150 Fieldwork in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Fieldwork in Social and Cultural Anthropology experiential, interpretative, and symbolic anthropology, for Ethnographic work in the various sites of fieldwork, in the
example, in the works by Clifford Geertz (1973), Turner early days and today, has been based on an ethos of trust.
Moshe Shokeid, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (1967), and Turner and Bruner (1986)). Anthropologists, mostly engaged in a lone journey, have never
! 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The method of fieldwork was adopted in most Western been able to implement a procedure of testing the accuracy and
European countries, though in France the interests of leading truthfulness of fieldnotes reported by colleagues and students.
anthropologists (Lévi-Strauss in particular) were far more Rarely did fieldworkers choose to return to a field studied
concentrated in oral and textual traditions such as tribal myths already by another ethnographer. The few cases of contested
Abstract
of creation. They attributed little importance to the ethnogra- reports have gained much attention, the controversy between
The article presents the origins of the method of fieldwork in European and American anthropology. It introduces the practice
pher’s experiences in vivo. The ethnographic tradition was also Oscar Lewis and Robert Redfield who studied the same
of fieldwork – ‘participant observation’ – as developed in the study of small, remote societies, during the era of colonialism. adopted outside Europe and the United States (in India in community of Tepotzlan, and in particular, Derek Freeman’s
The article proceeds to discuss later transformations in ethnographic research: moving away from the colonial territories to particular). (1983) refutation of Margaret Mead’s observations in Samoa.
fieldwork sites in Western industrial societies. The choice of new types of communal and institutional settings in urban and But long-term research, carried out by anthropologists whose
globalized spaces of social life also instigated major changes of methodology and theory in ethnographic projects. These continuing interest and commitment to a particular field has
include also a growing awareness of the impact of the researcher’s presence during fieldwork, his/her identity, as well as the The Practice of Fieldwork been supported by sufficient funds or easy access, also offered
expansion of the variety of the types of data considered in ethnographic projects. a strategy of verification of observations made at earlier trips.
As a first step in their project, fieldworkers in the Malinowskian Although anthropologists have been expected to master the
tradition have always been acutely aware that they must language of the society they studied, that prerequisite was rarely
develop rapport and friendly relationships with the people in fully achieved. Constraints of time and linguistic skills often
Origins of a Method The fieldwork projects carried out by Malinowski, his their chosen field. They are expected to listen attentively, and impelled them to rely on ‘informants’ as interpreters until they
colleagues, and the later generations of younger anthropolo- witness whatever happens around them in the field, without gained a better command of communication in the native
Fieldwork is a term that has been employed for nearly a century gists entailed observations of the minutiae of everyday life in disturbing the natural flow of events. As they consolidate their languages. The length of stay in the field was usually deter-
by social–cultural anthropologists as a major methodological the various domains of social behavior and cultural traditions. position with locals, they usually add information through mined by budgetary as much as by personal circumstances. But
tool and a profound professional experience that leaves its In sum, it was supposed to record the totality of the social more active modes of communication (such as initiating an informal norm of 1 year seems to have dominated main-
mark on their lives throughout their careers. It designates experience in the studied society. The essence of fieldwork was conversations, interviews, collecting statistical data, taking stream fieldwork projects.
