A couple of years back I wrote a paper about ‘field work’. It was written for a workshop on political ethnography and was a reflection on my then ongoing research on counter-piracy governance. Arguing that ‘field work’ is not the right term for what I as well as many others are engaged in, the paper explores problems such as multi-sitedness, time, proximity and experimentation. The edition of the workshop that contains the chapter is now forthcoming. Read it as pre-print here.