Fieldwork in Anthropology

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

Back cover text: If the new fin de siècle marks a recurrence of the real, Bent Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and Power epitomizes that development and sets new standards for social and political inquiry. The Danish town of Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding the real workings of power, and for grasping what they mean to our more general concerns of social and political organization. Politics, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow  a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader witnesses, firsthand, the classic and endless drama which defines what modernity and democracy are and can be.

This article presents the theoretical and methodological considerations behind a research method which the author calls ‘phronetic planning research’. Such research sets out to answer four questions of power and values for specific instances of planning: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What, if anything, should we do about it? A central task of phronetic planning research is to provide concrete examples and detailed narratives of the ways in which power and values work in planning and with what consequences to whom, and to suggest how relations of power and values could be changed to work with other consequences. Insofar as planning situations become clear, they are clarified by detailed stories of who is doing what to whom. Clarifications of that kind are a principal concern for phronetic planning research and provide the main link to praxis.

Feminist scholars have traditionally emphasized the importance of incorporating "the everyday'' worlds of women into the historically masculinist theoretical and empirical foundations of the social sciences. Such emphases have commonly resulted in smaller-scale research projects and more interactive kinds of research methods and methodologies. Feminist geographers have uniquely contributed to the body of feminist scholarship through drawing out the importance of place in everyday constructions of gender and, more recently, sexuality. Critical field-based research has therefore from the beginning been the mainstay of subdisciplinary research. L k e the discipline as a whole, however, little explicit attention has been given in publications or pedagogically to the politics of fieldwork (including how a "field" is defined and the politics involved in choosing and working in a particular "field") or the politics of representation (which includes considerations of the partiality of knowledge and how and to whom we represent our work, ourselves and others in various kinds of texts). These "Opening Remarks" show how these issues are addressed in the papers that follow and how feminist geography has much to contribute to critical analyses of global and multinational processes, including patriarchy, capitalism, and racism.

Taken together, the works of Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault highlight an essential tension in modernity. This is the tension between the normative and the real, between what should be done and what is actually done. Understanding this tension is crucial to understanding modern democracy, what it is and what it could be. It has been argued that an effective way of making democracy stronger is to strengthen civil society. This article contains a comparative analysis of the central ideas of Habermas and Foucault as they pertain to the question of democracy and civil society. More specifically, the discourse ethics of Habermas is contrasted with the power analytics and ethics of Foucault evaluating their usefulness for those interested in understanding, and bringing about, democratic social change.

[http://www.cambridge.org/knowledge/discountpromotion?code=PACKER12]

This book is a unique examination of qualitative research in the social sciences, raising and answering the question of why we do this kind of investigation. It explores the multiple roots of qualitative research – including phenomenology, hermeneutics, and critical theory – in order to diagnose the current state of play and recommend an alternative. The diagnosis is that much qualitative research today continues to employ the mind-world dualism that is typical of traditional experimental investigation. The recommendation is that we focus on constitution: the relationship of mutual formation between a form of life and its members. Michel Foucault’s program for “a historical ontology of ourselves” provides the basis for a fresh approach to investigation. The basic tools of qualitative research – interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and analysis of discourse – are re-forged in order to articulate how our way of living makes us who we are, and so empower us to change this form of life.

"By combining the range of theories from different disciplines, this book makes an excellent textbook for beginners in social and behavioral sciences. Furthermore, this informative book will be useful for all those interested in different theories and methods framing qualitative inquiry. Specifically, this work would be particularly helpful for students employing qualitative methodologies and working on grounding their studies. Although this book covers many theories and methodologies, extensive background knowledge of the theorists and concepts is not required as Packer does a great job explaining in detail those topics required to understand the content."
The Qualitative Report

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

This article provides an answer to what has been called the biggest problem in theorizing and understanding planning: the ambivalence about power found among planning researchers, theorists, and students. The author narrates how he came to work with issues of power and gives an example of how the methodology he developed for power studies—phronetic planning research—may be employed in practice. Phronetic planning research follows the tradition of power studies running from Machiavelli and Nietzsche to Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. It focuses on four value-rational questions: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What should be done? These questions are exemplified for a specific instance of Scandinavian urban planning. The author finds that the questions, and their answers, make a difference to planning in practice. They make planning research matter.

