Academics read, and reading defines a very large part of their professional habitus and ethos – it is through reading that we establish intertextual intellectual lineages connecting our own empirical work with that of previous generations of scholars or contemporary peers, all of this in search of a potential for adequate generalization or, as some prefer, theoretical validity for our own findings. We read, thus, instrumentally, but to actually put our finger on this ‘instrumental’ value is far from easy – we read in search of a broad and not too precise thing called ‘inspiration’, often also in search of a less focused form of intellectual fellowship, and quite often also just for pleasure, because reading is fun. Subjective filters occur at every moment of reading: every reading of someone else’s text reflects our own concerns, priorities, curiosities or frustrations. This is a truism, but it is this truism that encourages me to publish my own readings of texts and oeuvres written by others.

My own reading has rather consistently been filtered and biased by a search for ethnographic relevance. My work is and has been ethnographic throughout, but ethnographic in a particular sense: not that ‘ethnography’ found in most textbook descriptions of it (a ‘method’, in other words), but a general programmatic perspective on social reality and how real subjects, in real conditions of everyday life, possessed by real interests, make sense of it. This broader understanding of ethnography pushed and pushes me to seek, translate and apply elements in the work of others that could strengthen and validate the theoretical and epistemological foundations of this ethnography-as-perspective. This quest drove me, at times, deeply into the work of people not often considered as canonical sources in ethnography, where ideas, metaphors and empirical insights could be found that were useful for my own theoretical ‘bricolage’. The present collection reflects this quest.

Several authors have profoundly influenced the quest, and this book will discuss just a handful of them.