The text calls on us to reconize the "ghosts" that characteristically attach themselves to the ethnographic places that produced them in the first place as "haunting reminders of lingering trouble" (xix). According to Gordon, there are "place[s] where things stand gaping" within ethnographic fieldsites, and these might bring us to question the limits of representation and how we present the world. While the ghost represents loss and paths not taken, they also speak to the future possibility and hope of a place. Gordon asserts that social scientists are responsible for considering how we grapple with the history of places when dealing with the present circumstances, asking questions such as the following: How are certain aspects of a place (such as social memory) silenced and absented? How do we capture the fundamental sociality of haunting in a particular place and time?
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