Fruitful Unpredictabilities of the Field: Procedural Serendipity in a Multi-Sited Ethnography

Abstract

Doing ethnographic fieldwork is, inevitably, an experience full of contingencies. Many of them result in happy chance and valuable epistemological outcomes. In this article I discuss some of these serendipitous occurrences in the context of a multi-sited ethnography on Euro-Brazilian mobilities and intimacies. I focus only on events that are embedded in the configuration and incursion into the field, aiming to demonstrate how the ethnographic approach is intrinsically associated with multiple situations of procedural serendipity. These situations manifested primarily in the pathways, field settings, procedures, and operational tasks of the empirical research, and were facilitated in a very particular way by the epistemological openness, methodological non-standardization, and plasticity of the ethnography itself. Although not always easy to manage, the unpredictabilities provided useful clues for defining the research boundaries, building the network of research-related social relations, calibrating the methodology, and articulating the fieldwork transnationally. Thus, they served as important procedural stepping stones in the complex ethnographic navigation of the field.

Introduction

Inspired by an ancient Persian tale that narrates the extraordinary accidental findings of the three princes of Serendip, the English writer Horace Walpole coined the neologism “serendipity” in the mid-eighteenth century to designate the combination of happy chance and sagacity that leads to relevant discoveries (Bourcier and Van Andel 2011; Campa 2008; Catellin 2014; Darbellay et al. 2014; Remer 1965; Van Andel 1994). In the twentieth century, this new word was appropriated by Robert K. Merton as a key concept in his sociology of science (Merton 1948, 1957, 1965, 1973, 1996; Merton and Barber 2004). In Merton’s formulation, serendipity refers to a flexible, non-linear, unpredictable, and tendentially intuitive cognitive process of scientific creativity, providing “unanticipated, anomalous and strategic datum” that lead to new theoretical perspectives (Merton 1948, 507; Merton and Barber 2004). Alongside this conception of serendipity as a creative outcome in the theoretical-conceptual realm, there are other notions and typologies that reflect the heterogeneity of the phenomenon and demonstrate that it also manifests in more operational and methodological dimensions of research (Fine and Deegan 1996; McCay-Peet and Toms 2015; Yaqub 2018).

Serendipitous manifestations are transversal to all scientific fields and reveal how illusory is the possibility of a strictly rationalist-positivist science, one devoid of unforeseen events, coincidences, luck, intuition, and creativity (Catellin and Hautbois 2012; Copeland, Ross, and Sand 2023; Gallenga and Raveneau 2016). In the sphere of social sciences, particularly in qualitative-comprehensive approaches, serendipity is practically an inevitability or property of epistemological assumptions and methodological research procedures (Florczak 2015; Gallenga and Wathelet 2022; Howell 2017; Jacobsson, Göransson, and Wästerfors 2013; Rivoal and Salazar 2013). As well as being an almost ontological expression of research itself, in the social sciences, it is associated with slower, cumulative, and disputed modes of knowledge production, rarely characterized by sudden far-reaching consensual discoveries (Collins 1994). The result is more diffuse and discrete expressions of serendipity that often tend to be naturalized, unrecognized as such and not given their due value. ¹

In a previous text, I developed an epistemological reflection showing serendipitous manifestations as intrinsically inseparable from field work experiences and ethnography as a condition and expression of serendipity (Sacramento 2026, in press). The main purpose was to highlight the relevance of serendipity in the ethnographic approach, giving it a strong and distinctive heuristic vocation. Now, the challenge underlying the present article is to provide a more consistent and illustrative empirical analysis base to the epistemological debate, considering for this purpose an anthropological research experience in which I used “multi-sited ethnography” (Marcus 1995). The focus of this research was on transnational mobilities and intimacies in the Atlantic context, characterized by Brazilian women and adult European men who meet during the latter’s tourist stays in the northeast of Brazil (Sacramento 2014). The particularities of the object of study and its transnational scale made this research very revealing of the recurrence of serendipitous events in fieldwork and their importance in defining certain orientations, perspectives, paths, and procedures.

In ethnography and many other approaches, serendipity can occur on two major levels that are closely interconnected and difficult to delimit: a first level of a more procedural nature of constitution, experience, and in situ observation of the ethnographic field; a second level of a markedly conceptual nature of producing relevant theoretical insights driven by empirical evidence (Bajc 2012; Gallenga and Wathelet 2022; Giabiconi 2013; Le Courant 2013; Pink 2021; Wyart and Fait 2013). Since it is clearly impossible to discuss these two levels and their many intersections in detail here, I have chosen to limit my analysis to the first. I will therefore focus on the discussion of ethnographic immersion as a process that is inseparable from events of procedural serendipity, which manifest primarily in the paths, procedures, and operational tasks of progressive constitution and empirical exploration of the field, based on flexible methodological guidelines and a dense social network of contingent research relations. I will not directly and systematically address situations of analytical-conceptual serendipity in which unexpected factual indications give rise to new theoretical arrangements.