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

"Corruption has become one of the most popular topics in the social scientific disciplines. However, there is a lack of interdisciplinary communication about corruption. Models developed by different
academic disciplines are often isolated from each other. The purpose of this paper is to review several major approaches to corruption and draw them closer to each other. Most studies of corruption fall
into three major categories: (i) rational-actor models where corruption is viewed as resulting from cost/benefit analysis of individual actors; (ii) structural models that focus on external forces that determine corruption; and (iii) relational models that emphasize social interactions and networks among corrupt actors. Focusing on actors’ behavior and the social context, this article explains corruption concepts taken from sociology, economics, organization studies, political science, social anthropology, and social psychology."

The current text locates the anthropological study of roads within the wider context of studies on mobility and modernity. Besides introducing the articles of this special issue of Mobilities on roads and anthropology, this introduction also addresses some of the broader theoretical and epistemological implications of the anthropological perspective on roads, space, time and (im)mobility

The current text locates the anthropological study of roads within the wider context of studies on mobility and modernity. Besides introducing the articles of this special issue of Mobilities on roads and anthropology, this introduction also addresses some of the broader theoretical and epistemological implications of the anthropological perspective on roads, space, time and (im)mobility

Niccolò Machiavelli, the founder of modern political and administrative thought, made clear that an understanding of politics requires distinguishing between formal politics and what later, with Ludwig von Rochau, would become known as Realpolitik. No such distinction has been employed in the study of rationality. Yet I will argue that distinguishing between formal rationality and real rationality is as important for the understanding of rationality and planning as the distinction between formal politics and Realpolitik has been for understanding politics.

As tourism service standards become more homogeneous, travel destinations worldwide are conforming yet still trying to maintain, or even increase, their distinctiveness. Based on more than two years of fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and Arusha, Tanzania, this book offers an in-depth investigation of the local-to-global dynamics of contemporary tourism. Each destination offers examples that illustrate how tour guide narratives and practices are informed by widely circulating imaginaries of the past as well as personal fantasies of the future. The author reveals how local guides in Yogyakarta and Arusha insure the continued reproduction and localization of tourism fantasies, but they also use the privileged contact with foreigners to foment their own imaginations of "paradise on earth." The book focuses on the human mechanics of globalization, cosmopolitan mobility, and the role of the imaginary in giving people’s lives meaning, demonstrating essential ways in which ethnographies of tourism and travel contribute to ongoing theoretical and methodological debates about the local–global nexus.

The article offers an overview of the history of Estonian ethnology in juxtaposition with simultaneous developments in anthropology, a discipline recently established on the Estonian academic scene. The article explores the context and implications of early differences, as well as the recent rapprochement of the two disciplines, and the institutional collisions of the two disciplines in Eastern Europe. This collaborative issue of Estonian ethnologists and anthropologists studying their compatriots is offered as a reflection of a more harmonious relationship between the two disciplines. It is nevertheless discussed in light of the remaining methodological dissimilarities, fieldwork in particular.

The article considers the transmissions and effects of a digital letter, and its implications for multi-situated-as opposed to a multi-sited-anthropology. Multi-situated moves beyond multiple sites as supplementary contexts to the life flows of people, materials, and ideas, to consider multi-ontological, dynamic, and temporally contingent situations constitutive of such movements in the making, that are embedded and/or enfolded along several intersecting planes on-and offline. The public letter was written collaboratively in May 2012 by activists in Britain, agreed to and signed off by supportive British members of Parliament among others, and addressed to the then prime minister of India and the chief minister of the state of Tamil Nadu. The letter's contents pertained to the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in south India, with concerns about mandatory procedures in the construction of a nuclear power station, and democratic and human rights abuses against nonviolent protestors. By focusing on the emergence, travels, and receptive trajectories of the letter, the article makes a case for the increasing need to encompass aspects of digital anthropology not as a discrete subdiscipline, but as an integral part of core anthropological focus and method for the study of "onlife" entanglements-what effectively has become the digitalia of everyday life.

https://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/1369

""This article is an ethnographic study of a 29-kilometer stretch of cross-border highway located in South Albania and linking the city of Gjirokaster with the main checkpoint on the Albanian–Greek border. The road, its politics, and its poetics
constitute an ideal point of entry for an anthropological analysis of contemporary South Albania. The physical and social construction, uses, and perceptions of this road uniquely encapsulate three phenomena that dominate social life in postsocialist South Albania: the transition to a market economy, new nationalisms, and massive emigration (mainly to Greece). Taking this cross-border road section as my main ethnographic
point of reference, I suggest the fruitfulness of further discussion of the relationship between roads, narratives, and anthropology.

