Fieldwork in Anthropology

«Etnografias de alfândega: exercícios simples com vista à desterritorialização do trabalho de campo»

by maria cardeira da silva

Coastal Environment made Public: Notes from the Field.

by Werner Krauss

In: Latour, Bruno und Peter Weibel (eds.), Making Things Public – Atmospheres of Democracy. The MIT Press Cambridge, Mass.,2005, pp. 398-403
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Review - George Kunnath, Rebels from the Mud Houses: Dalits and the Making of the Maoist Revolution in Bihar (New Delhi, 2012)

by Uday Chandra

Forthcoming in Journal of Agrarian Change 12 (4), 2012

The return of Redwoman: fieldwork in Highland Papua New Guinea

by Rena Lederman

Pretexts for ethnography: on reading fieldnotes

by Rena Lederman

All Research is Fieldwork: A Practical Introduction to Studying in Japan as a Foreign Researcher

by Levi McLaughlin

The Asia-Pacific Journal, 30-1-10, July 26, 2010

Of Food and Friendship: A Method for Understanding Eating Disorders in India

by Tanja Ahlin

Forthcoming in Medische Antropologie 24 (1), June 2012 (special issue on 'Ethnography and self-exploration').

Studies of eating disorders in general and of anorexia nervosa in particular are abundant in Western countries and... more Studies of eating disorders in general and of anorexia nervosa in particular are abundant in Western countries and perspectives on causes are plentiful. However, in South Asia this condition has not been investigated extensively. During my voluntary work in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand I forged a friendship with a young woman with disordered eating. Her condition seemed much more complex and multi-layered than suggested by the literature I could find on the topic. In this article, I describe the methods I used to examine the various meanings of “being too weak and thin” in rural India through an ethnographic case study. In particular, I give an account of the friendship I developed with my informant, the implications it had on the choice of this research topic, and the ways in which it helped me understand my informant’s condition better. While friendship is by no means an unproblematic method in the social sciences, it proved to be a highly valuable approach in this study.
[friendship as method, self-reflection, ethnographic case study, eating disorders, India, personal narrative]

2009, « Habitus, Freedom and Reflexivity », in Theory and Psychology Volume 19, no. 6, pp. 728-755.

by Mathieu Hilgers

The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this paper I propose that the notion of freedom is... more 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.

2011, Autochthony as Capital in a Global Age, in Theory, Culture & Society , vol. 28 no. 1 34-54

by Mathieu Hilgers

For a little over a decade we have been witnessing a profusion of discourses on autochthony — that is, an original... more For a little over a decade we have been witnessing a profusion of discourses on autochthony — that is, an original belonging to a group or territory — in many parts of the world. A global approach to this question first requires a look at the principle of autochthony and its genealogy. Starting from African examples, places of prolific expression of the phenomenon, this article shows how autochthony plays the role of capital that can be invested, valued and profited from. The structure of this capital carries within itself the seeds of conflict. The article analyses how the stabilization of its value requires the execution of specific strategies. Among these strategies, I will focus in greater depth on voting. The relationship between capital, autochthony and elections will thus bring us back to debates that animate political science: in new municipalities, autochthony as capital is at the heart of candidate selection, suffrage, political participation and citizenship.

The Material-Cultural Turn: event and effect.

by Dan Hicks

Cite this paper as: Hicks, Dan 2010. The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect. In Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford: OUP, pp. 25- 98.

The full references are provided in the bibliography for the published volume.

