Orientation: Arrival and Framing the Work of Ethnography

Abstract

I introduce myself as researcher and lens by which the people are described to the reader. I discuss being a partial-native, as well as early ethnographic “failures” that provided valuable insights for the rest of the project. I use my inability to gain admission to a Jewish cemetery in which I had conducted previous research to address the changing nature of security and accessibility in Jewish spaces under Moroccan Muslim control. I close with a discussion of the human task of writing about other people, the ethnographic opaque, and how I evaluate the descriptions of nostalgia, loss, love, and devotion from people whose income is based on performing affiliation with the deceased.