[roads, globalization, transnationalism, development, postsocialism, materiality, Albania]""

Anthropologists dealing with death have pointed to a process of privatization, bureaucratization, and secularization of death in the age of ‘high modernity’. In this article I argue that the exploration of death within the framework of modern terrorism, a form of death that is becoming increasingly common, reveals new expressions and interpretations of death that are public and are represented by a complex religious repertoire of images and practices. Based on a field study that combines in-depth interviews, observations, films, and textual analyses, this article examines how volunteers from the ‘Zaka’ organization (the Jewish ultra-Orthodox team for identification of victims of disaster in Israel) explain their deathwork during terror attacks. Generally we would expect that this community's religious norms, which prevent them from involvement with the larger society, would also prevent members from participation in cases of death in the public sphere. Nevertheless, Zaka's tasks involve collecting, matching, and recomposing pieces of human flesh and blood in the public arena. Through these new practices, Zaka volunteers shape new narratives of public death, which are based on two central premises: a discourse of ‘corpse symbolism’ and a narrative of taboo desecration. This language reinforces and revives Haredis' own religious expressions during terror, allowing them to monopolize the death experience and the handling of dead bodies, introduce sacred meanings of corpses and death into the public sphere, and create their new position as specialists and deathworkers.

This article examines the ways in which problems of concealment emerged in an ethnographic study of a suburban bar, and considers how disclosure of the research aims, the recruitment of informants and elicitation of information was negotiated throughout the fieldwork. The case study demonstrates how the social context and the relationships with specific informants determined overtness or covertness in the research. It is argued that the existing literature on covert research and covert methods provides an inappropriate frame of reference with which to understand concealment in fieldwork. The article illustrates why concealment is sometimes necessary and often unavoidable, and concludes that the criticisms leveled against covert methods should not stop the fieldworker from engaging in research that involves covertness.

There is no ethnography without a corresponding ethnographic sensibility. That is, the understanding and practice of ethnography as method, theory, and writing practice rests on the cultivation of a sense of the ethnographic as the lived expectations, complexities, contradictions, possibilities, and grounds of any given cultural group. Within anthropology, the articulation of an ethnographic sensibility has long been at the heart of our disciplinary project of documenting how people collectively organize, understand, and live in the world. As such, we consider ethnography both something to know and a unique way of knowing.

Social scientists and folk views have long had it that there is an association between religiosity and prosocial behaviour, but hard evidence for such a relationship is limited. Studies show that religiosity is correlated with self-reported prosociality, however this relationship is not very clear when it comes to observed prosocial behaviours. Experimental studies reveal a link between religious priming and prosocial behaviours, and remarkably such effects hold irrespectively of degrees of religiosity. Building on and combining the strengths of previous field designs, I report here the results of a field experiment in Mauritius examining the effects of religious environments on cooperation in a naturalistic setting. These results were consistent with previous findings that religious cues may increase cooperation. Importantly, this effect was not dependent on degrees of prior religiosity. Plausible interpretations of such effects are discussed.

This article proposes an artistic performance to reflect on the labour of fieldwork. The experimental method consists in installing myself at a café in Lisbon and Tbilisi for 35 hours beyond the reach of smartphones and laptops and then doing nothing. Across this exercise, time slows, opening a clearer window into ordinary life. The intervention raises questions about the way digital technologies transform the temporality and experience of ethnographic fieldwork. The essay sets up to make a methodological contribution to a growing literature on 'inactivity' and about experimental methods, reminding us that observation is a tiring physical experience and that slow time is correlated with anthropological quality. Doing nothing appears as a slow time being in front of others, which enables a break of consciousness, suspends politics of relevance, and leaves space for serendipity and embodied imagination. Keywords ethnographic installation, art and anthropology, urban ethnography, experimental methods , performance of fieldwork, Pessoan anthropology, ecology of attention, static journey

Ethnographic films hold great historical value for the communities in which they were filmed, yet people in source communities often lack access to them. Visitors engaging in ‘visual repatriation’ of ethnographic film can enrich both sides of the ethnographic exchange. I review my experiences screening ethnographic films with Trobriand Islanders, their reactions, and the various ways in which local communities regain ownership of these films, including re-narration and renaming. My findings reiterate how source communities’ reception of, and uses for, ethnographic film can sharply differ from the filmmakers’ original agenda.