I am aware that it is very difficult to establish a precise spatio-temporal delimitation of serendipity. It can occur at different moments in the scientific endeavor and not only within the framework of the countless contingencies associated with the processes and contexts of empirical research (Copeland 2019; Dalsgaard 2013; Hazan and Hertzog 2016; Sen 2022). Its scope extends from the initial ideas about potential research fields to the production of scientific discourse, and what happens here is inseparable from the researcher’s academic journey and even from everyday situations (Herzfeld 2014; Iribarne 2013; Kohn 2010; Lahelma et al. 2014; Wolcott 2016). However, in the present analysis, I only consider events that are directly inscribed in my experiences of empirical configuration and incursion into the field, endeavoring to demonstrate how the ethnographic approach is intrinsically linked to multiple manifestations of procedural serendipity.

Ethnography as Inherently Serendipitous

Scientific work is not a linear process, as it is always subject to countless coincidences and contingencies. When inferences can be drawn from these unforeseen events, which significantly impact the direction, perspectives, procedures, experiences, and outcomes of research, it is a manifestation of serendipity. This kind of manifestation represents the convergence of chance and sagacity, occurring only when the contextual chances of research are transformed into happy chances by the actions of a prepared mind, leading to research paths that are unplanned yet highly pertinent (Bourcier and Van Andel 2011; Darbellay et al. 2014; De Rond 2014; Glăveanu 2020, 2022; Jacobsson et al. 2013; Marletta 2017). By being expressed through the dialectic established between “environmental contingency” and “human agency” (Ross and Copeland 2022), serendipity takes on a dual nature as both a situational and subjective phenomenon (Björneborn 2017), simultaneously referring to empiria and reason. In this sense, it is much more than mere chance or a manifestation of “objective luck” (Melas 2017), as it is prompted, albeit unintentionally, by the complexities of the scientific endeavor and the very subjectivity of research (e.g., preparation, agency, and creativity) of those who do science (Klag and Langley 2013).

The presence of serendipity in the research process is particularly evident in ethnography, where serendipitous occurrences are considered “essential” components of field work and the development of knowledge (Donzelli 2019; Fabietti 2016; Gallenga and Wathelet 2022; Hazan and Hertzog 2016; Pieke 2000; Rivoal and Salazar 2013; Schritt 2022; Tilche and Simpson 2017). The ethnographic approach is intrinsically shaped by the cognitive “double capacity” involved in serendipity, which presupposes both an “openness posture” of manifest willingness to embrace unforeseen events in the research process, and a “heuristic posture” of discovery, comprehension, and fruitful exploitation of those events (Wyart and Fait 2013). But ethnography is not only an expression of serendipity. It is also a condition, establishing principles and procedures that ultimately lead to its occurrence (Sacramento 2026, in press). After all, serendipity is never absolutely accidental, nor does it simply occur in a vacuum (Simard and Laberge 2015), despite being unpredictable and unsubmissive to planning.

Due to its epistemological, methodological, and analytical assumptions, ethnography creates conditions that are manifestly favorable to the numerous valuable unforeseen events that constitute serendipitous manifestations. Here are some examples of the assumptions of ethnographic research that favor serendipity: lengthy and in situ research; a naturalistic and holistic approach; deep social immersion of the researcher in the context under study; little control over situations and openness to the unexpected; organic and non-standardized data collection; great theoretical and methodological flexibility; in-depth exploration of the understandings of social actors; embodied and sensorial research conditioned by the subjectivity and identity of the ethnographer; inductive-abductive reasoning; constant reflexivity (Coffey 2018; Daynes and Williams 2018; Donzelli 2019; Harrison 2018; Jones and Watt 2010; Madden 2022; Martins and Mendes 2016; Rivoal and Salazar 2013; Schaffhauser 2017; Silva et al. 2015; Wyart and Fait 2013).

Although there is currently “very limited agreement about what ethnography involves” (Hammersley 2018, 12), one of the most important skills expected of an ethnographer is the capacity to observe relevant occurrences that he did not expect to see in the course of his deep social immersion in the study context (Olivier de Sardan 1995). Their work does not strictly follow a research plan or manual, as the particularities, complexities, and meanings of social life that interest them so much cannot be foreseen; they can only be found unexpectedly in the process and in progress (Bajc 2012; Sacramento 2014, 2016a; Schritt 2022; Silva et al. 2011). As Martínez (2018, 2) notes, “what often happens is that the hints enabling us to go forward in our knowledge about a theme are not to be found but rather encountered on the way, thrown by the field, faced in semideliberate detours, not by following straight lines.” This plasticity is a broad and prominent feature of ethnographic research, perhaps even more so when conducted in digital and online environments (Boellstorff et al. 2012; Caliandro 2018; Pink et al. 2016). Ethnography is, therefore, the perfect example of the Mertonian idea that it is not possible to plan discoveries, but it is possible to orientate scientific work in (flexible) ways that will probably lead to discoveries (Campa 2008).

