Doing Field Projects. John Forrest
Third, there are numerous ethical concerns about dealing with human subjects that have to be monitored carefully. Fourth, setting up the kind of fieldwork projects that undergraduates can productively engage in is a challenge. The last issue is the reason for this book. Undergraduate fieldwork is similar to graduate work in some ways, but not identical by any means, and should really be handled differently. Hence the projects in this volume.
This book is the product both of my own intensive professional experience as a fieldworker over a period of 40 years in the swamps of the Tidewater of North Carolina, the pueblos and Hispano villages of New Mexico, Buenos Aires and surrounds (my birthplace), and urban Cambodia (where I currently live), as well as smaller projects in England, Ukraine, Mari-El in the Russian Federation, and northern Italy, and of my experience designing and teaching a fieldwork methods course for undergraduates, which ran annually for over 20 years. I also introduced fieldwork methods into my Introduction to Anthropology course, not as a full-blown lab section akin to bio or chem lab, but as a paper requirement in the second half of the semester, where students could pick one assignment to pursue. Many examples in this book can be used in this way.
This book is designed to be a self-contained text for undergraduate instruction, but, if you are an instructor considering using these projects for your classes, either as individual exercises, or strung together as a full-blown course, you should realize that, despite the personal details and the specificity, there is a great deal of flexibility built into each exercise, and you should feel free to add and modify as you see fit. In certain spheres, such as the development of research design, it is expected that you will have your own needs and ideas, and you should treat the suggestions here as a rough template only. Most of the projects can be used on their own, although some of the later ones build on skills acquired in earlier ones, and several require the kind of planning that is, perhaps, impractical for a stand-alone exercise in a course for which a field project is only an adjunct.
Although this text is designed for use in undergraduate courses in anthropology, it is not limited to that audience. Postgraduate students may also use it to gain insight into qualitative fieldwork as a method, particularly at the beginning of their studies. Trainees in a variety of disciplines from sociology and social psychology to market research and hotel management can also use relevant projects to apply qualitative methods of investigation to their own specialties. These days, there is a common popular belief that if social data under investigation are quantified, the resultant “study” is somehow more rigorous (that is, more “scientific”) than a qualitative one. This perception may sometimes be reasonable, but it does not have to be. Qualitative investigations can be designed in a thoroughly rigorous manner, and may yield results that are more nuanced and insightful (and, therefore, more “useful”), than a strictly quantitative one. In that regard, the methods outlined in this text can be used by anyone interested in facets of social research, so that the projects can be tailored for use by people in human resources, public relations, political campaigns, workplace efficiency, and the like, where a deeper understanding of various components of the social landscape can be beneficial.
My goals as a teacher of anthropology have been student-centered from the outset. To this end, I have always valued an approach to teaching anthropological theory that addresses the crucial question of where our raw information comes from, what it looks like, and how it is used to generate theory. When undergraduates engage in fieldwork for themselves, they gain an understanding of both the strengths and weaknesses of the anthropological method. They also start to gain practical insight into explanatory modeling and theory building, which helps in their critical reading of classic texts in anthropology.
The projects in this text can be used individually as assignments in a variety of anthropology courses (including Intro to General or Social/Cultural Anthropology), or chosen units can be pieced together to form an entire qualitative methods course – for undergraduate majors in anthropology, or in allied fields where such fieldwork is applicable. There are too many projects described here for a methods class covering a 12- to 15-week term, or even a whole academic year, so a certain amount of selection is necessary. Furthermore, a number of the projects deal with topics that are not pertinent to the needs and interests of all instructors and can be omitted. My purpose is to open up as many choices as possible and leave it up to individual instructors to determine how to make use of the projects independently or woven together.
Both because the world is now dominated by digital technology and because the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2019 forced many universities to switch to online resources for teaching, there are a number of ways to use this book in a socially distanced manner. There are four chapters devoted exclusively to digital ethnography (17–20) and many projects, such as those that involve interviews, contain suggestions for carrying them out online rather than in person. There is enough such material presented here that the book can be used exclusively as an online tool if the need arises.
Chapters both before and after the projects themselves analyze the history of fieldwork in anthropology in Europe and North America, pointing out the pros and cons of the method, as well as underlining certain pitfalls and biases that can easily (and unwittingly) creep in. These chapters also investigate the complex process of writing field notes themselves, as well as problematizing the numerous ways – good and bad – that field notes have been, and can be, converted into finished ethnographic writing. My intention in these chapters, as well as in the projects themselves, is to give instructors scope for further discussion with their students concerning the importance of the fieldwork method in anthropology, along with consideration of the numerous debates that continue to surface regarding its reliability and utility.
Throughout the projects presented here there is an awareness that the fieldworker is the instrument of field study, in the same way that a telescope is the instrument of astronomy or the microscope of microbiology, and I have made an effort to incorporate self-analysis and self-reflection on the part of the novice fieldworker in the process of data collection whenever possible. Such self-awareness is also reflected periodically in some of my project descriptions by way of highlighting how critical it is for the accurate interpretation of the results of fieldwork to understand the personal biases and interests of the person gathering the data. To that end, I often include my own field notes and project data as examples, as well as those of my former students, as I do when I am teaching. I hope these examples can be used as springboards for instructors to incorporate their own experiences into their teaching of these projects, rather than as replacements.
I would like to thank a number of colleagues for insightful comments during the preparation of this manuscript, including Shaka McGlotten, who helped with the chapters on digital ethnography, as well as Alasdair Clayre of UNIMAS Kuching, James Peacock, UNC Chapel Hill, and former students Janette Yarwood, and Elisabeth Jackson. I would like to give special thanks to all the anonymous reviewers of the many versions of the manuscript over the years who have helped enormously in shaping the work into what it is today. Their help has been invaluable.
Foreword (Including a Word to Student Readers)
When I was first asked to join this book as a supporting author, I was delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to such an innovative text. I had already reviewed a draft of the book and was impressed by the variety of field projects it contains as well as the depth by which each exercise is presented. I have been a college anthropology instructor for over 15 years and have written about qualitative methods and teaching and learning in anthropology textbooks and through my work as a founding member and Associate Editor of the Teaching and Learning Anthropology Journal. John (whom I personally refer to as Juan Alejandro – his birth name) is a number of years my senior and has the experience of a full life and career as an anthropologist and professor behind him. His own research background is varied and rich. His depth of knowledge and experience complements my passion for pedagogical accessibility and relevance. You will find that the exercises in this volume likewise represent these qualities. They are comprehensively classroom-tested and are engaging.
There are a number of fieldwork books in print, but none quite like this one. This text is designed for students, or others, with an interest in learning qualitative anthropological fieldwork methods, regardless of whether they intend