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Ethnography for a new global political economy? Marcus (1995) revisited, through the lens of Tsing and Nash

In 1995 George Marcus wrote on the ‘emergence of multi-sited ethnography’, contrasting ethnography in the world and ethnography of the world. He seemed to anticipate that with increasing globalization, technological advances, and new economic conditions, multi-sited methods would become the hallmark of ethnography for the nascent age. More than two decades later, I reflect on Marcus’s forecast. Anna Tsing has written perhaps the first monograph to fulfill Marcus’s ‘follow the thing’ model, as a style of ethnography of the world, while June Nash exemplifies his description of ethnography in the world system. Here I compare the merits and challenges of the two ethnographic styles through their works. I consider whether Marcus’s prediction has proven true. I conclude that both approaches are still relevant and, in fact, necessary complements to one another, just as post-capitalist and classic Marxist theories, far from being mutually exclusive, are vital tools for describing and understanding the world.