Fieldnotes on some cockroaches at SOAS and in Stavanger, Norway

Abstract

This paper explores various aspects of doing 'anthropology of home'. An anthropologist of home does not go 'elsewhere' to produce the experiential shifts that can lead to anthropological knowledge. She experiences shifts at home. In this paper I am interested in exploring precisely these experiential shifts-these 'dislocations'-and how they might be instrumental in producing anthropological insight. I want to suggest that 'dislocation insights', as I call them, can come about not just when crossing geographical distance but also when confronted with familiar categories that suddenly become strange, when confronted with yourself in a new way, or when confronted with the unheimlich-the unhomelike-at home.