a complete concentration on observations in their chosen site encapsulated, for example, in the following statements by photographs, etc.), but they are careful not to instigate a flow of How fieldworkers present their role, and to what extent their
of research, for a considerable period of time, usually of no less representatives of three generations in British anthropology: information into preconceived patterns of their own making. subjects comprehend the purpose and consequences of their
than 6 months and up to a few years. Originally, this engage- They invest much of their time recording this material in their work, remains an unsolved ethical problem. However, some
ment involved a total separation from the researcher’s ordinary notebooks or computers. The bulk of that store accumulates norms that pertain to a universal code of behavior have been
This goal is, briefly, to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to
life and his/her immersion into a remote and an alien social into their most treasured fieldwork product – ‘fieldnotes’ (to be institutionalized at an early stage, such as the disguise of the
life, to realize his vision of his world. (Malinowski, 1922: p. 25)
environment. Anthropological fieldwork is known also as the later transformed into an ethnography). The hallmark of community studied. More rigorously maintained is the tradi-
First, in my estimation, is the point that fieldwork in the
‘ethnographic method.’ anthropology, fieldwork had also come to differentiate tion of disguising the identity of individual participants. But no
empirical mode remains the sine qua non both for the testing of
The idea of fieldwork owes its origin to the interests of theory and, what is more important, for making new discoveries. anthropology from sociology. That major difference became forcing regulations were designed in regard to the rights of
scientists at the turn of the nineteenth century concerning the (Fortes, 1978: p. 24) more prominent a few decades later when anthropologists were privacy in recording and disclosing of intimate information
evolution of the human species, as much as to the expansion of ‘Good’ fieldworkers are those who are prepared to have good ‘trips,’ no longer confined to the study of remote Third World collected during fieldwork. Anthropologists were actually left
European colonialism that brought under its rule vast territo- that is, suspend as far as possible their own social conditioning in societies. to make their own decisions concerning ethical issues under the
order to have sensory and mental knowledge of what is really The practice of fieldwork has raised many, as yet not fully assumption of a deeply felt responsibility toward ‘their people.’
ries inhabited by unknown ‘exotic’ peoples. But no less, that
happening around and to them. (Turner, 1985: pp. 205–206) resolved, problems of methodology and ethics. Considered This dilemma was addressed, for example, by Geertz (1968:
movement coincided with a growing awareness in the United
States about the vanishing cultures of Native Americans. The a ‘method,’ it is assumed to maintain a standardized guide for p. 157): “A professional commitment to view human affairs
new science of anthropology that intended to satisfy these In the United States, the method of ethnographic fieldwork professional behavior, as well as technical rules concerning the analytically is not in opposition to a personal commitment
interests was at its first stages mostly speculative, based on was initiated by Franz Boas and his students most of whom had collection and recording of data. But throughout the history of to view them in terms of a particular moral perspective.” In
secondary sources of data collected by missioners, traders, until World War II concentrated their work in the not too far anthropology, the craft of fieldwork was practiced mostly by any case, fieldworkers were expected to record in their
colonial administrators, travelers, adventurers, etc. The practice away reservations of Indian tribes. Their trips to the fields of individuals who went on their own to explore new research fieldnotes, without censoring, as much as they could
of prefieldwork anthropologists was nicknamed ‘armchair research had rarely involved a long departure from their ordi- sites where they confronted conditions and constraints not remember from their daily observations and conversations.
anthropology.’ Its most celebrated as well as discredited nary life and work. They were also far more dependent on key envisioned by their teachers and colleagues. For many years, During many years of practice, however, anthropologists
representative remains James Frazer whose monumental work informants who provided them with data on specific subjects. the teaching of anthropology in many universities did not informed their colleagues, also in a more public fashion, about
was all based on library material. Consequently, they were not as deeply engaged in the routine include specific courses in methodology. The apprenticeship in the circumstances they encountered during fieldwork. The early
The invention of fieldwork as the characteristic method of of everyday life of the people they studied. The ethnographies anthropology was gained through more informal methods publications had mostly revealed the personal tribulations of
anthropology, as well as of its corollary aspect of ‘participant by Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie are good examples of the such as a close familiarity with the relevant corpus of ethnog- individuals in their respective fields (Powdermaker, 1966;