The ethnographer, much like a skilled cook, follows a “recipe” in a flexible and creative way, using it only as a reference and adapting it according to what they encounter in the field (Cornu 1984). This is artisanal work which, although methodical, is never mechanical and inevitably ends up incorporating intuition, improvisation, creativity, and bricolage (Atkinson 2013; Denzin and Lincoln 2000; Fayard 2017; Olivier de Sardan 1995; Svašek 2023). The lack of detailed prior planning does not turn ethnography into an exercise of mere dilettantism. In order to safeguard the “rigour of the qualitative,” there is always a “field policy” to be followed (Olivier de Sardan 1995), based on the key assumptions of ethnographic research identified above. It is, however, a policy flexible enough to allow for adjustments in response to the many unforeseen events and challenges in the field, giving the researcher room to take creative advantage of the eventualities they encounter.

In the generality of ethnographic work experiences, serendipity extends beyond situations directly associated with theoretical creativity. It inevitably manifests itself in a pervasive manner in the countless “twist[s] and turn[s]” of the field (Fine and Deegan 1996) and is not limited to sagacious conceptual insights. It transcends the strict cognitive-conceptual sphere and assumes a central epistemological preponderance in the configuration of the entire ethnographic process (Rivoal and Salazar 2013). In field work, particularly when doing ethnography, “connections made between people, or one’s being present at the right time and in the right place, can just as well lead to valuable discoveries” (Copeland 2019, 2388). This perspective implies a broad understanding of serendipity as something extremely multifaceted and fluid, emphasising that it is a concept capable of multiple meanings (McCay-Peet and Toms 2015; Yaqub 2018).

Given the amplitude, heterogeneity, and ambiguity of serendipitous manifestations, I think Fine and Deegan’s (1996) proposal is particularly relevant for understanding serendipity in ethnographic research. They conceptualize serendipity as the fruitful outcomes of contingent mixes of chance and insight that reveal themselves above all in the temporal, relational, and analytical dimensions of fieldwork. By reference to these distinct dimensions, the authors establish a categorization that encompasses three major forms of serendipity: temporal serendipity—the synchronicity of being in the right place at the right time enables the researcher to witness fortuitous events of great significance, which can substantially influence the course of the research; relational serendipity—the unplanned constitution of the social network of research relations, including a more or less extensive and diverse set of informants, each of whom provides elements to instigate and sustain the ethnographic gaze, particularly key informants; analytical serendipity—dialogical connections between unexpected empirical data and theory within a heuristic framework, where seemingly eccentric data induces new assumptions, interpretations, and conceptualizations (Fine and Deegan 1996, 438–443). My notion of procedural serendipity is inspired by and synthesizes the first two forms, which predominantly refer to the chronology, trajectories, positions, practices, and relations that underpin field research. The third form refers to a more conceptual type of serendipity, which I have chosen not to include in this analysis.

Procedural Serendipity in a Transnational Multi-Sited Ethnography

Following a research trajectory that began in 2001—shaped along the way by many coincidences and vague plans, as will be seen— I conducted ethnographic fieldwork for approximately one year (November 2009 to November 2010) on transatlantic mobilities and configurations of intimacy involving Brazilian women and European men who meet at the tourist meeting ground of Ponta Negra (Sacramento 2014). This seaside neighborhood, home to around 25,000 residents, is located in the city of Natal, in northeastern Brazil. The development and internationalization of tourism in this neighborhood during the last two decades of the twentieth century took place under the sign of a national identity that was already extensively (hetero)sexualised in global representations of brazilianness (Bignami 2002; DaMatta 1984; Piscitelli 2008; Sacramento 2018a). It is therefore not surprising that there is a strong influx of male tourists from Europe, primarily from Mediterranean countries. During their tourist stays, it is common for them to engage in intimate relationships, more or less commercialized, with Brazilian women they meet locally (Sacramento 2018b). Some of these relationships continue after the tourists return to their home countries and evolve into conjugality, requiring successive mobilities (tourist and migratory) of the Europeans to the northeast of Brazil or of their partners in the opposite direction (Sacramento 2016b).

