FROM CAR TO HOUSE (DEL COCHE A LA CASA)

Joint fieldwork has led the authors to question several accepted ideas of ethnographic method and theory. According to traditional wisdom, t he fieldworker is a solitary figure who, acting as participant and obs erver, strives to overcome a gap of knowledge between her world and th at of others; ethnographies are compilations, translations, and interp retations of knowable facts. In contrast to this construction, the aut hors' collaboration suggests that in fieldwork the anthropologist crea tes a community of inquiry. This community includes voices from the fi eld, from home, from the past, and from joint workers; the ethnographe r participates in many-stranded conversations and contexts of learning . Ethnographies are not objective reports or displays of new methodolo gies but the products of artisans who draw on the skills and imaginati ons of many. Like good conversations and culture itself, ethnographies are never complete.