Ethnographers in the Field: The Psychology of Research PDF
Preview Ethnographers in the Field: The Psychology of Research
Ethnographers in the Field John L. Wengle Ethnographers in the Field The Psychology of Research The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa Copyright © 1988 by The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wengle, John L., 1956- Ethnographers in the field. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Anthropology-Field work-Psychological aspects. I. Title. GN33.W46 1988 301'.0723 87-19218 ISBN 0-8173-5176-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8173-5176-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8173-8504-0 (electronic) Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following individuals and publishers for permission to reprint from their works: A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term. Bronislaw Malinowski. 1967. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. Reprinted by permission of Valetta Malinowski and John Hawkins &. Associates, Inc. An Asian Anthropologist in the South. Choong Soon Kim. 1977. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Used by permission. Crossing Cultural Boundaries: The Anthropological Experience. Solon T. Kimball and James B. Watson, eds. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing. Used by permission. "Into the Heart of Sisala Experience." Bruce Grindal. 1983. Manuscript. Used by permission. Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family. Jean Briggs. 1970. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Used by permission. Reflections of a Woman Anthropolo- gist: No Hiding Place. Manda Cesara. 1982. New York and London: Academic Press. Used by permission. Return to Laughter. Elanor S. Bowen. 1954. New York: Harper and Brothers. Reprinted by permission of Laura Bohannon. They Studied Man. Abram Kardiner and Edward Preble. 1961. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. Reprinted by per- mission of Harper &. Row. To My Parents and Family To Berta To Ryan (for all the unknown help) Contents Preface ix Prologue xv Part I: Understanding Fieldwork 1. On Death and Fieldwork 3 2. Fighting Back: Identity Maintenance in the Field 20 Part II: Plain Old Everyday Fieldwork 3. The Typical Field Experience 41 Part III: Fieldwork as a Study in Extremes 4. A South American Odyssey 87 5. Trauma in the Field: Reflections on Malinowski's Fieldwork 107 6. Death and Rebirth in Fieldwork: An Archetypal Case 130 Part IV: Conclusion 7. Notes and Fragments 153 Appendix: Sample Questionnaire 170 Notes 173 References 183 Index 193 vii Preface This book is an exploration of anthropological fieldwork. It is not, however, of the kiss-and-tell genre that has become so popular re- cently, nor does it belong to the "how anthropologists know what they know" class of books; epistemological concerns are discussed throughout the book, but they do not dominate the text. Rather, my primary purpose is to understand and then to elucidate certain psy- chological ramifications of an initial and traditional fieldwork expe- rience among professional anthropologists. I have attempted, mostly through interviews, to determine the psychological changes that typically affect the advanced graduate student who has undertaken fieldwork to gather the material necessary to complete a disserta- tion and, at the same time, training in anthropology. In using the adjective traditional, I simply mean that the student did not study his or her own culture or people, but rather studied a foreign culture, and did so alone. My hope is that this book will better enable us to understand the psychology of fieldwork and therefore to gain a com- prehensive knowledge about the nature of anthropological endeavor. The book is divided into four parts. In Part I, "Understanding Fieldwork," I present the basic idea that underlies and animates my thinking about fieldwork, namely, that the process of fieldwork sub- jects the anthropologist to an attack against his or her sense of self and that, in tum, the anthropologist defends against this attack through the activation of certain behaviors designed to maintain and bolster the threatened self-representation. As will be apparent from this brief description, I tend to concentrate almost exclusively on the dark and unflattering aspects of fieldwork. I chose this perspec- tive-it would be more correct to say that the perspective chose me-primarily because whatever else fieldwork is, it is always, to some degree, identity-dystonic. Also, of course, I chose this perspec- tive because it speaks more directly to my own experiences than the ix
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