The shifting terrain of ethnography: why flexible points of attention matter in the study of social relations

In what ways can we better understand the benefits of foregrounding ethnography as a practice with shifting points of attention, a moving terrain in which our work both literally and theoretically shifts as we engage in long-term fieldwork? Ethnographers have long remarked on the tensions of maintaining bounded objects while remaining open to new questions and avenues of research. How could one not, when anthropologists study the changing relations at the heart of human life? Highlighting research and conceptual challenges faced in recently completed fieldwork in an upland autonomous area in Southeastern Burma (Myanmar), I hope to offer a brief example of how a structured yet flexible research design, so often absent in a world of rigid research frameworks, measured outputs and research analytics, not only has the potential to offer unique insights but has profound implications for research outcomes and our understanding of the kinds of relations we foreground as important in peoples’ lives, writes Dominique Dillabough-Lefebvre.