Research practice in connections: Travels and methods

Abstract

In the edited volume Les discourses de voyages, Romuald Fonkoua (1998: 5-10) introduces travel literature, with exploration traveling as the center of social analysis. He refers to the fascination surrounding travel and the relationship between traveling and discovery. This perspective is similar to that of travelers at the turn of the twentieth century who set off to discover the world, to experience things that were unknown and new to them. Fonkoua adds another perspective to the discoverer, namely, the writertraveler (le romancier). It is, in the end, travel itself that forms the basis of the writing by the ethnographer and the novelist. Obviously, as Fonkoua points out, discoveries and travel writing are also constructed by people “in the other world” and in this sense travel is always about interaction. The construction of the world in those days was largely inspired by travel and journeys and we are now taking up this notion of “travel as discovery” and extrapolating it to our own constructions of the world.