The ethnographic foray into the field that I have just briefly outlined was driven by the aspiration to understand the structural conditions, circumstances, imaginaries, subjectivities, and practices that constitute social spaces of intimacy and mobility in the transatlantic context. This implied a dispersed empirical research, considering multiple geographical and even digital sites where the transnationalization of intimacy is processed, along with the dense network of flows that it involves. The result was a multi-sited ethnography, “[. . .] designed around chains, paths, threads, conjunctions, or juxtapositions of locations in which the ethnographer establishes some form of literal, physical presence, with an explicit, posited logic of association or connection among sites that in fact defines the argument of the ethnography” (Marcus 1995, 105). It was thus possible to accompany some of the main informants—both the Europeans and the Brazilian partners—on their journeys between the two Atlantic shores, as well as follow them on online sites as part of the multi-sited ethnography (Caliandro and Gandini 2017; Hine 2007), thereby more effectively capturing the transnational dimension of their experiences of mobility and intimacy.

For the first six months I settled in Ponta Negra, the reference context for the empirical research. The more intensive place-based ethnography carried out here was articulated and complemented with ethnographic research exercises dispersed across European contexts (e.g., in Italy and the Netherlands) and within the digital space of the internet, a social space of practices that is increasingly enmeshed in daily life and therefore indispensable as a research location (Boellstorff 2016; Caliandro 2018; Grigoryan 2024; Hine 2020; Postill 2024). To avoid turning the field into a mere collection of disconnected and unframed units, I sought to follow people—and, in a certain way, the users and the medium on the Internet (Caliandro 2024)—as well as their practices, stories and plots (Marcus 1995), always keeping Ponta Negra as the common denominator. The articulation of dispersed geographical and online sites to which I was led through fieldwork in Ponta Negra gave rise to a multi-sited and “hybrid ethnography” (Liu 2022), characterized by itinerancy across physical and digital social spaces and “polymorphous engagements” with the field (Gusterson 1997, 116).

This route made it possible to understand mobilities, relationships, negotiation processes, and ways of expressing the intimacy of concrete people within different scenarios and socio-spatial scales (local, national, transnational). Some may skeptically question whether it is indeed possible to do ethnography in a field spread over multiple scales and geographical and digital contexts without compromising the density of the ethnographic exercise. Within the framework of multi-sited research, a “thick and thin” ethnography is both possible and desirable: one that can translate empirical elements in a more detailed or “superficial” manner, depending on their specific characteristics and the contexts and objectives of the research (Marcus 1998).

The complexity and many imponderables of this multi-sited transnational ethnography resulted in a fieldwork based more on contingencies and in-progress decisions than on major prior planning. Serendipity was an almost omnipresent condition, manifesting in various situations and taking on different formats. In the next two sections, I will discuss its occurrence and relevance in the operational procedures of setting and experiencing the field, with the most influential happy chance events being related to the definition of routes, contexts, research social relations, and methodologies. It is essential to bear in mind that, in general, these are relatively discrete outcomes of serendipity, as is common in the social sciences. Some of these outcomes were intuited practically at the moment they occurred, while others were only properly acknowledged and appreciated after leaving the field and engaging in subsequent processes of reflexivity.

Vague Intentions, Happy Chance and the Definition of the Field

In ethnographic research, the notion of field (or terrain) is not widely agreed upon and is shrouded in a certain ambiguity (Beach 2005; Coleman and Collins 2020). In the most literal and objective sense of the “classical anthropological tradition,” the field was almost always associated with a small, holistic socio-territorial context of bounded research (Nadai and Maeder 2005). However, this conception of a territorialized and autarchic bounded field has been greatly questioned and, to a certain extent, has become obsolete. Anthropology, for example, has been determined to “give up its old ideas of territorially fixed communities and stable, localized cultures, and to apprehend an interconnected world in which people, objects, and ideas are rapidly shifting and refuse to stay in place” (Gupta and Ferguson 1997, 4). The result is a tendency to produce fields without clearly established boundaries (“fuzzy fields”), as happens paradigmatically when multi-sited ethnography is carried out (Nadai and Maeder 2005).

Within this framework of fuzziness, the field is not limited to specific space and place; rather, it is defined primarily by the researcher’s personal experience and “performance” in the context of relations with informants, regardless of the modes and sites of their interactions (Coleman and Collins 2020; Hannerz 2003, 2020; Kilani 1994; Vale de Almeida 1995). It is only through the researcher’s multiple experiences and engagements that the construction of the ethnographic field develops progressively. In this process, their long and deep immersion in the context(s) of study, privileging an inductive approach, means that the configuration of the field is always highly susceptible to manifestations of serendipity (Gallenga and Wathelet 2022). ² I will now discuss these serendipitous situations, aiming to highlight their role in the genealogy and progressive delimitation of my ethnographic field.

