In recent times, anthropologists have been challenged to rethink the nature of ethnographic research, the meaning of fieldwork and the role of ethnographers. In this book, the authors look at the still traditional training of ethnographers and at alternative models for professional fieldwork training and its intellectual contexts.

Over the past two decades anthropologists have been challenged to rethink the nature of ethnographic research, the meaning of fieldwork, and the role of ethnographers. Ethnographic fieldwork has cultural, social, and political ramifications that have been much discussed and acted upon, but the training of ethnographers still follows a very traditional pattern; this volume engages and takes its point of departure in the experiences of ethnographers-in-the-making that encourage alternative models for professional training in fieldwork and its intellectual contexts. The work done by contributors to Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be articulates, at the strategic point of career-making research, features of this transformation in progress. Setting aside traditional anxieties about ethnographic authority, the authors revisit fieldwork with fresh initiative. In search of better understandings of the contemporary research process itself, they assess the current terms of the engagement of fieldworkers with their subjects, address the constructive, open-ended forms by which the conclusions of fieldwork might take shape, and offer an accurate and useful description of what it means to become—and to be—an anthropologist today.

"This is not yet another step-by-step guide to research methods. Rather, Pole and Hillyard draw the reader into fieldwork as a form of living and lived research. They take key threads of research practices and processes and weave them into a holistic approach to fieldwork. Doing Fieldwork is a must read for new researchers planning a journey into the immersion of ′being there′ that is field work." - Professor Garry Marvin, University of Roehampton Fieldwork is central to Sociology, but guides to it often treat the real questions invisibly or over-load the reader with micro-details. This refreshing, authoritative volume, written by two experienced, highly respected fieldworkers, provides a one-stop, engaging guide. The book: Clearly explains fieldwork methods Shows how to locate a field and map it Covers common problem areas and ethical considerations Provides a ready reckoner of time management issues Helps with analysis of findings. Doing Fieldwork is an invaluable teaching and research resource. It should be in every student’s backpack and part of every researcher’s tool kit. Professor Chris Pole is Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Brighton. His long-standing research interests are in social research methodology, especially Ethnography and in the Sociology of Education and Childhood. Dr Sam Hillyard is a Reader in Sociology at Durham University. Her research interests are in qualitative research methods, interactionist social theory and rural studies.

In this long-anticipated second edition of The Art of Fieldwork, prominent anthropologist Harry F. Wolcott updates his original groundbreaking text, which both challenges and petitions anthropology and its practitioners to draw not only on the traditional precepts of science, but also on the richness of artistry in the collection, interpretation, and expression of fieldwork data. Each of the original chapters have been thoughtfully revised to reflect the past nine years of anthropological development. Combined with a new final chapter, this refreshing text makes an exciting reentry into the ongoing debate of the processes, challenges, and rewards of fieldwork methodology. Researchers in qualitative methods and field methods--and fieldworkers across disciplines--will find this well-crafted, approachable book a thought-provoking read.

Reflecting on fieldwork for the twenty-first century, anthropologist and artist Susan Ossman invites readers on a journey across North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. She reveals that fieldwork today is not only about being immersed in a place or culture; instead, it is an active way of focusing attention and engendering encounters and experiences. She conceives a new kind of autoethnography, making art and ethnography equal partners to follow three "waves" of her research on media, globalization, and migration. Ossman guides the reader through diverse settings, including a colonial villa in Casablanca, a Cairo beauty salon, a California mall-turned-gallery, the Berlin Wall, and Amsterdam’s Hermitage museum. She delves into the entanglements of solitary research and collective action. This book is a primer for current anthropology and an invitation to artists and scholars to work across boundaries. It vividly shows how fieldwork can shape scenes for experiments with multiple outcomes, from conceptual advances to artworks, performances to dialogue and community making.

Making use of his own research experiences in Papua New Guinea, Southern Ontario, and Newfoundland, Wayne Fife teaches students and new researchers how to prepare for research, conduct a study, analyze the material (e.g. create new social and cultural theory), and write academic or policy oriented books, articles, or reports. The reader is taught how to combine historic and contemporary documents (e.g. archives, newspapers, government reports) with fieldwork methods (e.g. participant-observation, interviews, and self-reporting) to create ethnographic studies of disadvantaged populations. Anthropologists, Sociologists, Folklorists and Educational researchers will equally benefit from this critical approach to research.

In this landmark study, now celebrating thirty years in print, Paul Rabinow takes as his focus the fieldwork that anthropologists do. How valid is the process? To what extent do the cultural data become artifacts of the interaction between anthropologist and informants? Having first published a more standard ethnographic study about Morocco, Rabinow here describes a series of encounters with his informants in that study, from a French innkeeper clinging to the vestiges of a colonial past, to the rural descendants of a seventeenth-century saint. In a new preface Rabinow considers the thirty-year life of this remarkable book and his own distinguished career.

Ethnography by Design, unlike many investigations into how ethnography can be done, focuses on the benefits of sustained collaboration across projects to ethnographic enquiry, and the possibilities of experimental co-design as part of field research. The book translates specifically scenic design practices, which include processes like speculation, materialization, and iteration, and applies them to ethnographic inquiry, emphasizing both the value of design studio processes and "designed" field encounters. The authors make it clear that design studio practices allow ethnographers to ask and develop very different questions within their own and others' research and thus, design also offers a framework for shaping the conditions of encounter in ways that make anthropological suppositions tangible and visually apparent. Written by two anthropologists and a designer, and based on their experience of their collective endeavours during three projects, Luke Cantarella, Christine Hegel, and George E. Marcus examine their works as a way to continue a broader inquiry into what the practice of ethnography can be in the twenty-first century, and how any project distinctively moves beyond standard perspectives through its crafted modes of participation and engagement.

Fieldwork deals with the practical, mechanical, ethical, and theoretical aspects of collecting data. Jackson discusses how fieldworkers define their role, how they relate to others in the field, and how they go about recording for later use what occurred in their presence. This treatment offers an abundance of useful information to those who do folklore fieldwork as well as those who work in any of the other social sciences or humanities. An appendix relates the author's own experiences while documenting Texas's death row.

Anthropologist Myerhoff's penetrating exploration of the aging process is brilliant sociology--as well as living history--that tells readers about the importance of ritual, the agonies of aging, and the indomitable human spirit. "(The book) shines with the luminous wit of old age".--Robert Bly.