Proem: Archipelagoes of Pan Pacific Ethnographies

Ethnography-ethnographic writing, ethnographic fi ctions and narratives and performances and many other multi-faceted incarnations-depends upon, as Geertz above puts it, “the way we talk about it.” But, for us, the questions still linger: what is ethnographic writing, what is ethnography itself? Long passed (and past) are the days when one single “defi nition” could encompass what this multi-faceted, multi-layered, traditional and experimental, theoretical and praxis-oriented catch-all has become.