Fieldworking

FieldWorking is a fun and practical guide to research and writing. This acclaimed text incorporates examples by professional writers such as Peter Elbow, Joan Didion, Oliver Sacks, and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as student research projects on communities as diverse a truck stop, sports bar, homeless shelter, and horse sales barn, to help students identify and define their own subcultures and communities. In unique activities and comprehensive instruction, FieldWorking presents an ethnographic approach that empowers students to observe, listen, interpret, analyze, and write about the people and artifacts around them, while learning the essentials of college writing and research. FieldWorking is suitable for courses in English, anthropology, cultural studies, journalism — or in any discipline where research is required.

Shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction Set in Thailand, a brilliantly original and page-turning first novel of anthropologists, missionaries, demon possession, sexual taboos, murder, and one obsessed young American reporter. When his girlfriend takes a job in Thailand, Mischa goes along for the ride, planning only to enjoy himself as much as possible. But when he hears about the suicide of a young woman, Martiya van der Leun, in the Thai prison where she was serving a life sentence for murder, what begins as mild curiosity becomes an obsession. It is clear that Martiya was guilty, but what was it that led her to kill? 'A killer novel... A great story... You can't stop reading.' Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

This book draws on research, professional literature and theories to put a realistic view on fieldwork. "This is a useful introductory text, which could help to develop a positive and enlightened view of fieldwork from the occupational therapist's perspective." - "British Journal of Occupational Therapy".

Over the past two decades anthropologists have been challenged to rethink the nature of ethnographic research, the meaning of fieldwork, and the role of ethnographers. Ethnographic fieldwork has cultural, social, and political ramifications that have been much discussed and acted upon, but the training of ethnographers still follows a very traditional pattern; this volume engages and takes its point of departure in the experiences of ethnographers-in-the-making that encourage alternative models for professional training in fieldwork and its intellectual contexts. The work done by contributors to Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be articulates, at the strategic point of career-making research, features of this transformation in progress. Setting aside traditional anxieties about ethnographic authority, the authors revisit fieldwork with fresh initiative. In search of better understandings of the contemporary research process itself, they assess the current terms of the engagement of fieldworkers with their subjects, address the constructive, open-ended forms by which the conclusions of fieldwork might take shape, and offer an accurate and useful description of what it means to become—and to be—an anthropologist today.

This volume examines some crucial issues in the conduct of fieldwork and ethnography and provides new insights into the problems of constructing anthropological knowledge. How is anthropological knowledge created from fieldwork, whose knowledge is this, who determines what is of significance in any ethnographic context, and how is the fieldsite extended in both time and place? Nine anthropologists examine these problems, drawing on diverse case studies. These range from the dilemmas of the religious refashioning of the ethnographer in contemporary Indonesia to the embodied knowledge of ballet performers, and from ignorance about post-colonial ritual innovations by the anthropologist in highland Papua to the skilled visions of slow food producers in Italy. It is a key text for new fieldworkers as much as for established researchers. The anthropological insights developed here are of interdisciplinary relevance: cultural studies scholars, sociologists and historians will be as interested as anthropologists in this re-evaluation of fieldwork and the project of ethnography.

Lane Hirabayashi examines the case of the late Dr. Tamie Tsuchiyama. Drawing from personal letters, ethnographic fieldnotes, reports, interviews, and other archival sources, The Politics of Fieldwork describes Tsuchiyama's experiences as a researcher at Poston, Arizona - a.k.a. The Colorado River Relocation Center. The book relates the daily life, fieldwork methodology, and politics of the residents and researchers at the Poston camp, as well as providing insight into the pressures that led to Tsuchiyama's ultimate resignation, in protest, from the JERS project in 1944. A multidisciplinary synthesis of anthropological, historical, and ethnic studies perspectives, The Politics of Fieldwork is rich with lessons about the ethics and politics of ethnographic fieldwork.

Fieldwork deals with the practical, mechanical, ethical, and theoretical aspects of collecting data. Jackson discusses how fieldworkers define their role, how they relate to others in the field, and how they go about recording for later use what occurred in their presence. This treatment offers an abundance of useful information to those who do folklore fieldwork as well as those who work in any of the other social sciences or humanities. An appendix relates the author's own experiences while documenting Texas's death row.