The Art of Disembarking

The Art of Disembarking is a magazine-style multimodal essay which is available as a download from this page or best viewed here.

Wishes and acknowledgment

Writing a book after about four years of fieldwork is a tough job, much harder than I ever anticipated. As a perfectionist, I have agonized over every single word I have used in these pages and over every bit of material utilized on the book’s website. And as a chronically unsatisfied author, I have found … Continued

One Sailing Wait (book introduction)

Like most ethnographers, I am fond of a good arrival scene. More than once over the last four years I have been tempted to begin this book with an island arrival scene inspired by Raymond Firth’s classic entrance onto the field in Polynesia. My notes on this subject, scribbled on the back of a printed … Continued