Since Malinowski (1961) invited anthropologists to get off their verandahs and out to the world with the natives, ethnographers have travelled far and wide. They have studied down, up and sideways (Hannerz, 1998; Nader, 1969; Ortner, 2010) with various social groups around the world, and reflected on transnationality of the mobilised and localised. Besides being invited into interlocutors’ armchairs, some ethnographers have been invited to get their hands dirty in roof-top gardening or to send pigeons to fly in an imaginary free world.  We invite anthropologists to dwell - in all its senses - on balconies without inhibitions and share the unfolding stories. 

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This storytelling part of our project is inspired by Gísli Pálsson’s Volcanologues: Tales of Eyjafjallajokull in 2010. Pálsson collected stories of peoples' lives being affected by the volcanic eruption that delayed and cancelled several international flights. Pálsson (2017) also wrote the book, Fjallið sem yppti öxlum, where he tells his neighbours' stories and reflects on how he felt being away studying during a volcanic eruption in his village on the island Heimaey (‘Home-island’)in 1973. Pálsson is there in a similar manner to Shahram Khosravi's (2010) self-narrative as an Illegal Traveler - both experimenting with personal experiences in ethnographic writing.

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     Check out Gísli's Glacier Hub and Facebook here! http://english.hi.is/frettir/assembling_stories_volcanic_eruption_iceland

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On Pálsson’s Heimaey, very few houses have balconies but still, people make spaces around their houses green and inhabitable in the stark contrast to the dark volcanic sand. Around the world, this space has many forms and linguistic names and seems always to be being reconfigured and contested. Thus we consider The Balcony broadly, as a space of in-between nature and civilization, home and street, privacy and social interaction...and many more paradigms.

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For some ethnographers this may be a space of relaxation, of familiarly-foreign sounds, smells and sensualised views. While savoring the exotic, some of us might also have been homesick and thought at least we were under the same moon as our loved ones. In Balconologues, we are breaking up with the image of the ‘stoic lone anthropologist’, acknowledging that we share emotional spaces between our fieldsites and our own homes.

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We invite you all to share an intimate storytelling on and about life on balconies (in their myriad forms). Our Balconologues exists in two platforms. On Facebook we will have a fluid, interactive 'rooftop!' were anthropologists can post & share photos and short stories themselves. And on this website, we offer more dedicated 'picture windows!' for detailed reflections and deeper storytelling, where you can send your word files and two to three photos by email (aki2@hi.is). We will then upload them to this website. Storytellers can choose to remain anonymous or known - this will also be a space where we allow ourselves to be imperfect and simply share our thoughts.