Ethnographic Fieldwork

Ethnographic Fieldwork
Author: Jan Blommaert
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2020-07-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 178892715X

Ethnographic fieldwork is something which is often presented as mysterious and inexplicable. How do we know certain things after having done fieldwork? Are we sure we know? And what exactly do we know? This book describes ethnographic fieldwork as the gradual accumulation of knowledge about something you don’t know much about. We start from ignorance and gradually move towards knowledge, on the basis of practices for which we have theoretical and methodological motivations. Jan Blommaert and Dong Jie draw on their own experiences as fieldworkers in explaining the complexities of ethnographic fieldwork as a knowledge trajectory. They do so in an easily accessible way that makes these complexities easier to understand and to handle before, during and after fieldwork. The 2nd edition of this bestselling book updates the 1st edition and includes a new postscript on ethnography in an online world.

Ethnographic Fieldwork

Ethnographic Fieldwork
Author: Antonius C. G. M. Robben
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 632
Release: 2006-11-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1405125926

Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader provides a comprehensive selection of classic and contemporary reflections, examining the tensions between self and other, the relationships between anthropologists and informants, conflicts and ethical challenges, various types of ethnographic research, and different styles of writing about fieldwork. Discusses fieldwork in general, as opposed to its formal methods Presents a good sense of the historical and conceptual development of fieldwork as the predominant methodological approach of social and cultural anthropology Includes introductory chapter and 38 leading articles on ethnographic fieldwork in cultural anthropology, organized around ten themes – Beginnings; Fieldwork Identity; Fieldwork Relations and Rapport; The Other Talks Back; Conflicts, Hazards, and Dangers in Fieldwork; Ethics; Multi-Sited Fieldwork; Sensorial Fieldwork; Reflexive Ethnography; and Fictive Fieldwork and Fieldwork Novels.

Constructing the Field

Constructing the Field
Author: Vered Amit
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2003-12-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134640676

Ethnographic fieldwork is traditionally seen as what distinguishes social and cultural anthropology from the other social sciences. This collection responds to the inte nsifying scrutiny of fieldwork in recent years. It challenges the idea of the necessity for the total immersion of the ethnographer in the field, and for the clear separation of professional and personal areas of activity. The very existence of 'the field' as an entity separate from everyday life is questioned. Fresh perspectives on contemporary fieldwork are provided by diverse case-studies from across North America and Europe. These contributions give a thorough appraisal of what fieldwork is and should be, and an extra dimension is added through fascinating accounts of the personal experiences of anthropologists in the field.

The Ethnographic Self

The Ethnographic Self
Author: Amanda Coffey
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1999-05-10
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9780761952671

"What are the relationships between the self and fieldwork? How do personal, emotional and identity issues impact on fieldwork?" "The Ethnographic Self argues that ethnographers and others involved in research in the field should be aware of how fieldwork affects the researcher, and how the researcher affects the field. Coffey synthesizes accounts of the personal experience of ethnography, and aims to make sense of the process of fieldwork research as a set of practical, intellectual and emotional accomplishments. The book is thematically arranged and illustrated with a wide range of empirical material. The author examines the ethnographic presence in the field, and the implications of this in and beyond fieldwork, exploring issues such as the creation of the ethnographic self, and the embodiment and sexualization of the field and self." "The Ethnographic Self will be of interest to anyone working in the area of qualitative research, but especially for sociologists, and educational and health researchers."--BOOK JACKET.

Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be

Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be
Author: James D. Faubion
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2011-10-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0801463580

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.

Improvising Theory

Improvising Theory
Author: Allaine Cerwonka
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2008-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226100286

Scholars have long recognized that ethnographic method is bound up with the construction of theory in ways that are difficult to teach. The reason, Allaine Cerwonka and Liisa H. Malkki argue, is that ethnographic theorization is essentially improvisatory in nature, conducted in real time and in necessarily unpredictable social situations. In a unique account of, and critical reflection on, the process of theoretical improvisation in ethnographic research, they demonstrate how both objects of analysis, and our ways of knowing and explaining them, are created and discovered in the give and take of real life, in all its unpredictability and immediacy. Improvising Theory centers on the year-long correspondence between Cerwonka, then a graduate student in political science conducting research in Australia, and her anthropologist mentor, Malkki. Through regular e-mail exchanges, Malkki attempted to teach Cerwonka, then new to the discipline, the basic tools and subtle intuition needed for anthropological fieldwork. The result is a strikingly original dissection of the processual ethics and politics of method in ethnography.

Doing Fieldwork

Doing Fieldwork
Author: W. Fife
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2005-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781403969095

Making use of his own research experiences in Papua New Guinea, Southern Ontario, and Newfoundland, Wayne Fife teaches students and new researchers how to prepare for research, conduct a study, analyze the material (e.g. create new social and cultural theory), and write academic or policy oriented books, articles, or reports. The reader is taught how to combine historic and contemporary documents (e.g. archives, newspapers, government reports) with fieldwork methods (e.g. participant-observation, interviews, and self-reporting) to create ethnographic studies of disadvantaged populations. Anthropologists, Sociologists, Folklorists and Educational researchers will equally benefit from this critical approach to research.

Experimental Collaborations

Experimental Collaborations
Author: Adolfo Estalella
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785338544

In the accounts compiled in this book, ethnography occurs through processes of material and social interventions that turn the field into a site for epistemic collaboration. Through creative interventions that unfold what we term as “fieldwork devices”—such as coproduced books, the circulation of repurposed data, co-organized events, authorization protocols, relational frictions, and social rhythms—anthropologists engage with their counterparts in the field in the construction of joint anthropological problematizations. In these situations, the traditional tropes of the fieldwork encounter (i.e. immersion and distance) give way to a narrative of intervention, where the aesthetics of collaboration in the production of knowledge substitutes or intermingles with participant observation. Building on this, the book proposes the concept of “experimental collaborations” to describe and conceptualize this distinctive ethnographic modality.

Ethnography by Design

Ethnography by Design
Author: Luke Cantarella
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2019
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1350071021

Ethnography by Design, unlike many investigations into how ethnography can be done, focuses on the benefits of sustained collaboration across projects to ethnographic enquiry, and the possibilities of experimental co-design as part of field research. The book translates specifically scenic design practices, which include processes like speculation, materialization, and iteration, and applies them to ethnographic inquiry, emphasizing both the value of design studio processes and "designed" field encounters. The authors make it clear that design studio practices allow ethnographers to ask and develop very different questions within their own and others' research and thus, design also offers a framework for shaping the conditions of encounter in ways that make anthropological suppositions tangible and visually apparent. Written by two anthropologists and a designer, and based on their experience of their collective endeavours during three projects, Luke Cantarella, Christine Hegel, and George E. Marcus examine their works as a way to continue a broader inquiry into what the practice of ethnography can be in the twenty-first century, and how any project distinctively moves beyond standard perspectives through its crafted modes of participation and engagement.