As a result of its importance to the discipline's identity and epistemology, the nature of fieldwork and the fieldtrip itself have recently come under close scrutiny in the education and geographical literature. Moreover, not only is their pedagogical importance being debated, but also their future viability at a time of increasing pressure on institutions to minimise potential risk situations in the field, offer value for money to students as well as following the increasingly common and popular trend of long-haul fieldtrips. This paper therefore critically interrogates the role and use of fieldwork within geographical teaching and learning in the light of its changing and increasingly contested status within the discipline in three parts. First, it outlines and reflects upon the current debate surrounding the threat to the primacy of fieldtrips in geography at a time of ongoing upheaval in higher education. Second, through the empirical example of personal experiences teaching on second-year undergraduate urban geography fieldtrips to San Francisco in December 2007 and 2008, the paper engages with the current discussions of the pedagogical importance of fieldtrips. Third, the paper asks, to what extent teaching in 'the field' might foster the 'experiential' or 'active' learning needed to inspire the kind of 'deep learning' approaches that hold the kind of 'transformative' potential envisaged as a key goal of education more broadly. Through exploring these ideas with reference to recent and relevant experience, the paper aims to critically interrogate the role and value of fieldtrips at a time when their potential demise is being cast as a fundamental assault on geography's founding identity and pedagogical traditions. The paper concludes that despite the threats it faces, the pedagogical significance of fieldwork means that it must remain a fundamental tenet of the geographical educational experience.a rea_892 108..116

This is an ethnographic study of the Mystic Krewe of Spermes, which does float construction and a parade for Mardis Gras in New Orleans. We compare spectacular and carnivalesque elements of the organization in its preparation for and enactment of the annual parade. We show that both system-maintaining spectacular theatrics and systemchallenging carnivalesque protest govern the event, which at once leads to opposition and tension, as well as acceptance and renewal within the krewe and its local audience. We discuss implications for critical organization studies, and the importance of the krewe as an indigenous organizational form.

This article concerns the extent to which corrupt behavior is dependent on the organizational power structure and the resources available for illegal exchange. This qualitative study is based on 42 in-depth interviews with organizational actors in different organizations in Hungary. Four core themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: (a) isolated corruption at the bottom, (b) the middle level’s own corruption, (c) “technicization” when middle-level professionals and expert groups are used to legalize the corruption of the dominant coalition, and (d) “turning-off controls” when organizational elites intentionally deactivate internal and external controls to avoid detection.

Field research requires careful preparation so as to protect the integrity of archaeological studies and ensure the health and wellness of our students and field crews. In this special issue, we hope to lay a foundation for securing health and wellness as elements of the ethical practice of archaeology fieldwork through discussions of common hazards and tools to prevent, prepare for, and address safety incidents in the field. Even as archaeology and other field sciences grapple with serious safety concerns such as sexual harassment and mental health, it can be tempting to view field sites as extensions of the classroom or office. But field research can be a high-risk endeavor where we are exposed to a range of hazards not typically encountered in a traditional learning or work environment. We reach across disciplinary boundaries toward outdoor leadership and backcountry medicine to introduce the concept of wilderness context to describe the remote-and not-so-remote-locations and conditions common to archaeology field research. These are places where small or unanticipated problems can quickly become serious incidents. By rethinking research sites as wilderness activity sites, we highlight how methodical preparation can help us craft more robust and ethical health and safety practices for all members of our teams.

The present article develops a new approach to intellectual history and sociology of knowledge. Its point of departure is to investigate the conditions under which social thinkers assume the iconic reputation. What does it take to become ‘a founding father’ of a humanistic discipline? How do social thinkers achieve the status of a trans-disciplinary star? Why some intellectuals attract tremendous attention and ‘go down in history’ despite personal and professional failures, while others enjoy only limited recognition or simply sink into oblivion, even if they have met all the standards of their day? Quite a few sociologists have tackled this elusive issue. Pierre Bourdieu, Michele Lamont and Randall Collins are among those who fleshed out strong explanatory frameworks. This project adds to this body of knowledge by emphasizing cultural factors that these authors downplayed in their seminal accounts, despite being aware of their significance. By showing why these underdeveloped aspects of their works need to be incorporated into the debate and how this can be achieved, this article introduces a new theorization of the iconic, lasting intellectual reputation substantiated by evidence from the lifeworks of Bronislaw Malinowski and Michel Foucault. As such, it aims, minimally, to make sociology of knowledge decisively ‘cultural’. Maximally, it seeks to demonstrate that the iconic success of intellectual intervention in social theory depends on carefully performed and contingently mediated engagement with the binary systems of symbolic classification.