observations,’ has often been attributed to Bronislaw achievements and deficiencies of the tradition of short field- raphies (and particularly those associated with the candidates’ Freilich, 1970). But certain specific subjects of methodology
Malinowski, the British–Polish scholar, who is also considered work trips and reliance on informants. Margaret Mead, prob- departments, for example, ‘The Manchester School’), attending had engaged a more rigorous professional treatment. For
among the founders of the school of functionalism in ably the most celebrated among Boas’ students, who went to presentations and seminars by colleagues who returned from example, ‘the extended case method’ (Gluckman, 1958),
anthropology. His claim to fame as a fieldworker is based on Samoa in a style of research closer to the British tradition the field, communication with those who had already gone though mostly a method of ethnographic presentation,
his long stay, of more than 2 years, during World War I, among (1928), was later seriously criticized for her poor work as through the experience, and finally, through the good or bad suggested a follow-up strategy that stimulated the fieldworker
the Trobriand islanders of Melanesia. Although he was not the a fieldworker. It was mostly since the mid-1940s that Amer- fortunes of the novices on their arrival in the field and their to concentrate his/her observations, thereby revealing the
first to employ the method engaging participant observation, ican anthropologists have been equally engaged in intensive success in establishing rapport with their native hosts. No hidden connection between disjoined events. Another theme
nevertheless, his linguistic skills, the meticulous ethnographies fieldwork projects away from home. Compared with the British surprise, fieldwork had been often described as the major rite de that gained much attention concerned the various types of
he produced, and the introductory chapter on his method of tradition, American anthropologists, since the early stages, have passage for students of anthropology. Many anthropologists informants one might meet at entrance to a new field, and the
inquiry that opened his most famous work (Argonauts of the developed a distinctive orientation in their fieldwork projects, have been engaged in one major fieldwork project only. But it strategies and precautions one might consider working with
Western Pacific, 1922) have become the hallmark and quin- more broadly directed toward inquiries of culture and seems that more ethnographers have gradually become them (Casagrande, 1960; Shokeid, 1988). Detailed manuals
tessential model of fieldwork for almost half a century. personality (transformed in later years to domains of involved in a few fieldwork ventures throughout their career. and reference materials for the various aspects of fieldwork

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.12072-0 149
 Fieldwork in Social and Cultural Anthropology 151 152 Fieldwork in Social and Cultural Anthropology

have gradually developed into books of methodology so long observing cultural performances (Heilman, 1983), as well as connections), which can be collected without the need for Kulick, D., Willson, M. (Eds.), 1995. Taboo: Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in
absent (Epstein, 1967; Wax, 1971; Agar, 1996; Ellen, 1984; observing the members of dispersed social categories (Ortner, fieldwork. It is too early to predict whether the new genre of Anthropological Fieldwork. Routledge, London.
Leap, W.L., 1999. Public Sex/Gay Sex. Columbia University Press, New York.
Shaffir and Stebbins, 1991; and Wolcott, 1999). A more 1997). These fields, no longer designed to record the totality armchair anthropology will have a more lasting impact on
Lewin, E., Leap, W.L. (Eds.), 1996. Out in the Field: Reflections of Lesbian and Gay
meticulous approach came to fore examining the methods of of personal and communal life experiences, have been the role of fieldwork and its practitioners. Anthropologists. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL and Chicago.
recording and safekeeping of fieldnotes, the most valuable variously defined: delocalized, multisited, postcommunity, Lewis, O., 1966. La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty – San Juan
product of fieldwork (Sanjek, 1990). Also, conferences transnational spaces, and polymorphous engagements (Marcus, and New York. Martin Secker and Warburg, London.
See also: Anthropology and History; Anthropology: Overview; Malinowski, B., 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Routledge & Sons, London.
dedicated to specific methodological issues have become 1998; Amit, 2000; Shokeid, 2007; Hannerz, 2010).
Cultural Critique, Anthropological; Cultural Relativism, Malinowski, B., 1967. A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term. Routledge & Kegan
frequent events (such as ‘fieldwork at home,’ ‘long-term The ongoing change of the spatial research entities has not
Anthropology of; Ethnography; Ethnology; Field Observational Paul, London.
research’). necessarily transformed some of the major characteristics of Marcus, G.E., 1998. Ethnography through Thick & Thin. Princeton University Press,
Research in Anthropology and Sociology; Lesbian, Gay,
fieldwork. Anthropologists in the new fields continue to initiate Princeton.
