The boundaries of fieldwork not only define the scope of research but also circumscribe and delimit the bounds of responsibility. This essay proposes a return to the whereness of the field as an antidote to treating the powers of description and historical dispersal as absolute and uncontested. Linking classic critiques of social science’s mapping of nature and culture, of the authors and subjects of research, to contemporary debates about the ethics of field research and anthropology’s complicity with colonial systems of rule, it offers a reappraisal of the field as a ground from which to build new solidarities across incommensurable political and scholarly commitments. By approaching fields not as empty retainers but as comprised of and defined by research interlocuters and their politics, scholars can better account for global slippages and dispersals without subtly reviving the figure of an inert nature under duress, in/organic or otherwise.

田野工作的边界不仅界定了研究的范围，也限制和划定了责任的范围。本文提出回归该领域的本质，作为将描述和历史分散视为绝对和无可争议的权力的解毒剂。它将对社会科学对自然和文化、作者和研究对象的映射的经典批评与当代有关田野研究的伦理和人类学与殖民统治体系共谋的争论联系起来，它重新评价了该领域，作为研究这一领域的基础。在不可通约的政治和学术承诺上建立新的团结。通过不将领域视为空洞的保留者，而是将其视为由研究对话者及其政治构成和定义的领域，学者们可以更好地解释全球滑移和分散，而无需巧妙地恢复在胁迫下（无论是内/有机还是其他）下的惰性形象。