The various ways in which peoples and places around the globe are represented and documented in popular media have an immense impact on how tourists imagine and anticipate future destinations. Even though tourism discourses take a variety of forms, visual imagery seems to have the biggest influence on shaping tourists’ pretrip fantasies. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper illustrates the dynamic processes of cultural tourismification in Tanzania’s so-called “northern circuit”. In many parts of the world, famous nature documentaries, mainstream Hollywood entertainment, and semi-biographic films about this region have become fashionable icons for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, often reinforcing a perfect nostalgic vision of the black continent as an unexplored and time-frozen wild Eden. While tourism representations have overwhelmingly focused on wildlife, an increasing demand for “meet-the-people” cultural tourism is increasingly bringing local people into the picture. Interestingly, locals are commonly portrayed while engaging in vibrant rituals or in inauthentic, staged poses wearing celebrative costumes. As an example, the paper discusses how the romanticized image of the virile Maasai warrior, dressed in colourful red blankets and beaded jewellery, has led to a true Maasai-mania that is profoundly affecting the daily life and culture of Maasai and other ethnic groups.

Th e research activity generating data in times of transition is subject to politicization and needs to deal with widespread distrust due to the legacy of violence or atrocity. This article discusses the main principles of a research design that took into account these hindrances by making prudence its basic tenet. Th e objective was to generate understanding of the functioning of Rwanda's gacaca court process through a heightened awareness in data collection. In doing so, this article calls attention to the importance of a refl ective and adaptive research process in times of transitional justice. Two research principles are discussed in detail: immersion and iteration. Th e latter were adopted to facilitate the generation of context-specifi c knowledge on both breadth and depth of the transitional justice process. Th is article demonstrates how a pragmatic stance that draws on a variety of epistemologies and methodological approaches facilitates data collection as well as navigation of the fi eld of study. It will be argued that data collection and the activity of navigating the fi eld while collecting data reciprocally produce knowledge.

How did phenomenology inspire anthropology to re-evaluate its principal method: participant observation? This question is answered by exploring how phenomenology has contributed to the anthropological study of religion. The focus in this field is not only on the way people perceive but also how they experience the world. This allows for a view that does not treat experience of the world separately from cognition of the world. Religion can thus be studied as it is lived and acted in concrete situations. By seeing the scholar as part of the
life-world of the people in whose lives she participates, phenomenology in anthropology goes against the tendency to privilege ‘scientific’ knowledge over other kinds of knowledge. This has some important theoretical ramifications, most notably the refusal to transcend lived experience through theory. This discussion will be illustrated from authors’ fieldwork. The influence of phenomenology in anthropology also raises some important doubts. At the end of this article, these doubts will be addressed.

The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this paper I propose that the notion of freedom is an essential and necessary component for the coherence of the analyses which mobilize habitus both in terms of their theoretical articulation and in terms of their grounding in empirical reality. This argument can seem surprising considering that the theory of habitus has often been accused of being deterministic. Yet I show that, from an epistemological point of view, habitus theory is not deterministic. Bourdieu’s treatment of this concept implies at least three principles that exclude determinism: (1) the production of an infinite number of behaviors from a limited number of principles, (2) permanent mutation, and (3) the intensive and extensive limits of sociological understanding. After identifying and describing these principles, I show the reason for their incompatibility with a deterministic perspective and consider their implications for the corresponding model of action. I illustrate this analysis by a discussion of Loïc Wacquant’s carnal sociology of the pugilistic universe which reveals why it is essential to understand and explain the relation between habitus and freedom.

This paper explores the relationship between oligoptic visual economies and liberal technologies of government which emerge from a consideration of the field collecting practices of Mass-Observation (MO), a social research movement established in the years leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War which attempted to develop an anthropology of British “everyday” life. Focussing on MO's fieldwork agencements, the paper shows how the project brought together museological methods of collecting and curating with new mechanisms of collective self-watching, and the ways in which these mechanisms became implicated in technologies of government through its archival operations. In the connections it drew between the liberal subjectivities of collective self-watching and surrealist aesthetic practices, MO played a significant role in shaping new governmental rationalities, with implications for both metropolitan and colonial populations, through its interlinked conceptions of “mass” and “morale”. These formed part of a broader scientific–administrative–bureaucratic apparatus which facilitated the classification, ordering and governance of populations and “things” in this and later periods.

