Notes on an archipelagic ethnography: Ships, seas, and islands of relation in the Indian Ocean

Abstract

This paper explores a mobile anthropological method, or what I call an archipelagic ethnography. This archipelagic ethnography focuses on relationality to think through not only islandness and archipelagoes—land, ship, and sea—but also considers relationality as a starting point for examining connections across space. Based on over ten years of ethnographic research among dhow sailors in the Indian Ocean, I argue that navigation, social interactions, notions of patronage, and protection alongside memories and histories of mobility draw together these multiple spaces across the Indian Ocean. Moving between dhows docked in port, on islands, and at sea, I elaborate on an archipelagic ethnographic method that is a mode of thinking relationally about different kinds of spaces and places. Taking relationality as a central point in thinking through relations between ship, land, and sea, I hope to think about the notion of society in relational terms as a starting point for an anthropological method that is attuned to both difference and connection.