Anahí ViladrichAna Abraído-Lanza, Robert Fullilove, Kathy McCarthy, Peter Messeri, Richard Parker,
and Terry Williams for our conversations on placing the intricacies of the tango world into
my broader research agenda on social networks. As usual, Stephen Pekar provided invalu-
able comments and generous assistance in editing this manuscript. This research was par-
tially supported by a grant from the Center for the Active Life for Minority Elders at Co-
lumbia University.
2. As Marta Savigliano ( 1995 , xiii, xiv) argues, “Tango and exile (in the sense of ‘being
away from home,’ for whatever reason) are intimately associated.” She continues, “It is
more than common for any Argentine living abroad to connect the experience of longing
and nostalgia to the tango. It is a recurrent pattern, even for those of us who do not con-
sider ourselves connoisseurs or fans of the tango, to be affected by the tango syndrome af-
ter being deprived for a while of our argentino ‘environment.’” Certainly, the novelty of
the tango’s revival relies on its role as an emblem of Argentines’ cultural nationalism (term
used by Castells 1997 ), which, in the midst of globalization, is being nurtured through lo-
cal religious forms, ethnic foods, and patriotic celebrations. As Castells ( 1997 , 53 ) sug-
gests: ethnicity is being specified as a source of meaning and identity, to be melted not with
other ethnicities, but under the broader principles of cultural self-definition, such as reli-
gion, nation, or gender.
3. Milongas follow a carefully orchestrated tango-hierarchy, where the skills and repu-
tation of practitioners are definitely ranked above looks. Savigliano ( 2003 ) argues that the
roles of women as wallflowers allow them to gamble their own femininity (as femme fa-
tales) on the tango floor.
4. There is a rich literature on gender issues and fieldwork that deals with diverse issues:
from the existential nature of gender relationships to practical solutions women can use to
protect themselves and conform to local gender ascriptions without jeopardizing fieldwork
(see Whitehead and Conaway 1986 ; Golde 1970 ).
5. These practices rely on commodified bodies (see Scheper-Hughes 2002 ), which de-
mand ritualistic training and practice that is only showed off in a stage drama.
6. The need for a categorical cessation of time through departure is within the very na-
ture of fieldwork, which, sooner or later, will bring the ethnographic encounters to a close
(Crapanzano 1986 ). “The ethnographic encounter, like any encounter, however distorted
in its immediacy or through time, never ends. It continually demands interpretation and
accommodation” (Crapanzano 1980 ). “The sadness, the guilt, the feelings of solitude, and
the love that come with departure and death will not, cannot, end” (Crapanzano 1980 ,
140 ) Ortner ( 1995 , 173 ) notes that the ethnographic stance (as we may call it) is as much
an intellectual (and moral) positional, a constructive and interpretive mode, as it is a bodily
process in space and time.