Paper short abstract:

In studying “small places”, anthropologists presuppose International Relations (IR). I suggest that any account of small places is necessarily skewed, even impossible, unless the presuppositions of IR are made explicit and written about as points of intersections between the two, not necessarily symmetrical.

Paper long abstract:

Since George Marcus' (1995) article it has become nearly commonplace to admit the non-viability and limits of intensive fieldwork in one location. Hence the buzzword "multi-sited ethnography"! Appreciating this move and while attentive to the "world system" and "political economy", I argue that anthropology ought to confront the international relations which comprises states claiming to represent "nations". Any account of small places -whether single- or multi-sited -is necessarily skewed, even impossible, unless the presuppositions of the international relations and world order are made explicit and written about as points of intersections between the two and more, not necessarily symmetrical, however. With reference to some recent anthropological works and the writings of Wright Mills, who gestured such an approach long ago, I argue how the distance between anthropology and international relations continues to block the flowering of sociological imagination.