The good thief: A note on revisits in long‐running ethnography

Abstract

This commentary revisits Nancy Scheper‐Hughes’ Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics ([1979] 2001) and opens up its contentious history as resented exposé, unflinching portrait of a demoralized and anomic landscape, and ethnographic test‐case of the terms of engagement. I suggest that the controversy may betoken what long‐haul ethnography in the present era might hold in store, not for individual researchers alone but for our discipline as well. Wholesale rewrites or retractions may not be in the cards, but reparation comes in many shades. At times what it creates is the necessary clearance to build out what was missed—with what may look like deliberate provocation—the first time around. The trick is not to confuse contrition with renunciation … or the space of a landing with the finality of an ending.