The Significance of Place: Fieldwork Reflections on "South Africa" and "the United States

by Nadine Dolby

Polityka tożsamości we wspólnotach neopogańskich. Przykład Zakonu Zadrugi „Północny Wilk”

by Mariusz Filip

W. Dohnal, A. Posern-Zieliński (red.) 2011. Antropologia i polityka. Szkice z badań nad kulturowymi wymiarami władzy. Warszawa: Komitet Nauk Etnologicznych PAN – Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii PAN. 174–188

O etnografię rodzimowierstwa. Wprowadzenie do etnografii Zakonu Zadrugi "Północny Wilk"

by Mariusz Filip

Państwo i Społeczeństwo 2008, 8(4): 107-121

Analiza istniejących opracowań ruchu rodzimowierczego wskazuje, że podstawową strategią opisu doktryn i działalności... more Analiza istniejących opracowań ruchu rodzimowierczego wskazuje, że podstawową strategią opisu doktryn i działalności poszczególnych ugrupowań jest socjografia, a więc taki sposób przedstawiania rzeczywistości, który uniwersalizuje zarówno opisywanych, jak i opisującego. W artykule postuluję o partykularyzację opisu opartego o długotrwałe badania terenowe – etnografię. Posmak tego sposobu pisania o rodzimowierstwie daje opis sytuacji „pierwszego kontaktu” z członkami Zakonu Zadrugi „Północny Wilk”.

Call for Book Chapters- Fieldwork Experiences in Turkey

by Rabia Harmansah

Folklorni tekst u procesu zaborava [Folklore Text in Process of Oblivion].

by Marija Ilic

Published in: Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU 53 [Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography]. Beograd: Etnografski institut SANU, 321–335. /in Serbian/

Folklore Text in Process of Oblivion

The paper presents contemporary research of the traditional folklore... more Folklore Text in Process of Oblivion

The paper presents contemporary research of the traditional folklore from the perspective of ethnolinguistics and anthropolinguistics. The analysis is based on material collected among the Serbs from Hungary during the ethnolinguistic field research in 2001. The paper discusses the methods of collecting traditional folklore texts in the ethnolinguistic interview. Furthermore process of memorising / forgetting, textualisation in the course of verbal interaction and metadiscursive comments are particularly focused upon.

Folklorna anegdota: između individualnog i kolektivnog – terenska istraživanja Srba u Medini (Mađarska) [Folklore Anecdote: Between and Betwixt Individual and Collective. The Field Research of the Serbs in Hungary]

by Marija Ilic

Published in: Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU 55/1 [Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography]. Beograd: Etnografski institut SANU, 217–231. /in Serbian/

Folklore Anecdote Between Memorata and Fabulata:
– Field Research of Serbs in Medina (Hungary)

This... more Folklore Anecdote Between Memorata and Fabulata:
– Field Research of Serbs in Medina (Hungary)

This paper is based on the folklore material which was collected during an ethnolinguistic field research of the Serb community in the Hungarian village of Medina in 2002. The material to be analysed comprises the interviews with the informant Savo Sokic, which can be primarily be defined as a series of comical narratives. By analysing these narratives one can notice their complex structure. That is, the narratives function, on the one hand, as memorat with typical genre beginnings and meta-textual comments. On the other hand, the narratives follow the rules of the genre of folklore fabulate. Therefore, comic narratives of Save Sokic - and this is valid also for folklore anecdote in general - can be classified as borderline genre – between memorat and fabulate.

Coping with Socially Sensitive Topics: Discourse on Interethnic Marriages among the Elderly Members of the Serbian Minority in Hungary

by Marija Ilic

Published in: Balcanica 41. 2011 (2010). Belgrade: Institute for Balkan Studies, 33-53. /in English/

Coping with Socially Sensitive Topics:
Discourse on Interethnic Marriages among Elderly Members of the Serbian... more Coping with Socially Sensitive Topics:
Discourse on Interethnic Marriages among Elderly Members of the Serbian Minority in Hungary

Drawing on the field research conducted in the Serbian community in Szigetcsép, Hungary, the paper examines interlocutors’ oral discourse on interethnic marriages. Until the Second World War, the Serbs in Hungary, rural communities in
particular, mainly practised endogamy. In the post-war era, however, they tended to be among the minority groups with the highest rate of exogamic marriages. Consequently, the interviewed Szigetcsép Serbs established discourse links between “interethnic marriages”, “loss of native language” and “fear of identity loss”. The analytical focus is on the interlocutors’ internal dialogism between the authoritative word of the
ancestors and autobiographical assertions.

