The taste of description. Notes on the Notes from the field [Il gusto della descrizione Note sulle «Note dal campo»]

Informal consultations with young scholars seem to indicate that a paper fitting the category of «notes from the field» is deemed of less value than a paper labelled «essay» or «research article». Although this conception deserves to be discussed in depth and even overturned, the aim of this paper is more modest: to show that a «note from the field» is a full research text that embraces and reports on the core of ethnographic field research. Firstly, it shows how at the core of this kind of research lies an activity of description. Secondly, it gives an account of the remarkable increase of «notes from the field» written from different positions and following various approaches, especially from perspectives that are not strictly research-oriented; it is argued that a comparison with such texts can be helpful in enhancing what may be the specific character of an ethnographic research text. Thirdly, it focuses on field notes, their production activity and the practical transition from fieldnotes to notes from the field. Lastly, some suggestions on how to write such notes are given.