Transnational manifestations of intimacy and the Brazilian northeast emerged on the horizon of my research perspectives during a long process in which intentionality intersected with multiple, happy, and fruitful “tricks of chance” (Peirano 1995). The beginning dates back to the period between 2001 and 2005, when I participated as a junior researcher in an extensive research team that conducted a study funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) on female prostitution in regions along the Spanish-Portuguese border (Ribeiro et al. 2005). In this study, the vast majority of the sex workers we surveyed came from South America, with the presence of women of Brazilian nationality standing out. In the report submitted to the FCT at the beginning of 2005, we considered it relevant to carry out further complementary research focussed on the conditions that predispose these women to emigrate to Europe and their experiences of returning, temporarily or definitively, to the contexts of origin (Ribeiro et al. 2005). It would be a question of knowing the before and after of prostitution, aiming at a transnational analysis capable of capturing their global women condition (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2002).

In order to continue the previous work and eventually develop new research directions, a colleague from the research team and I decided to conduct exploratory fieldwork in Brazil for around two months during the summer of 2005. As an initial reference site for establishing the field, the geographical context that seemed most obvious to us was the city of Goiânia, the capital of the state of Goiás. The reasoning behind this choice appeared simple and logical: in our previous research, we had realized that many women came from this Brazilian state. However, occasional conversations with Brazilian academic colleagues led us to abandon this possibility. In an effect of serendipity “facilitated by social connections and interactions” (Cunha, Clegg and Mendonça 2010, 324), we realized the relevance of broadening the field to also include European men who engage in mercantile sex relationships while touring in Brazil. ³ This serendipitous adjustment compelled us to set aside our initial hypothesis regarding the location of the ethnographic site, as Goiânia is not exactly a destination for so-called “sex tourism.”

Almost simultaneously, we were once again struck by the luck of serendipity based on social capital. A Brazilian living in Portugal, a friend of my colleague, told him about a compatriot, a professor at the State University of Rio Grande do Norte (UERN, Natal), who had done fieldwork in our country. My colleague promptly made contact through their mutual friend. Although he wasn’t an anthropologist and didn’t have similar research interests, his references immediately led us to choose the seaside neighborhood of Ponta Negra, in the southern part of the city of Natal, as the socio-spatial reference to start building the research field. Through this relational serendipity, the geographical starting point for our work was definitively found and, five years later, it would become the reference place for my doctoral research. A local contact was also established, which proved to be fundamental in the initial approach to the field, in resolving logistical issues, and in the early development of the network of informants.

Already in Ponta Negra, the ethnographic facts surprised us substantially. We found few women who had worked in prostitution in Europe or who intended to emigrate for that specific purpose. Unlike their fellow countrywomen in Goiânia, for example, many of the young women in Ponta Negra who are considering sex work don’t need to emigrate. The intense influx of male tourists to the neighborhood provides them with opportunities for prosperity (vida boa), either through the strict mercantilization of sexuality and/or through the relationships they establish with their European boyfriends (Sacramento 2017). In light of these findings, we have substantially reformulated our initial aim of studying the social scenarios both upstream and downstream of the migration of Brazilian women to the sex industry in Europe. Simultaneously, several unexpected ethnographic insights into the complexity, ambiguity, and volatility of the intimate relationships between tourists and local women deeply captured our attention and functioned as serendipitous triggers to rethink the field almost exclusively through the lens of sex tourism, which we still considered to be a relevant and consistent concept at the time.

In September 2005, we left Ponta Negra. As a result of this exploratory research experience, it seemed certain that I already “had a field” that was reasonably well defined and a suitable conceptual direction for exploring it. However, this conviction would eventually dissipate. With the distance of returning “home” and exposure to unexpected insights—triggered by reading about contexts similar to Ponta Negra and deepening the shared analysis of the data already collected (Ribeiro and Sacramento 2006, 2009; Sacramento and Ribeiro 2009)—the field retrospectively took on new dimensions and meanings beyond the notion of sex tourism. Thus, when planning the research project for my PhD in anthropology, I established a new starting perspective on the field, considering it a Euro-Brazilian social space with diffuse manifestations of mobility and intimacy that extend beyond the spheres of tourism and mercantile sex, as well as beyond the physical location of Ponta Negra. At the same time, I had to rethink the geography and methodology of the research to account for the transnational scale and multiple locations of the object of study. These unplanned reorientations fall within a form of serendipity that “invites the researcher to shift their gaze and envision a different research path” (Schaffhauser 2017, 165).

Deepening the Field Experience: Unforeseen Research Relations, Multi-Locations, and Adjustments

I returned to Ponta Negra alone in 2009 to conduct fieldwork for my PhD thesis. Even with my prior exploratory field experience in the same place, the return was not exactly a time of re-encounters. ⁴ Although I had the advantage of carrying over some references and practical knowledge from the previous stay, I still had to build the network of ethnographic social relations almost from scratch. This is an arborescent process (Olivier de Sardan 1995) that is highly influenced by relational serendipity (Fine and Deegan 1996)— “the people we meet unexpectedly, who turn out to be sources of valuable knowledge or who lead to further valuable connections” (Copeland 2019, 2385). The chance encounter with key informants and access to social situations relevant to the research are also the result of being in the right place at the right time—temporal serendipity (Fine and Deegan 1996)—which ethnography tends to favor, allowing unplanned opportunities to be seized (Florczak 2015; Wolcott 2016).