This article addresses three main issues. First, it argues that David Laitin, in a misguided critique of Bent Flyvbjerg’s book Making Social Science Matter for being a surrogate manifesto for Perestroika, misrepresents the book in the extreme. Second, the article argues that Laitin’s claim that political science may become normal, predictive science in the natural science sense is unfounded; the claim is a dead end that perestroikans try to get beyond. Finally, the article proposes that political scientists substitute phronesis for episteme and thereby avoid the trap of emulating natural science. By doing so, political scientists may arrive at social science that is strong where natural science is weak: in the reflexive analysis and discussion of values and interests aimed at praxis, which is the prerequisite for an enlightened political, economic, and cultural development in any society.

Resumen: Objetivo/contexto: se toma como punto de partida la investigación etnográfica sobre el proceso sociopolítico en el País Vasco tras el alto al fuego de ETA. En este artículo planteo primero la importancia de la etnografía como práctica política desde los encuentros, las conversaciones y las relaciones. En segundo lugar, analizo los conflictos que son inherentes a la práctica etnográfica y cómo su reconocimiento y análisis es necesario para la reflexión investigativa y la generación de conocimiento. A partir de esto, exploro la vulnerabilidad inherente a las prácticas etnográficas, desde el trabajo de campo hasta el proceso de escritura. Metodología: la investigación se basa en la metodología etnográfica. El artículo plantea la importancia para esta metodología de trabajar los conflictos y la creación de conciencia sobre la vulnerabilidad como ejes/actores transformadores, y como parte de la política feminista que implementamos en los distintos ámbitos de nuestra vida, incluyendo el académico; marco que es preciso revisar y cuestionar. Conclusiones: al hacer etnografía hacemos política. Una política que sostengo es feminista porque permite el surgimiento de dudas y contradicciones, tolera errar y tambalearse, busca placeres, cuestiona privilegios incorporados e incita al debate. Las etnografías feministas son posibles precisamente porque su propia existencia se cuestiona y porque abren conflictos desde los cuales el conocimiento circula y se amplía, en conexión con nuestros cuerpos y emociones. Originalidad: este artículo pretende ahondar en la discusión, reflexión y cuestionamiento de una práctica etnográfica cargada de desafíos. El potencial de su escritura desde la reflexión experiencial es una provocación para abrir conversaciones de orden epistemológico, metodológico y político.

Palabras clave: cambio social; etnografía; feminismos; política; reflexividad; trabajo de campo.

Based within Conflict: Epistemology and Politics in Feminist Ethnography

Abstract: Objective/Context: Drawing on ethnographic research on the socio-political process in the Basque Country following ETA’s cessation of violence, in this article, I first explore the importance of ethnography as a form of political practice embedded in encounters, conversations, and relationships. Secondly, I address the multiple conflicts that are inherent to ethnographic practice and how their recognition is inextricably linked to a reflexive generation of knowledge. From this foundational base, this article moves on to explore the vulnerability inherent to ethnographic practices, from fieldwork to the writing process. Methodology: My research is based on ethnographic methodology. This article explores the importance, in this methodology, of opening conflicts and awareness of vulnerability as transformative, and part of feminist politics being carried out in different areas of our lives, including the academic framework —which must be reviewed and questioned. Conclusions: In the act of ‘doing’ ethnography, we always practice politics. Politics that are feminist politics are based on doubts and contradictions, as they allow us to err and sway. Politics that seek pleasures. Politics that reflect on our incorporated privileges. Politics that promote debate. Feminist ethnographies exist precisely because they can be questioned. Feminist ethnographies open up conflicts from which knowledge circulates and expands, in connection with our bodies and emotions. Originality: This article aims to spark thoughts and questions for an ethnographic practice full of challenges. Drawing on experiential reflections, this writing entails a provocation in order to open conversations on epistemology, methodology, and politics.

Keywords: Ethnography; feminism; fieldwork; social change; reflexivity; politics.

