In the Field. Prof. George Gmelch
Mountain
6-1.Traditional racks or “flakes” for drying cod, 1972
6-2.With the decline in cod, a thriving crab fishery emerged
6-3.Mobile workers on an oil rig supply vessel in St. John’s harbor
6-4.Bay de Verde, an “outport” on Newfoundland’s Conception Bay
7-1.George as a young minor league ballplayer, 1967
7-2.Conducting interviews in the clubhouse of the minor league Springfield Cardinals
8-1.Morgan Gmelch and classmates at Tonoyama Daiichi Yochien
8-2.Sharon with her women’s nakama or friendship group
8-3.Preparing for Sports Day at Tonoyama Daiichi Yochien
8-4.Sharon with Nobuko Kinoshita, Athuko Horishima, and children at a park in Hirakata
9-1.Elbridge W. Merrill with unidentified Tlingit boy and woman near Sitka, 1905
9-2.Chief L.aanteech, Sitka, 1905
9-3.Female cannery workers at Funter Bay, Alaska, 1907
9-4.Interviewing the O’Leary and Connors family at their home in Tullow, county Carlow
9-5.Filming an interview with the McCarthys at the Spring Lane, Cork
9-6.Student research assistants Aisling Kearns and Carolyn Hou in a shared camping trailer
10-1.Student Sara Finnerty with her homestay family in the village of Josey Hill
10-2.Homestay mother Valenza Griffith and family in Coles Cave, St. Lucy Parish
10-3.Men clean flying fish, a staple of the Bajan diet, on the beach near Bathsheba
10-4.A typical street scene in the parish of St. Lucy
11-1.Aerial view of the city of Hobart, Tasmania
11-2.One of Union College’s anthropology field-school groups
11-3.Sharon talks to students during a field trip to Bruny Island
12-1.A developed portion of downtown Moshi, Tanzania
12-2.Swahili teacher Joyce Semiono with friends and neighbors
12-3.Student Jason Klusky relaxes with members of his internship NGO
12-4.Students are instructed in bow hunting by Hadza men
Acknowledgments
During the decade this book was in progress, many people advised and assisted us. Early on, Tom Curtin, Richard Nelson, and Kenji Tierney helped us understand what a book needed to do to invite student readers into the world of cultural anthropology.
We are also indebted to Karen Brison, Lucia Cantero, Rob Elias, Morgan Gmelch, Jerry Handler, Rabia Kamal, Steve Leavitt, Chris Loperena, John Nelson, Craig Root, Diane Royal, John Ziegler, and Rue Ziegler, who were always ready sounding boards and who contributed new perspectives. Katharine (“Kat”) Beal, Constance Clement, Maria Delgado, and Howard DeNike were superstar editors. Kat and Maria, together with Jacqueline Cepeda who also read the entire manuscript, added a valuable student perspective. Colleagues, friends, and relatives who were too kind to say no when asked if they were willing to read a particular chapter include Judy Adler, Matt Barg, Jim Eder, Ellen Frankenstein, Larry Hill, Terry Hill, Jan Holmes, Anthony Howarth, Noboku Kinoshita, Joanna LaFrancesca, Debbie Miller, Barbara Neis, Richard Nelson, Nicole Power, Sharon Roseman, Jack Stuster, and Adrian Tanner. They served as informal fact checkers and gave us good advice on what passages to keep and what to excise.
Seth Dobrin, Renee Donovan, and Kate Marshall, our editors at UC Press, provided wise counsel. Ten anonymous reviewers made valuable early suggestions that we took to heart and that have made this a better book. We are also grateful to Bradley Depew who shepherded the manuscript through the production process and to Anthony Chiffolo for his careful copyediting.
We owe thanks to our former field-school students, especially Chris Berk, Johanna Campbell, Carolyn Canetti, Pat DiCerbo, Ellen Frankenstein, and Pearl Jurist-Schoen for digging into their memories to help us reconstruct our times together. Our son, Morgan, also played an important role in this regard. We also wish to thank our anthropology colleagues at the University of San Francisco and Union College for providing a nurturing atmosphere for scholarship. Finally, our deepest gratitude goes to the many people in Ireland, England, Barbados, Tasmania, Tanzania, Alaska, and Japan who over the decades assisted us in our fieldwork, giving us their time and trust. Their lives and their stories opened new windows onto the world.
To Richard K. Nelson—anthropologist, nature writer, conservationist, and lifelong friend. And for our son, Morgan, and the many students who have accompanied us to the field over the years.
1
The Fieldwork Tradition
This book offers a personal and humanistic glimpse of the life and work of cultural anthropology. Many manuals or “how to” books on fieldwork are available. Our aim instead is to explore what being an anthropologist and doing fieldwork are like. We tell stories from our own experiences as well as recount some from the many students we have taught over the years. By doing so we hope to convey the range of topics anthropologists study and the different kinds of research they do. We describe the strategies and techniques we used to gather data, some of our findings, and the problems and pleasures of doing fieldwork. We hope these stories impart a sense of the anthropological approach to knowledge as well as the excitement and challenge of living in and learning from other cultures. The chapters that follow include experiences in diverse cultures, with representatives from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and the Caribbean.
THE FIELD
“The field” refers to the cultural setting where anthropologists do their research. Until a few decades ago, this was usually a non-Western place and involved living among tribal or peasant peoples. Typically, fieldwork meant moving into a village, learning the language, gaining rapport, and living as closely as possible to the way of the “natives” for at least a year. Many anthropologists still go to distant and unfamiliar places to do this kind of fieldwork, but today the field can be just about anywhere, from a village in Kenya to a New York City street corner, an ethnic enclave in Paris, or the corridors of a transnational corporation. It can also refer to more than one place, since more and more research requires or benefits from a multisited approach. Now it is common among scholars studying migration, for example, to do fieldwork in both the migrants’ home society and their destination communities. Regardless of geographic location or cultural group, however, the notion of “the field” or being “in the field” is symbolically and emotionally laden. Doing fieldwork remains a rite of passage in anthropology, turning graduate students into professionals.
The appeal of and opportunity to travel abroad and learn about another culture by living among its people probably attract as many students to anthropology as its vast subject matter. The prospect of conducting surveys or reading manuscripts, in contrast, holds less allure as the reason someone would choose to go into sociology or history. While in the field, there is no sharp boundary between an anthropologist’s work and play, public and personal life. In contrast, the sociologist administering a survey or the historian reading documents in an archive usually commutes to his or her research site and returns home at the end of the day. Not so for most anthropologists. Even during casual conversations or while just hanging out at their research site, anthropologists are always “on the job,” their antennae up.
As we hope becomes evident in the following chapters, fieldwork is more than a particular methodology of research. It is also a transformative experience for the individuals who engage in it. Going to the field means leaving one’s own culture and immersing oneself deeply in the life of another and is usually totally absorbing. As such, it is a personal as well as a professional crucible. In the process of learning about others, anthropologists also discover a great deal about themselves and their own culture. It is no wonder that a mystique surrounds the discipline.
FIELDWORK: