Chronicling cultures : long-term field research in anthropology /

This volume looks at the value of long-term fieldwork by anthropologists who return again and again to a people in order to better understand them. According to the authors in this collection, the advantages of long-term field research were discovered by Malinowski while detained in the Trobriand Islands of the Pacific at the outbreak of WW I. Malinowski realized the importance of directly observing what a people actually do in addition to what they say they do. Soon after the 1922 publication of Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific, anthropologists were quick to appreciate the richness of his observations on the Trobriand Islanders. The present volume presents the shift from short-term to long-term fieldwork in Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East by the anthropologists who undertook it. Continuous residence is not necessarily involved, but repeated visits are, and in later years the work has been inherited by students of the original researchers. In this reviewer's experience, working with the grandchildren and even the great-grandchildren of one's original informants yields a depth of understanding achievable in no other way. All academic levels and collections. F. P. Conant emeritus, Hunter College, CUNY