Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco by Paul Rabinow

Fun book that I read over the past two or three months that takes "one's object the study of the object" (Bourdieu's Afterward), namely, fieldwork.

Some interesting quotes and moments and people:

- Richard, the French emigré bar owner in Sefrou stuck in between two worlds, that of the vieux Marocains and the nouveaux vieux Marocains
- Rabinow's relationship with his informant Ali; Rabinow's "systematic questioning" brings Ali to spend "more time in this liminal, self-conscious world between cultures," a dialectic process in which "neither the subject nor the object remain static" (p.39)
- the same Ali is a pimp and Rabinow has sex with one of his girls
- Rabinow identifies participant observation as an "oxymoronic term," as "no matter how far 'participation may push the anthropologist in the direction of Not-Otherness, the context is still ultimately dictated by 'observation' and externality" (p.79)
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