Anthropological practice : fieldwork and the ethnographic method /

The author's goal is to write about aspects of fieldwork that remain largely untold. She speaks about moving beyond the caricatures of field experience often found in texts, or the misunderstandings that can underlie judgments by research review panels. Anthropologist Okely (emer., Hull Univ., UK) situates the subject of fieldwork methods in historical context (e.g., discussing issues of detachment, universalism, and hypothesis-driven research from the discipline's scientific roots) and considers what anthropologists write as well as what they say and do. Drawing on extensive interviews with some two dozen established anthropologists, Okely touches on a range of issues, often in brief sections. These include what draws an anthropologist to a field site, the role of chance in fieldwork, changing one's research focus, being available for the unexpected, the role of patience, the myth of the lone ethnographer, and the intimacy of insights that emerge from daily life for the participant observer. A particularly interesting chapter focuses on the embodied experience of fieldwork and considers questions of working, sitting, dancing, and sleeping, as well as the racialized and gendered body. Readers will note that examples largely come from faculty affiliated with European universities. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. C. Hendrickson Marlboro College