Sad od naši deca mi se radujemo da kolko maternjeg jezika skupu i nauču: čipska ovorna zajednica i proces zamene jezika [We are Happy if our Children Learnt a Bit of Their Mother Tongue: The Szigetcsép Speech Community and Language Shift].

by Marija Ilic

Published in: Etnografija Srba u Mađarskoj 6 [Ethnography of the Serbs in Hungary]. 2011. Budapest , 98–120. /in Serbian/

We are happy when our children learn a bit of mother tongue:
Szigetcsép speech community and language shiftmore We are happy when our children learn a bit of mother tongue:
Szigetcsép speech community and language shift

In the paper, the sociolinguistic situation of the oldest Serbian generation in Szigetcsép was analysed, based on the fieldwork in 2001 and 2008. Firstly, the community history and its social network were presented. Subsequent to this, the anthropolinguistic fieldwork in Szigetcsép, its methods and results were explained. Finally, the speech community of Szigetcsép Serbs, its language repertoire, Serbian local variety, language use and practice of language shift were described. The paper is accompanied with the transcripts of interviews with the interlocutors, in which they reflect on their language use.

Velika seoba Srba u kolektivnom pamćenju: Zajednice pamćenja i žanrovi [Great Serb Migration in Collective Memory: Communities of Memory and Genres].

by Marija Ilic

Published in: Detelić, М., Samardžija, S. (eds.) Živa reč. Zbornik u čast prof. Nade Milošević-Đorđević [The Word of Mouth. Collection Dedicated to Prof. Nada Milošević-Đorđević]. 2011. Beograd: Filološki fakultet, 215–234. /in Serbian/

Great Serb Migration in Collective Memory:
Communities of Memory and Genres

The paper deals with the... more Great Serb Migration in Collective Memory:
Communities of Memory and Genres

The paper deals with the narration and confabulation of the Great Serb Migration into the Hapsburg Empire that took place in 1690. The confabulation of this historical event has been analyzed across different genres as repertoires of cultural memory and different Serbian communities of memory. Thus, the analysis contained many sources: such as the Serbian historical description of the event, the records that were made throughout the 17th and 18th century, oral sagas from Serbian regions that were depopulated by the Migration (e.g. Kosovo, Eastern Serbia), the public commemorations by the Serbs in Hungary, and the oral narratives that were collected among the Serbs in Hungary during the fieldwork. The analysis proved that commemoration of the Great Migration – that was eventually engraved into the Serbian national memory, either official or vernacular – is arguable, dependant upon different communities and genres of memory, as well as on power relations in the society.

Narativi ličnog iskustva i međuetnički brakovi među Srbima u Mađarskoj [Personal Experience Narratives among the Serbs in Hungary].

by Marija Ilic

Published in: Antropologija 10/3 [Anthropology]. 2010. Beograd, 99–120. /in Serbian/

NARRATIVES OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND INTERETHNIC MARRIAGES AMONG THE SERBS IN HUNGARY

In this paper,... more NARRATIVES OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND INTERETHNIC MARRIAGES AMONG THE SERBS IN HUNGARY

In this paper, narratives of the Hungarian Serbs on interethnic marriages were analyzed. The narratives were extracted from the interviews that were conducted during the anthropolinguistic fieldwork in Szigetcsép, Hungary. Since the Second World War, the Serbs in Hungary have had a very high exogamy rate. Hence, the issue of interethnic marriages turned out to be a
subject of constant negotiation, internal dialogism, and ideological dispute. Based on the analysis of two personal experience narratives, the paper attempted to illustrate how interlocutors from Szigetcsép construct internal dialogism, orient themselves and express their points of view with regard to
interethnic marriages.