Although serendipity and its variants are, by definition, unplanned occurrences, there is an ethnographic methodological intentionality in provoking something that is not yet clear what it might be. In the earliest phase of my social insertion in the field, this serendipity-generating intentionality led me almost every day to occupy a specific strategic point on the benches of the Ponta Negra beach promenade (calçadão). Precisely at the time and on the stretch of beach where there was the biggest crowd of European tourists and local women, mostly call girls (garotas de programa). As well as being a privileged spot for more distant observation, the place where I positioned myself was also very favorable for striking up a conversation and meeting people. Little by little, I built up a very close and empathetic relationship with many of those who regularly gathered in this part of the beach. Among all the people I met there, I would highlight a 58-year-old Italian man, divorced and living as a tourist-resident in Ponta Negra. He became one of my main informants. The circumstances in which I met him are quite revealing of the usual serendipity of ethnographic procedures:

Next to E.’s drinks trolley I bumped into L., a call girl from the northern part of Natal who I met a few days ago at the very same spot. This is where she usually picks up clients for her sexual services (programas). While we were drinking caipirinha and chatting, two Italians in their 50s sat down beside us. Since there wasn’t much space on the bench, they almost leaned against us. They talked to each other quite effusively, gesticulating constantly. [. . .] One of them was more expansive and talkative than the other. The first, apparently dissatisfied with the feedback he was receiving from his colleague, repeatedly appeared to want to direct his interpellations towards me, as if searching for a more attentive and engaged interlocutor. Not wanting to rush in and risk an untimely intrusion, I waited for (yet another) blatant cue and only then decided to join the conversation. The more talkative one then began a lengthy dialogue with me. He speaks and understands Portuguese quite well. Right from that first conversation, he shared personal details about his life. Most notably, he spoke about his relationship with a woman from the town (vila) of Ponta Negra, who is currently serving a prison sentence, and about their son. He seemed to have a strong need to unburden himself and be heard. I had the feeling that I had found a key informant. (Field notes, Ponta Negra, Brazil, 26/11/2009).

As my local ethnographic relationships progressively broadened and deepened, I encountered several unexpected situations that compelled me to readjust the boundaries of my fieldwork. Two of these stood out as particularly significant. The first situation concerns the recurrence of empirical evidence indicating the gradual matrimonial formalization of some transnational intimate relationships, showing me the pertinence of also incorporating conjugality and the mobilities it entails within the scope of my study. In this regard, the lightbulb or serendipitous moment occurred in a revealing way when, in Ponta Negra, a Brazilian woman told me about her marriage to a Norwegian man and the subsequent chain of marital relationships involving her sister, two cousins, and her husband’s friends. The second situation refers to the expansion of the research field into the digital space, adopting a “non-digital-centric” (Pink et al. 2016) and tendentially hybrid approach (Liu 2022), with the digital being perceived as embedded in a broader reality, where research presupposes “engagement with life on screen as it is with life off-screen” (Duggan 2017, 6). This expansion has become pertinent because the digital is a crucial medium for disseminating the imaginaries that drive male tourist mobility, facilitating passionate encounters, and sustaining some of the resulting transatlantic intimate bonds over long distances. In this case, the serendipitous revelation first emerged when I observed the widespread use of the internet by local women in the numerous internet cafés along the beachfront. The revelation quickly became more consistent when one informant showed me her love advertisements on OLX (aimed exclusively at foreign tourists) and when another asked me to translate a message written on a napkin into English, which she intended to email to a Swedish tourist she had met in Ponta Negra.

The unexpected incorporation of a new dimension of analysis (conjugality and the resulting mobilities) and a new context for data collection (the digital space) ended up generating a kind of methodological serendipity, which presupposes the creation and/or adaptation of empirical research devices according to the singularities of the field (Wyart and Fait 2013). Without prior deliberation, I had to integrate new empirical research procedures into the ethnographic process and adapt them to the specificities of the study. For issues related to conjugality, I conducted documentary research at the notary services of Natal, utilizing a specific registration grid designed to collect information on binational marriages registered between 2005 and 2010 (Sacramento 2020). Regarding digital research, I carried out complementary data collection through selective netnography exercises (Kozinets 2010), focusing on websites referenced by informants (e.g., discussion forums, blogs, social networks, YouTube). In these brief incursions into digital ethnography, I have considered the Internet following Caliandro’s (2018, 553) suggestion: “not so much as an object of study, but rather as a source of new methods and languages for understanding” the deep hybrid entanglements between individuals’ offline experiences and their online social expressions—both of which constitute everyday life and shape identities, practices, and relationships (Hine 2020).

