Ethnography under Fire: Alma el-Shaab Summer 2006

This chapter describes my goals as a researcher and how I was prevented from achieving them. It was inspired by an experience of shared disperation from within a bunker under bombardment, in the summer of 2006, in the Christian enclave of Alma el-Shaab on the Lebanese Israeli border, an experience of desperation that was transformed into a shared resistance. This chapter is also a methodological account on its own right. I never regarded the people around me as a subject of study, but rather as people who could help me. When I finally interviewed them, it was at their own request. So I will speak about myself, and how I went beyond my initial research project.