Introduction Towards a Nomadic Turn in Anthropology

Anthropological journeys are often journeys that have started long before one has become a conscious student of social phenomena. Moreover, continuous movement between diverse social settings and realities is not reserved to anthropologists, nor are the multiplicity of visions such movement can provide. Critical Anthropological movement between different versions of reality allows us to detect sites of friction between them and explore both their oppressive effect and the creative ways by which different social actors manoeuvre in and between them. The most common images of anthropological journeys and transgressions refer to anthropologists’ geographical displacements. The anthropological movement can thus be understood as a privileged choice to inhabit those marginal social realities that surround us and may otherwise remain invisible, intertwined in our lives in obscure ways. Anthropologists ground their journey in tangible realities: complex compositions of others, their homes and languages. The anthropologist is said to leave home to travel to the anthropological ‘field’.