Still within the scope of the methodology, a relatively similar situation arose with a small questionnaire for European tourists in Ponta Negra. Initially, I hadn’t even considered carrying it out. However, one day, as I walked along the beach and observed the tourists, it clicked in my head: “why not create a very short questionnaire to collect more systematic data to characterise these tourists?” The adoption of unexpected methodological strategies was always carried out under a logic of articulation and complementarity with participant observation and interviews, procedures planned from the outset. These methodological unpredictabilities highlight the contextual nature and flexibility of ethnography, allowing the researcher to adjust their positions, research techniques, and data collection instruments according to circumstances, opportunities, and unplanned pathways (Bajc 2012; Gallenga and Wathelet 2022; Hammersley and Atkinson 2019).

The methodological, operational, and relational contingencies of my six-month ethnographic experience in Ponta Negra provided me, fortuitously, with opportunities for the transnational projection and articulation of the field. They led me through an initial mental outline of the approach to be followed and the geographies to be considered for fieldwork on the European side, while also enabling the partial transposition of the social network of research relations. Although intensively place-based, the ethnography in Ponta Negra (along with its many coincidences) was already pointing me toward other sites involved in the transnationalization of intimacy and creating the conditions to, later on, resume in situ contact with some of the informants in Europe. It was therefore in a logic of continuity and complementarity that the place-centred and intensive ethnographic work was followed by a multilocalized ethnography, planned in progress and almost peripatetic: “being there. . . and there. . . and there!” (Hannerz 2003). This complementary stage of research was conducted in various locations across the European countries that are most prominent in terms of transits and connections with Ponta Negra.

To avoid turning the field into a mere sum of disconnected units, I tried to follow people and their stories (Marcus 1995) on a transnational scale. Initially, I wasn’t sure what else I was looking for beyond what I had already learnt from the field experience in Brazil. Despite the large amount of data collected, I couldn’t see how the itinerant ethnography on the European side would significantly complement the research done in Ponta Negra. I was simply hoping for a serendipitous epistemological evolution more or less in line with the assumptions outlined by Bateson in his work Steps to an Ecology of Mind: “[. . .] an explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored. [. . .] No doubt deeper levels of the mind guide the scientist or the artist toward experiences and thoughts which are relevant to those problems which are somehow his, and this guidance seems to operate long before the scientist has any conscious knowledge of his goals” (2000 [1972], xxiv).

The spatial dispersion of the short ethnographic exercises on the European side, the logistical complexity of this itinerant research, and the many imponderables regarding the informants didn’t allow me to establish well-defined plans and expectations. Initially, I only had the vague intention of accompanying in Europe, under different circumstances, some of the European men and Brazilian women I had met in the tourist scene of Ponta Negra. Apart from the probable expansion of the research relations network, I also recognized the possibility of identifying new (or complementary) dimensions of analysis, broadening perspectives on a transnational scale, and densifying the empirical basis of the study. Thus, it was with very indeterminate intentions that I resumed face-to-face contact with some of the key informants in various European locations, particularly in northern Italy (e.g., Aosta, Milan, Turin, Cesena) and the Netherlands (e.g., Lelystad). Inevitably, serendipitous events manifested themselves. I would highlight, for example, the fact that I was confronted with everyday situations (unexpected and almost trivial) that more effectively revealed to me the importance of considering daily life on the European side to better understand transatlantic mobilities, place attachments, and bonds of intimacy. The following field note is illustrative:

After breakfast, I met up in Aosta [north-west Italy] with G., one of the Italian tourists I’ve followed most regularly in Ponta Negra over the course of two months. When I got into the car, I saw the first signs of his strong attachment to Brazil: a woman’s beach scarf in green and yellow covering the driver’s seat and sertaneja music, his favourite, playing on the CD player. We drove to his house on the mountainside, about 10 kilometres from Aosta. He lives alone in a small house inherited from his grandparents, which he restored himself. [. . .] Like the car, his living space is filled with Brazilian souvenirs, particularly from Natal and Ponta Negra. On the kitchen cabinet, magnets evoking Brazilianness are stacked up, among which stands out one of a woman’s bottom in a green and yellow hang-glider bikini. While we were chatting, he was getting things ready for lunch. He had to be done by one o’clock in the afternoon, the time he’d arranged to meet on messenger with his Brazilian girlfriend, to whom he’s about to become engaged [. . .] After that, we went up the mountain. The dense fog didn’t allow us to glimpse what I suppose was a breathtaking landscape. We continued on to the end of the tarmac road, at an altitude of over 2,000 metres, where he meets up with his colleagues every morning. He works in a team responsible for maintaining the small structures along the mountain trails. During the months when the weather is harshest, roughly between November and March, work is suspended. He continues to receive a salary, albeit a reduced one. It is precisely during this period that, for more than a decade, he has taken the opportunity to go to Ponta Negra every year. (Field notes, Aosta, Italy, 10/10/2010)

