likely to want to learn about. Suppressing information about how the fieldwork encounter actually took place, this well-known critique asserts, dissembles the power imbalance between the anthropologist and his or her objects of study (cf. Clifford and
Search Results
Reflections on Fieldwork in Yemen
The Genealogy of a Diary in Response to Rabinow's Reflections of Fieldwork in Morocco
Daniel Martin Varisco
In preparation for writing an ethnographic monograph on fieldwork in Yemen, I compare and contrast my field diary, written in 1978–9, with Paul Rabinow’s Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (1977). The underlying question is what post-fieldwork reflections reflect meaningfully about the immediacy of ethnographic fieldwork? I criticise the reflexivist trope of privileging ‘writing culture’ over the significance of ‘being there’ in the field. Point by point, I examine the implications of graduate training in anthropology, culture shock, health problems, language skills, the unreflective male voice, visual ethnography and the rhetoric of narrative writing.
In Anthropology of the Middle East
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2006
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 35–62
Fieldwork Assignments in the Anthropology of Religion
A Practical Guide
Andrew Buckser
This article discusses structural, logistical, and administrative issues associated with the use of participant observation assignments in teaching the anthropology of religion. Fieldwork presents extraordinary opportunities for teaching students about the nature of cultural difference, but it also poses pedagogical challenges that require careful planning and supervision. The article reviews problems including the scope and nature of the observation, student preparation and guidance, connecting with fieldsites, presentation formats, issues of ethics and confidentiality, and university administrative considerations.
Classic Fieldwork, Critique and Engaged Anthropology
Into the New Century
George E. Marcus
Classic conditions of fieldwork research, to which anthropology remains committed, are difficult to establish today within far-reaching projects of neoliberal economy, governance and philanthropy. The forms of collaboration on which these projects insist, and those that ethnography encourages for its own research purposes, must be reconciled. On the bargains or adjustments that anthropology makes with neoliberal projects, within which it establishes scenes of fieldwork, depends its capacity to produce critique - its primary agenda since the 1980s. These issues are what are at stake in the widespread current discussions of, and hopes for, an 'engaged' anthropology.
In Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2012
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 35–42
Jeffrey A. Sluka
The ethnography of state terror is “high risk” research and there are real personal dangers for anyone who conducts fieldwork on this issue. Managing such dangers has particularly become an issue for those conducting primary research with perpetrators of state terror—the “rank and file” who apply the electric cattle prods and pull the triggers—and all of the researchers I know who have taken this path have been threatened in one form or another. Th is article reviews the core literature and latest developments in managing the physical dangers inherent in the ethnography of political violence and state terror, particularly fieldwork or primary research with the actual perpetrators themselves, makes practical recommendations for managing such dangers, and presents some ideas for developing risk management plans or protocols for researcher survival in perilous field sites.
Traversing Fields
Affective Continuities across Muslim and Christian Settings in Berlin
Omar Kasmani and Dominik Mattes
settings in the same city? Or how, for that matter, through such joint labors, might we establish shared affective terrains and relations that would otherwise be implausible? With such questions at hand, we reflect on carrying out collaborative fieldwork
Research Methodology in Kurdish Studies
Interactions between Fieldwork, Epistemology and Theory
Mehmet Orhan
domination and legitimation in societies, likely resulting from the separate discussion of theory and observation (see Shil's foreword to Weber 1949 ). This problem has certainly lessened due to the development of methodological and fieldwork techniques
In Anthropology of the Middle East
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–19
Methodology Matters in Iran
Researching Social Movements in Authoritarian Contexts
Paola Rivetti
This article examines how conducting fieldwork with qualitative research methods that question the binary distinction between the ‘researcher’ and the ‘object of the research’ generates findings that may ultimately innovate the study of social
In Anthropology of the Middle East
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 71–82
Navigating Unpredictable Sites
Methodological Implications of Positioning during and after Fieldwork in Conflict Societies
Eva Gerharz
fieldwork itself, but also of the time before and after fieldwork. Consequently, positioning needs to be understood as a process—a set of practices, actions, and meanings closely related to the field—as researchers constantly readjust the boundaries between
Religion through the Looking Glass
Fieldwork, Biography, and Authorship in Southwest China and Beyond
Katherine Swancutt
Euro-American scholarship more generally. I wish to extend this focus by exploring the fascination that fieldwork-based researchers and their interlocutors have with each other and with studying religion. As I show, this fascination may lead