This article reflects on the often-unacknowledged role of serendipity in anthropological practice and the processes through which ethnographic insight emerges. Drawing on the work of Ina-Maria Greverus, Martínez highlights how contemporary anthropology increasingly involves multilocal fieldwork, embodied knowledge, openness to unexpected encounters, and shifting epistemic partnerships.

The author argues that discoveries in fieldwork rarely follow linear paths; instead, they arise through contingent moments, detours, and intersubjective dynamics. Using a personal vignette involving his Estonian mother-in-law, Martínez illustrates how intimate, everyday interactions can become critical ethnographic moments that reshape research questions and theoretical understanding.

The article ultimately questions conventional notions of immersion and bounded fields, suggesting that anthropological knowledge emerges through relationality, reflexivity, and the experiential conditions that make serendipitous insights possible.

Quote:

“What often happens is that the hints enabling us to go forward in our knowledge about a theme are not to be found but rather encountered on the way, thrown by the field, faced in semideliberate detours, not by following straight lines” (Martínez 2018, 2).

Keywords:

• Serendipity in ethnography
• Embodied knowledge
• Reflexivity
• Postsocialism / Estonia
• Discovery processes
• Ethnographic method
• Fieldwork at home