumption a function of production, and consumption patterns a corollary of class position. Consumption was an expression of a central social hierarchy, inequalities of resource being turned into tools of class and status group struggle.

is article presents new ethnographical information on milestones in the history of the transnational migration of Chilotes (inhabitants of Chiloe Island, southern Chile), from the 1950s up to the assemblages existing today in di erent parts of Chilean and Argentinean Patagonia. In particular, we analyse stages in the development of mobility linked to the economic boom in these southern territories, highlighting sectors in which jobs were created on both sides of the border.  e preliminary results show how cultural connections are retained with places of origin and residence through the formation of com- munities, the circulation of goods, the extension of symbolic meanings and new inter-regional migratory trajectories.  e methodology used was that of ethnographies in movement derived from circumstantial approaches in di e- rent locations in Chiloe and Patagonia between December 2015 and May 2017.  e re ections in this work are a contribution to studies on human mobility in southern Chile from multi-local perspectives that allow cultural continuities to be identi ed in the experience of migration.

Grounded in ethnographic observations, this article offers a commentary on the visible and invisible dynamics of mobility between China and West and Central Africa. It follows the transnational trajectories of African trader women and takes stock of some of the weight that these women shoulder during trips where goods and money are set in motion. The materiality of the transported consumer items shapes traders’ experiences of mobility and immobility. Trader women also must carry immaterial baggage relating to what their mobile, racialized female bodies represent to various people they encounter. Specifically, the Chinese state and general public view their bodies as threats to social order and, in the context of Ebola and COVID-19, as threats to public health. Our analysis also attends to the weight that female scholars metaphorically carry while conducting research. We devote space to addressing our presence as White researchers, thus attending to methodological opaqueness alongside issues of hidden geographies in transnational trade and migration.

Reseña del exitoso libro Chiloé. Historias de viajeros, versa sobre la migración de chilotes hacia Patagonia argentina y chilena. Hace énfasis en movilidades y trayectorias fronterizas, así como también circulación de mercancías entre mar y tierra.

This book analyses the making of the international world of ‘natural’ disasters by its professionals. Through a long-term ethnographic study of this arena, the author unveils the various elements that are necessary for the construction of an international world: a collective narrative, a shared language, and standardized practices. The book analyses the two main framings that these professionals use to situate themselves with regards to a disaster: preparedness and resilience, arguing that the making of the world of ‘natural’ disasters reveals how heterogeneous, conflicting, and sometimes competing elements are put together.

In this paper we present results from contextual interviews and observations, which we conducted in Tanzania over a period of six weeks. In our interviews we focused on use cases and benefits that the mobile phone introduced in these areas. Specifically we were interested in the impact of mobile ICTs on social networks in general and communication with friends and family in particular. The goal of the study was to identify potential areas where ICTs could improve people's lives. Based on an analysis of the results from this study we created personas, which describe archetype mobile phone users and their respective needs and goals. The paper concludes with a number of directions for further research in this area.

Στόχος της παρούσας εισήγησης είναι να προτείνει την προσέγγιση των πολιτισμικών κινητικοτήτων στις μελέτες της μετανάστευσης του σύγχρονου παγκοσμιοποιημένου κόσμου, όπου η μετακίνηση ως συνεχής, αδιάκοπη και πολύπλοκη διαδικασία δίνει τη δυνατότητα στους μετανάστες να συνάπτουν σχέσεις, να δημιουργούν δίκτυα και να συνδέουν πολλές περιοχές που υπερβαίνουν τα τοπικά και εθνικά σύνορα. Εγγράφοντας την προσέγγιση αυτή στην περίπτωση των Αλβανών μεταναστών και αφενός σκιαγραφώντας τις διεθνικές πρακτικές τους με ιδιαίτερη έμφαση στην κατασκευή «σπιτιών» στην «πατρίδα» τους και αφετέρου εξετάζοντας τις μεθοδολογικές προκλήσεις που ανακύπτουν σε τέτοιου είδους πολυ-τοπικές έρευνες,  αναδεικνύονται οι πολλαπλές συνδέσεις και επαφές τους τόσο με την Ελλάδα, όσο και με την Αλβανία. Τονίζεται δε ο ρόλος που διαδραματίζουν οι αντιλήψεις και οι πρακτικές τους σε αμφότερες τις χώρες για την κατανόηση της συνολικής μεταναστευτικής τους εμπειρίας