Abstract
In this article Magnus Treiber looks back into his own PhD research in Asmara, Eritrea, to illustrate and discuss the role of ethnographic fieldnotes and diaries. Accompanying our developing thoughts these show how anthropology's arguments are built on an empirical base. Beyond the immediate field situation, fieldnotes allow to reflect on the conditions under which anthropologists are learning and rationalise our attempts to understand. Diaries are inevitably fragmentary, grasping the ephemeral, open to whatever comes up. Thus, the diary becomes the cocoon for both product and process, the ethnography and the intellectual pathway towards it.
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