A partir do conflito: epistemologia e política nas etnografias feministas

Resumo: Objetivo/contexto: toma-se como ponto de partida a pesquisa etnográfica sobre o processo sociopolítico no País Basco depois da suspensão do fogo por parte do grupo ETA. Neste artigo, discuto primeiro a importância da etnografia como prática política a partir do encontro, da conversa e da relação. Em segundo lugar, analiso os conflitos que são inerentes à prática etnográfica e como seu reconhecimento e abertura são necessários para a reflexão na pesquisa e na produção de conhecimento. A partir disto, exploro a vulnerabilidade inerente às práticas etnográficas, quando se passa do trabalho de campo à escrita. Metodologia: a pesquisa se baseia na metodologia etnográfica. O artigo propõe a importância desta metodologia ao trabalhar os conflitos e ao criar consciência sobre a vulnerabilidade como transformadora, como parte da política feminista que realizamos nos diferentes âmbitos de nossa vida, incluído o acadêmico — marco que deve ser revisado e questionado. Conclusões: ao fazer etnografia fazemos política. Uma política que sustento como feminista porque permite o surgimento de dúvidas e contradições, consente errar e titubear, procura prazeres, questiona mordomias incorporadas e incita ao debate. As etnografias feministas são possíveis precisamente porque sua própria existência se questiona e porque abrem conflitos desde os quais o conhecimento circula e se amplia, em conexão com nossos corpos e emoções. Originalidade: este artigo pretende aprofundar a discussão, a reflexão e o questionamento de uma prática etnográfica carregada de desafios. A potencialidade de sua escrita desde a reflexão experiencial é uma provocação para abrir conversas de ordem epistemológica, metodológica e política.

Palavras-chave: etnografia; feminismos; mudança social; política; reflexividade; trabalho de campo.

In March 2012, Philipps-Universität Marburg conducted a 12-day survey along a section of the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia reaching from Rabigh in the north to al-Shoaiba in the south. As the beginning of a five-year archaeological project, this preliminary venture sought to define the logistical situation and to discover any sites of archaeological importance that may exist within the zone. The survey included the search for and the examination of harbor sites, as well as shipwrecks. Sites of antiquity and the Early Islamic period were of particular interest. The results of the survey included the discovery of a harbor and a shipwreck of the late third or the fourth century that contained Roman amphoras, among other objects.

L’objectif de cet article est d’analyser à la fois l’importance du terrain dans la production du savoir anthropologique et la place des anthropologues dans un contexte de décolonisation de la recherche. L’auteur s’attarde sur le travail de terrain et sur la pratique ethnographique comme processus dynamique mettant en jeu des concepts tels que ceux de créativité, d’improvisation, d’implication et de ré exivité, particulièrement importants lorsqu’il s’agit de s’intéresser aux thèmes très sensibles de la spiritualité et de la guérison chez les Premières Nations du Québec. À partir d’une ré exion détachée sur une expérience de terrain avec les Atikamekw (Centre-du-Québec) marquée par des situations de contestation, l’auteur oriente ses réflexions autour de différentes questions : qu’est-ce qu’un terrain anthropologique aujourd’hui? Comment se positionner en tant que chercheur dans le contexte des études autochtones, contexte marqué par une contestation des méthodes de recherche et par la multiplication des protocoles de recherche?

Enquêter sur les rapports de genre en Algérie a conduit l’autrice à séjourner sur les lieux de son enfance, à la périphérie d’Alger, entre 2014 et 2016. Lors de son passage en ce terrain familier, elle a mené une ethnographie du mouvement des corps féminins au départ des espaces domestiques. Le partage des contraintes de genre avec les enquêtées au sein de l’espace domestique, ainsi que les expériences de harcèlement au sein de l’espace extradomestique, a déterminé les modalités de son implication en tant que chercheuse. Cette pratique du terrain a permis la coproduction d’un savoir situé et encorporé qui rend intelligibles les formes d’agentivité et de résistance spatiale et sociale.

Classroom teaching and field trips are both conventional ways of
teaching geography in higher education. But where the former can
be highly theoretical and abstract, the latter is rather practical,
empirical, and concrete. In this paper, I argue there is a need to
better incorporate theory into field trips. I seek to explore relations
between theory and field trips both theoretically and practically.
Theoretically, I draw upon Henri Lefebvre and Bertell Ollman and
argue for seeing the built environment as concrete abstractions.
Based on interviews with teachers, theoretical reflections, and, not
least, personal experiences, I end the paper offering practical steps
towards better combining theory and field trips.

Contributors to this special issue realised that reflecting on experiences of getting access (or not) can tell us something important about the institutions we aimed to study and, more broadly, about the migration control field. Put differently, attempts at approaching and approximating state actors within a charged field exposed us to some of its most fundamental organising principles. We have, therefore, set ourselves the task in this issue of SA/AS to ask and answer the following question: What do attempts at studying migration control tell us about the state? Our exercise is, thus, squarely set as an attempt to intervene in a burgeoning debate around the ways in which the 'anthropology of the state' can develop. Both the issues at stake-the management of undesired others-and the field in which we conduct our studies, migration control administrations, are indeed changing to become acutely central to the governing of our societies. By gathering findings from different research projects across Europe, this special issue offers a comparative perspective on some of the most salient features of the migration control field from the eyes of ethnographic researchers in search of access.

