Of ethnographic drifting
This article highlights a series of methodological problems raised by a specific fieldwork at UNESCO – I was there to follow the negotiations leading up to the adoption of the Convention for the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions in 2005. A feeling of being out of joint with the field is at the basis of a perplexing situation : each time I was approaching the Convention, it seemed do redirect me out of the host institution (UNESCO). Facing such a less than cooperating object, which seems to refuse to be captured by traditional disciplinary measures, I come to ask myself if what I am doing could aptly be described as fieldwork. I also expose how, from such an unstable posture – one foot in the field, the other outside of it – the object came to be viewed in a previously unsuspected way.