Encountering Morocco introduces readers to life in this North African country through vivid accounts of fieldwork as personal experience and intellectual journey. We meet the contributors at diverse stages of their careers-from the unmarried researcher arriving for her first stint in the field to the seasoned fieldworker returning with spouse and children. They offer frank descriptions of what it means to take up residence in a place where one is regarded as an outsider, learn the language and local customs, and struggle to develop rapport. Moving reflections on friendship, kinship, and belief within the cross-cultural encounter reveal why study of Moroccan society has played such a seminal role in the development of cultural anthropology.

Introduction /David Crawford and Rachel Newcomb -- Arabic or French?: the politics of parole at a psychiatric hospital in Morocco / Charlotte E. van den Hout -- Time, children, and getting ethnography done in southern Morocco / Karen Rignall -- Thinking about class and status in Morocco / David A. McMurray -- Forgive me, friend: Mohammed and Ibrahim / Emilio Spadola -- Suspicion, secrecy, and uncomfortable negotiations over knowledge production in southwestern Morocco / Katherine E. Hoffman -- The activist and the anthropologist / Paul A. Silverstein -- A distant episode: religion and belief in Moroccan ethnography / Rachel Newcomb -- Shortcomings of a reflexive tool kit; or, Memoir of an undutiful daughter / Jamila Bargach -- Reflecting on Moroccan encounters: meditations on home, genre, and the performance of everyday life / Deborah Kapchan -- The power of babies / David Crawford -- Afterword: anthropologists among Moroccans / Kevin Dwyer.