The reunion with some of my informants from Ponta Negra also ended up increasing relational serendipity, giving me unanticipated contact with other people and situations of great interest to my work. I would like to highlight the following cases: two transnational couples (Italian men, Brazilian women) living in Italy, but whose relationships began in Ponta Negra; another couple with an identical profile who are about to get married; and a divorce situation involving a Euro-Brazilian couple. In addition to being driven by my old informants, the network of new contacts and sources of information expanded through occasional tips from people I spoke to in different contexts ⁵ and regular exploratory forays into the digital space. It was under these circumstances of relative randomness that I identified, for example, the Brazil-Italy Institute (Ibrit). Here I had the opportunity to contact with staff and visitors and, through them, get in touch with the most active members of two important online communities focused on transnational marriages between Italians and Brazilians. Also, at Ibrit, by chance, someone gave me another tip that led me to meet and interview a Brazilian therapist who had, for several years, provided psychological counseling to Brazilian immigrant women in Europe, many of them married to European citizens.

Through old and new research relationships, built up in a more or less contingent and fortuitous way, I was able to access clues that led to the incorporation of dimensions into my research field that had not been properly considered until then, such as daily life and the imaginaries underlying male tourist mobility to Ponta Negra; seasonal probationary mobilities of Brazilian women toward potential European partners; the plasticity of transnational mobility and intimacy arrangements; and the expectations, challenges, and tensions faced by transnational couples living in Europe. As with the fieldwork conducted on the Brazilian side, access to these new dimensions of the field-fostered insights that required conceptual mobilizations and adjustments unforeseen at the outset. The analysis of this theoretical-analytical serendipity, as previously mentioned, does not fall within the scope of this article, although I acknowledge the dense imbrication between the manifestations of procedural serendipity discussed here and those with a more conceptual profile. I hope to develop another article specifically to explore the latter in detail.

Final Remarks

In his insightful sociological reflections on scientific production, Merton made an observation that, despite its age, still holds relevance: “There is a rich corpus of literature on how social scientists ought to think, feel, and act, but little detail on what they actually do, think, and feel” (cit. in Fine and Deegan 1996, 438). Given that science is an “imperfect oracle” (Brown 2009), the plane of epistemological normativity and the plane of effective praxis do not coincide at all. Inevitably, there is almost always a space of contingency and dissonance between the two; yet this does not cause science cease being science. Chance, luck, inspiration, mistakes, deviations, coincidences, and unforeseen events, although often downplayed in favor of an ideal of immaculate reason, are unavoidable factors, and sometimes decisive ones, in the processes of building scientific knowledge (Bedessem and Ruphy 2019; Gallenga and Wathelet 2022; Namian and Grimard 2013).

It was precisely with the aim of highlighting the presence and epistemological significance of eventualities in scientific practice that I set out to analyze the manifestations of procedural serendipity in my empirical exploration of a multi-sited ethnographic field. From this analysis, it is essential to note the marked inevitability, polymorphic recurrence, and referential function of serendipitous situations in field research. Their inevitability was evident in the countless unforeseen situations I encountered along a journey where, like any ethnographer, I was making my path by walking, without the guidance of a research GPS. I had only a rough, handcrafted sketch for approximate orientation, akin to old treasure maps. This unpredictability was recurrent and surfaced at various moments of the fieldwork: from the preliminary phase of charting possible routes to social incorporation into the research spaces, to data collection procedures, and even to the readjustment of previously defined routes and contexts. Although not always easy to manage, the unforeseen events I encountered provided useful clues for the thematic and socio-spatial delimitation of the research, the construction of the network of relationships with the informants, the calibration of the methodological strategy, and the transnational articulation of the fieldwork. Therefore, they functioned as important procedural references in the complex ethnographic navigation of the field, leading to valuable outcomes.

The happy and useful chances in research are not purely objective expressions, absolutely rooted in the ontological attributes of reality. They also relate, albeit in a more or less diffuse way, to a subjective dimension that integrates the actions of those who produce scientific knowledge. In this sense, serendipity is always the result of the intersection between empirical contingencies and the researcher’s agency to foster and/or make the best possible use of these contingencies. Throughout the text, it has become clear that this intersection is propitiated in a very particular way by the epistemological openness, methodological non-standardization, and plasticity of the ethnographic approach itself. Therefore, the principles and processes of ethnography constitute a particularly fertile ground for serendipitous manifestations. In fact, ethnographers naturally expect the occurrences of happy chance. They also hope to use them as stepping stones in their fieldwork procedures and in the development of conceptual inferences. The outcomes of procedural serendipity that I have discussed here in relation to my ethnography constituted relatively simple and incremental stepping stones. However, due to their recurrence, transversality, and operational importance, they were absolutely fundamental in conducting the ethnographic experience.