The chapter reconstructs the methodological trajectory of Polly Hill. Crossing the boundaries between economics and anthropology, Hill’s work was simultaneously an epistemic challenge to development economics, and a testimony to the complexity and richness of economic life in what she called the “rural tropical world.” Drawing inspiration from the process that Mary Morgan called “seeking parts, looking for wholes,” the chapter explores the evolving relationship between observational practice and conceptual categories in Hill’s work on West Africa and India. It is argued that fieldwork, the central element in Hill’s methodological reflection, served two main functions. Firstly, it acted as the cornerstone of her views on observation and induction, framing her understanding of the relationship between “parts” and “wholes.” Secondly, Hill used fieldwork as a narrative trope to articulate her hopeful vision for an integration of economics and anthropology, and later express her feelings of distance and alienation from the ways in which these disciplines were actually practiced.

While Chinese academic excellence is gaining increasing international recognition, plagiarism, corruption, nepotism and other negative practices are reportedly rampant in academia in China. Many point the finger at fundamental flaws within the tizhi, the highly structured Chinese socio-political system. I propose re-examining Chinese academia and its practices by applying and expanding Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of field as this framework helps to identify the predicament of the “deep water” in which Chinese scholars and institutes find themselves. The four fields I outline – ideological, quasi-official, fame–profit and guanxi fields – spotlight academic practices with “Chinese characteristics.” I elaborate on my own experiences and reflections as both an insider and outsider to these practices, a position which I refer to as a third-eye perspective. I argue that despite the constraints of the “deep water,” the field-oriented angle of investigation reveals that the depths and types of “deep water” vary from one institute to another and also that the internally generated ongoing initiatives promise a step-by-step transformation in Chinese academia. To provoke further thought, I contend that the Chinese case is both a non-exception and alternative to the Western (and other) practices. In so doing, I call for a balanced perspective to re-examine Chinese academic ecology.

Keywords: China; academia; field; intellectuals; ideology; education; universities

摘要: 随着中国学术界的研究水平在世界范围内逐渐获得更大认可的同时,据报道剽窃、腐败、裙带关系以及其它消极学术实践亦不乏见。许多人均将这种现象归结于高度结构化的政治社会体制。本文将使用并延伸布迪厄有关“场域” 的观点来重新审视中国学术界及其实践, 笔者认为这个理论构架有助于更好地理解学者和学术机构陷于“深水” 之中的困境。本人将中国学术界具体划分为意识形态场、准官场、名利场和关系场等四大场域来剖析具有“中国特色” 的学术实践。此项研究是着眼于对本人“局内人” 和“局外人” 双重身份的反思, 这便是本文所称的“第三只眼” 的视角。笔者认为固然“深水” 造成了种种限制, 但是“场域” 的审视角度却揭示出不同的机构陷于“深水” 的程度和类型都是不尽相同的。此外, 这种分析框架还可以展现出中国学术界内部持续衍生的动力促成其总体环境实现积极转变的前景。最后, 本文提出同西方和其它地区相比当前的中国学术实践既可以算作特例也同样可以当成一个通例来看待。由此, 笔者提倡一种平衡的视角来重新认识中国学术生态。
关键词: 学术界; 场域; 知识分子; 意识形态; 教育; 高校


Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
                                                                                                            Attributed to Henry Kissinger
What makes a university is not its imposing premises, but its first-rate scholars.
                                                                                                      Mei Yiqi 梅贻琦  (president of Tsinghua University, 1931–1948)
Belief is inedible, hence insignificant. Democracy is inedible, hence insignificant. Freedom is inedible, hence insignificant. Principle is inedible, hence insignificant. For the Chinese, nothing is significant unless it is edible. We believe in the life principle of pigs, thus we are faced with the same destiny as them – we will be eaten by others sooner or later.
"信仰不能当饭吃，所以不重要。民主不能当饭吃，所以不重要。自由不能当饭吃，所以不重要。原则不能当饭吃，所以不重要。对于中国人来讲，不能当饭吃的都不重要。我们信奉了猪的生活原则，于是乎我们也得到了猪的命运——迟早给别人当饭吃了." (王朔)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Wang Shuo 王朔

China has only one university, namely the University of the Ministry of Education.
                                                                                                                                                          An anonymous scholar