Bisexual, Transgender, Queer: Bear and Leather Subcultures; Marcus, G.E., Fischer, M.M.J. (Eds.), 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique.
their observations mostly as individuals, men or women,
Psychological Anthropology; Qualitative Methods, History of; University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Transformations in Fieldwork Research engaged in their lone projects. It seems, however, there are less
Symbolic Interaction: Methodology; Thick Description: Mead, M., 1928. Coming of Age in Samoa. Morrow, New York.
couples involved in these projects, compared with the tendency
Methodology. Myerhoff, B., 1978. Number Our Days, first ed. Dutton, New York.
The idea of fieldwork had gone through immense changes since of married anthropologists to take along their families to the Newton, E., 1972. Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America. Prentice-Hall,
the days of Malinowski and the generations that established the more remote field sites. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
ethnographic tradition of participant observations in remote, In recent years, however, some issues not considered before, Ortner, S., 1997. Fieldwork in the postcommunity. Anthropology and Humanism
Bibliography Quarterly 22, 61–80.
apparently homogeneous societies, clearly identified within concerning the fieldworker’s feelings and demeanor, have been Plotnicov, L., 1973. Anthropological fieldwork in modern and local urban contexts.
territorial and cultural boundaries. The consequences of World openly raised in conferences and edited volumes. Anthropol- Urban Anthropology 2, 248–264.
Agar, M.H., 1996 [1980]. The Professional Stranger, second ed. Academic Press, San
War II, the decline of colonialism on the one hand, but the ogists preparing for a fieldwork project have never been Diego, CA. Powdermaker, H., 1966. Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist, first ed.
expansion of anthropology in academia on the other, made requested to consult about their personality traits and social Agar, M.H., 1986. Independents Declared: The Dilemmas of Independent Trucking. W.W. Norton, New York.
Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, DC. Rabinow, P., 1977. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. University of California Press,
both the entry and the budgeting of long trips to remote capabilities to accommodate what might become stressful field
Amit, V. (Ed.), 2000. Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Contem- Berkeley, CA.
continents an impractical goal for the growing number of circumstances. But since Malinowski’s widow published his Read, K.E., 1980. Other Voices: The Style of a Male Homosexual Tavern. Chandler &
porary World. Routledge, London.
students. Instead, many candidates turned their interest to personal diaries (1967), revealing the prejudices and the Casagrande, J.B. (Ed.), 1960. In the Company of Man: Twenty Portraits by Anthro- Sharp, Novato, CA.
various attractive fields within the borders of their own socie- emotional stress experienced in the field by the mythical pologists. Harper, New York. Ruby, J., 1980. Exposing yourself: reflexivity, anthropology, and film. Semiotica 30,
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Press, London. Sanjek, R. (Ed.), 1990. Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology. Cornell University
the United States and Europe of ethnographic studies in fields place in the professional discourse about fieldworkers’ Press, Ithaca, NY.
Epstein, A.L. (Ed.), 1967. The Craft of Social Anthropology. Tavistock, London.
‘at home’ (e.g., the most celebrated work in an Italian lower personal problems. This attitude has been closely related to Shaffir, W.B., Stebbins, R.A., 1991. Experiencing Fieldwork: An Inside View of Qual-
Fortes, M., 1978. An anthropologist’s apprenticeship. Annual Review of Anthropology
class Boston neighborhood by Whyte, 1970 [1943]). But these the genre of reflexivity that since the late 1970s gained 7, 1–30. itative Research. Sage, London.
few research endeavors were unusual cases in a tradition that popularity in ethnographic texts (Rabinow, 1977; Ruby, Freeman, D.J., 1983. Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Shokeid, M., 1988. Anthropologists and their informants: marginality reconsidered.
Anthropological Myth. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Archives Européennes De Sociologie 29, 31–50.
was directed to confront ‘other cultures’ away from home. 1980). The lone fieldworker was no longer perceived through
Freilich, M. (Ed.), 1970. Marginal Natives: Anthropologists at Work. Harper & Row, Shokeid, M., 1995. A Gay Synagogue in New York. Columbia University Press, New
The new search for fields close to home seemed at first to the image of the infallible man or woman but expected to York (2003, augmented edition, University of Pennsylvania Press).
