In the Field. Prof. George Gmelch
an effort to get to know everyone at Holylands, it was inevitable that we relied upon some individuals and families more than on others. We had little contact with one of the Maughan families, primarily because the adults drank heavily, were often difficult, and created problems for everyone in camp. The eldest son, “Big John,” age twenty-six, was sometimes abusive. At various times he tossed a burning log under our car, threw a rock through our wagon window, and challenged George to a fight. George described one incident in his field notes:
Yesterday as we were driving out of the site, Big John stepped in front of the car. He was drunk and wanted a ride downtown. We reluctantly made room for him. A couple miles down the road, he changed his mind and insisted we take him back to camp. Already irritated and not wanting to appear weak, I told him politely yet firmly that he could either get out of the car now or continue on with us. He refused, so I pulled into a police station which happened to be nearby. As soon as I stopped, he jumped out of the car and we drove off. This morning he came up to the fire where I was sitting with Red Mick, Jim and Mylee. He was drunk again and announced that he had been in jail all night because of me. Waving his fist, he said, “I’m giving you fifteen minutes to pull your wagon out of this camp or I’ll burn you out.” All eyes were on me. I said, “Well, you’ll have to burn me out then.” He mumbled something and staggered off. The men assured me that I’d said the right thing, but I’m not so sure.
Fortunately for our peace of mind, his family left Holylands about a month later.
OTHER SOURCES OF DATA
Camp life soon fell into a comfortable and productive routine, which began most mornings with chatting with our immediate neighbors, the Donoghues, whose campfire we usually sat at while getting breakfast. Many days ended up back at the same campfire, enjoying further conversation with the Donoghues and passersby. In a letter, George described our routine as winter set in:
Dec 5, 1971: The wagon is cold in the morning. I usually stoke up the small wood-burning stove and get back into my sleeping bag until the wagon heats up which considering the small space doesn’t take long. The small bunk across the rear of the wagon is just six feet across so my head and toes touch, but I’ve gotten used to it. The wagon has great atmosphere. It creaks in the wind and you can hear the pitter patter of rain on the canvas roof. Unless the weather is bad, we eat on the wagon steps or at the campfire next door. At first the kids eyeballed my Cheerios as they had never seen boxed cereal before, nor have they eaten grapefruit. We wash up in a plastic dish pan and use the surrounding fields like everyone else for a toilet. There is no rule about which direction men and women go, so you try not to surprise anyone.
By late afternoon the men and women return from their rounds and there is usually good conversation around the fires. After dinner, we sit around the campfire again or else go to the pub or sometimes to a movie with Travellers. The pubs are noisy and smoke filled but the atmosphere and conversation are good. I am often able to get people to talk at length about the topics I’m working on. The pubs close at 11, and we’re back in camp and in bed by midnight.
Wanting to know how representative what we were observing at Holylands was of other Travellers, we continued to periodically visit other Dublin camps. We also regularly attended a weekly meeting of Dublin social workers working with Travellers. This enabled us to check our observations against theirs and learn about what was happening in other parts of the city. Late in our fieldwork, I was invited to fill in for six weeks when a social worker in a nearby neighborhood went on leave, which gave me the opportunity to more directly experience some of the issues that arise between Travellers and settled Irish in the welfare sphere. Together, George and I made short trips to other parts of Ireland to learn about Travellers’ situations outside Dublin. We also spent two weeks in England and Scotland, visiting local officials dealing with Travellers and Gypsies there as well as relatives of one Holylands’ family.
During the year, we got to know many settled people who were active in the Itinerant Settlement Movement, including its leadership, which was valuable to our research, especially mine, which also explored the type of contact and interactions Travellers had with members of the settled community.8 The friendships we developed with several middle-class Dublin families were especially rewarding. The occasional social evening spent in their homes was not only a pleasant change from camp life but almost always yielded new insights and questions for one of us to pursue. They also directed us to teachers, government officials, clerics, physicians, and even scrap-metal dealers working with Travellers, whom we would later interview.
We also spent many hours in the National Library, searching for early historical references to Travellers, and in the library of the Irish Times, going through bulky file folders of newspaper clippings (long before such files were digitized and searchable). These documented clashes with householders and the police over trespassing and efforts by the Itinerant Settlement Movement to settle Travellers. In the archives of the Folklore Department at University College Dublin, we discovered a set of questionnaires about Travellers that had been completed by schoolteachers across Ireland in the early 1950s. These painted a picture of Travellers’ work and nomadism before their city-ward migration and revealed many of the superstitions and folk beliefs that settled people held about them. When either of us felt depressed, anxious, or simply at loose ends, we could go to one of these places and escape into solitary and productive work. When a complete break from fieldwork was needed, Dublin provided cinemas, theater, museums, art galleries, plays, shops, restaurants, and the zoo—a range of diversions unavailable to anthropologists working in rural villages.
FINAL THOUGHTS
On August 15, 1972, thirteen months after our first conversation with the taxi driver on the drive into Dublin from the airport, we left Holylands and Ireland. We had become very close to some families, making our departure emotional on both sides. We promised to return, which we did several times through the 1970s and 1980s and again in 2001 and 2011. Now, looking back nearly fifty years later, we sometimes wonder why they willingly took us in. How many middle-class Irish or American families would put up with two foreigners moving into their neighborhood, watching how they behave, and asking endless questions about their lives? On the other hand, Travellers didn’t lose anything by accepting us, and most Holylanders seemed to enjoy the novelty of our presence and, we think, appreciated our friendship and the genuine interest and respect we had for their lives. When we returned in 2011, we were honored to learn that three children—one George and two Sharons—had been named after us. We were also pleased to discover people’s fond memories of the Wagon Wheels soccer team and the extent to which it and we had become a part of Holylands families’ folklore.
3
Politics and Fieldwork
Nomads in English Cities
For the first half century of anthropology’s existence in North America, most research was “pure,” that is, conducted for its own sake with little attention given to its practical applications.1 Today, half of American anthropologists are employed full-time by government agencies, NGOs, and the like to help solve specific social problems or provide the cultural context needed to develop new programs or policies. Typical goals include alleviating poverty, improving health, and evaluating the effectiveness of government and nonprofit initiatives. A friend of ours studies behavioral issues associated with isolation and confinement in order to help NASA design better training programs and space stations. Other applied work involves museum curation and historic preservation. Still other anthropologists are hired to help corporations understand how to increase efficiency, improve worker satisfaction, or deliver better services and consumer products.
Others, like us, are employed in academia but occasionally do applied research. We have conducted several research projects for federal and state agencies. Our first—the subject of this chapter—was for Britain’s Department of the Environment (DOE) and the Welsh Home Office.2 It involved studying the mobility patterns of Gypsy and Irish Traveller families living in England and Wales and the problems that the lack of legal places to camp created for them, for nearby residents, and for local government officials. The focus was on the estimated five hundred highly mobile regional and “long distance” families for whom providing legal campsites was most difficult. This chapter explores these issues