Crafting the field, crafted by the field: thin and thick encounters in spaces of care for homeless people

This intervention seeks to to respond to the major questions posed by the session's organizers, by providing an empirics-based critique of an alleged methodological thinness. The final aim is not the rejection of such a thinness but, instead, a reconsideration of the thinness-thickness interplay overall so as to start considering the possible methodological shades of the field. I do so by drawing from the multi-sited geographical research practice I carried out in 2016 and 2017 in Athens, Greece; a careful attention to the contextual particularities of the different components of this multi-sitedness demonstrates how spatial and methodological differentiations of ‘the field’ stress the importance not of an ubiquitous, unquestioned thinness but, instead, of the importance of a productive and dynamic interplay between thinness and thickness, an interplay sensitive to the specificities, limitations and possibilities of each micro-context wherein the research unfolds. Overall, the thinness-thickness interplay suggests a methodological transparency that is reflective of the geographical heterogeneity inevitably encountered by the researcher. The contribution unfolds as follows: First, I briefly outline the contextual framework of the research. Then, I describe how the multi-sitedness of the field is translated into what can be called the field’s «eclectic crafting» by the researcher, so that their practice can afterwards unfold therein. Following, I provide some empirical examples in order to illustrate that the «eclectic crafting» of the field, and its experience, entails both a methodological thinness and thickness. In the concluding part, I argue for a much needed new methodological imagination that takes the thinness-thickness interplay into serious consideration, a consideration that inevitably renders research geographical.