New York.
involve only a transfer of sites, such as the study of the withstand successfully all obstacles in a valiant test of Geertz, C., 1968. Thinking as a moral act: ethical dimensions of anthropological Shokeid, M., 2007. From the Tikopia to polymorphous engagements: ethnographic
apparently clearly defined urban ethnic neighborhoods in the personality that proves he/she is capable of penetrating the fieldwork in the new states. The Antioch Review 28, 139–158. writing under changing fieldwork circumstances. Social Anthropology 15,
United States (Lewis, 1966; Hannerz, 1969). However, that social codes of alien cultures in far away territories. Geertz, C., 1973. The Interpretation of Culture. Basic Books, New York. 305–319.
Ginsburg, F.D., 1989. Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Turner, V.W., 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Cornell
novelty demanded a change in the style and intensity of The new fieldwork sites in Western urban societies University Press, Ithaca, NY.
Community. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
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Gluckman, M., 1958 [1940]. Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand.
profound consequence, the next change of spatial sites of long-established taboos that separated fieldworkers from the Rhodes–Livingstone paper no. 28. Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ.
fieldwork came to also include institutions that offered subjects of their observations (Kulick and Willson, 1995; Lewin Hannerz, U., 1969. Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community. Columbia Turner, V.W., Bruner, E.M. (Eds.), 1986. The Anthropology of Experience. University of
University Press, New York. Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago.
specific services to permanent or transient populations (for and Leap, 1996). The border between the observer and the
Hannerz, U., 2004. Foreign News: Exploring the World of Foreign Correspondents. The Wax, R.H., 1971. Doing Fieldwork: Warnings and Advice. University of Chicago Press,
example, Myerhoff’s (1978) work in a community center for observed that was naturally upheld in the old fields, where Chicago.
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aged people). That transformation opened the door to the alien researcher had been conspicuously distinguished Hannerz, U., 2010. Anthropology’s World: Life in a Twenty-First-Century Discipline. Whyte, W.F., 1970 [1943]. Street Corner Society. University of Chicago Press,
a choice of fields that, hitherto, have not been considered (by race and other visible marks of personal characteristics), Pluto Press, London and New York. Chicago.
suitable for observation (e.g., fieldwork in the scene of gay is no longer easily maintained in many of the new sites of Heilman, S.C., 1983. The People of the Book: Drama, Fellowship and Religion. Wolcott, H.F., 1999. Ethnography: A Way of Seeing. Altamira Press, London.
life by Newton, 1972; Read, 1980; and Shokeid, 1995). In fieldwork. The photographs displayed in many ethnographies University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
these fields, the fieldworker is often unable to observe the of the founding generation, showing them in a landscape of
participants throughout a wide spectrum of daily activities. exotic trees and simple huts, posing in the company of
Moreover, in the fields of anonymous participants, the minimally clothed natives, have become a symbolic emblem
observer’s ability to record behavior and communicate with for the changing circumstances of fieldwork.
his subjects of research had been very limited in scope (Leap, It is probably an irony that by the end of the twentieth
1999). These new fields were instrumental in the century, a century that gave rise to modern anthropology,
development of the method and theory of symbolic interaction fieldwork, its most inventive method and major signifier of
(associated with Erving Goffman’s work). professional identity, seems to have lost its incontestable
The transformation of methods could also be identified in paramount position. Critical views of the validity of positivist
the choice of problem-oriented ethnographic projects. Even methodology, as well as the growing influence of post-
when the relevant site was actually a bounded territorial unit, it modernist currents in cultural studies, are challenging the
engaged a modified strategy of fieldwork (Ginsburg, 1989). But authority of ethnographic texts based on participant observa-
another major change of sites entailed a complete eradication tions (Marcus and Fischer, 1986). These intellectual
of the bounded spatial characteristics of fieldwork. These movements, popular in recent years, inspire and legitimize
unbounded sites included observations of participants anthropological projects that are based on other types of data
in particular occupations (Agar, 1986; Hannerz, 2004), (such as textual, mass media creations, and Internet