Among the most influential anthropologists of our time, Jean and John Comaroff have imaginatively expanded the boundaries of anthropology, history, and the social sciences. This new book brings together their writings on the practice of ethnography--and the challenges facing the qualitative social sciences more generally in the late modern world. Fieldwork, both as vision and technique, is persuasively expanded to take in the 'awkward' scales of consciousness, history, colonization, the commodification of human life, and more. Always they ask: where in local practice lurk social forces of larger scale?

Essential reading for all anthropology students and anyone seeking an expanded picture of the potentials of qualitative social science.