Rethinking Ethnographic Comparison: Two Cities,Five Years,One Ethnographer

Abstract

In this article I show that the ethnographer can be a heuristic source of comparison. I reflexively discuss the ways in which I learnt from the problems behind my comparative ethnography of everyday representations of Roma in both a Romanian and an Italian city. As a priori detecting a homogeneous group called Roma in Europe can be problematic, my comparison lacked the necessary condition of similarity between the two contexts. Once I came back from the field, I understood how my differently perceived selves influenced my informants’ articulations of their own representations of local Roma. This and further observations made me understand that I had not carried out a comparison; rather, I established a series of “partial connections” through “juxtaposition.” In the Conclusion, I encourage more reflexive research on the heuristic validity of taking ourselves-ethnographers as heuristic units of comparison.