So called fieldwork has often been seen as one of the principal distinctive marks of sociocultural anthropology, but its eplstemological and methodological status is not clear. This essay refers to the metaphor of a journey in the early writings of the philosopher Ernst Bloch in order to discover some key aspects of the production of anthropological knowledge based on fíeldwork that is not limited to positivist empiricism. Instead it is centered on the confrontation of changing alterities and identities, parts of a global sociocuItural process, to which the researcher himself belongs.