Anthropology Matters Journal, 2004, Vol 6 (2).

Special Issue: Future Fields

With this special issue of Anthropology Matters we bring together eleven papers that were first presented and discussed at the Future Fields conference held in Oxford in December 2003. The editorial team included Mette Louise Berg (conference organiser, now at the University of St Andrews), Julia Holdsworth (University of Hull), Susanne Langer (University of Manchester), Stefanie Lotter (University of Heidelberg), Rebecca Marsland (SOAS and Anthropology Matters) and Tom Rice (Goldsmiths College, University of London).

All articles went through a process of anonymous peer reviews by two reviewers before being accepted. The editorial team wishes to thank all of the peer reviewers for their comments and feedback. Tom Rice edited the articles by Mattia Fumanti, Julia Holdsworth, Ingie Hovland, Adam Kaul, Adi Kuntsman and Kaori O’Connor; Stefanie Lotter edited the articles by Giovanna Bacchiddu, Akbar Keshodkar and George Kunnath; Susanne Langer edited Stefanie Lotter’s article; Julia Holdsworth edited the article by Hannah Gill.

Introduction

Future fields: introduction.

Tom Rice (Goldsmiths College) with the collaboration of Mette Berg (University of St Andrews)

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Articles

The making of the fieldwork-er: debating agency in elites research.

Mattia Fumanti (University of Manchester)

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Based on the outcome of 20 months fieldwork on the process of elite formation and the making of public space in a northern Namibian town, this paper explores the challenges of doing research among elites. Elites, whether political, economic, administrative, religious or traditional, occupy a prominent position within a community, which sets them apart from the rest of the population. While elite status inevitably brings to its members prestige, recognition and privileges, at the same time it often attracts criticism and suspicion of the elites' modus operandi. For these reasons the elites tend to keep an aura of secrecy around their activities, thus limiting access to their social milieu by outsiders. Beyond secrecy, in Africa, where the relationship between the elites and their subalterns is often socially and culturally regulated through age practices, generational difference can become a considerable hindrance for a young researcher. Taking inspiration from the work of feminist anthropologists, I reflect on my own experience to highlight the problematic role of the researcher's agency in the context of elite studies. Much as in the case of gender, I argue that age and generation regulates and determines the access of fieldworkers to their chosen field sites. As a consequence, fieldworkers doing research among elites have to constantly negotiate and adjust their position in the field. I aim to stress that while on many occasions these negotiations respond to the fieldworker's conscious intended strategies, in other circumstances there is little room for individual choices, let alone conscious and planned manoeuvering.

Exploring and representing uncertainty: the demand to create order from chaos.

Julia Holdsworth (University of Hull).

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'You want to write about us? Look, this is how we are. (sweeping her arm to take in the others sitting on the courtyard bench) We are nothings. This is a crazy place… a crazy time. We cannot even understand ourselves and you want to understand (about us). I just don't know.'

Uncertainty, fear and the apparent contradictions of stagnation and rapid change are defining experiences of daily life for many of the poor and dispossessed in Donetsk, a post-industrial city in Eastern Ukraine. Throughout my fieldwork, exploring the ways in which people are coping with post-Soviet change, I struggled to make sense of people's lives recognizing that local people often say they are living 'non-sensical' lives. These tensions have remained during the process of writing up as I aim to create coherence without doing too much violence to local experiences and representations. Much has been written in recent years about the changing nature of anthropological fieldwork and writing, however as graduate students and young scholars we often find ourselves constrained in the ways we write. Raising questions of anthropological authority, representation and authenticity, this paper addresses the tensions I encountered through the demands of disciplinary orthodoxy, producing linear, ordered texts from disintegrated and fractured lives.

Stepping between different worlds: reflections before, during and after fieldwork.

Giovanna Bacchiddu (Department of Anthropology, University of St Andrews).

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Before beginning fieldwork, the anthropology student pictures herself in a totally different dimension: an 'indigenous' world in which she will be immersed for the whole fieldwork period: she does not know the native language, she has no idea of who she will meet or where she will spend most of her time. Then, the 'limbo' state ends and she finds herself suddenly active, even when she does nothing. To be doing fieldwork means to be constantly observed by other people as well as having to observe all around oneself.

This paper explores issues I lived through and experienced before, during and after my fieldwork in southern Chile. It is a personal narrative of the contradictions that the fieldworker frequently has to face-especially when doing research in a region that has never been studied by anthropologists before. In it I discuss some of the most confusing episodes that occurred to me during my process of becoming familiar with the host culture. These events illustrate the difficulty of overcoming the 'innocence' typical of the inexperienced fieldworker and the impossibility of stepping outside one's own cultural expectations, despite months of serious professional training.

Eventually the experience of fieldwork deeply transforms the fieldworker and her perceptions both of herself and the surrounding world. However, can we cope with the potentially dangerous underpinnings of adopting a different lifestyle for a long period of time? Fieldwork provides us with a chance (with all its emotional implications) to step from one world to another, and the feeling of belonging to both worlds-despite the enormous distance between them.

The field as 'habitus': reflections on inner and outer dialogue.

David Clark (London Metropolitan University).

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While Clifford (1997) regards fieldwork as a key marker of the discipline of anthropology itself, notions concerning fieldwork have undergone considerable change over the last decades. This paper elaborates on Clifford's suggestion that fieldwork practice constitutes what Bourdieu terms as habitus and examines some of the key elements of what that practice might be. The discussion interweaves a theoretical analysis with descriptions of my own thought processes prior to fieldwork and of what happened once I entered the field. The paper also seeks to be self-reflexive and examines some of the internal dialogue that takes place as a result of fieldwork.

Bourdieu (1977) describes habitus in terms of shared pre-dispositions to act in a certain manner under certain circumstances. Habitus essentially refers to a set of practices that become habitual and engaged upon without any great deal of prior reflection. This paper focuses on certain common practices in fieldwork that are virtually taken-for-granted, but ought to be spelled out in order to demonstrate how much part of the 'fieldwork habitus' they have actually become.

Cyberethnography as home-work.

Adi Kuntsman (Lancaster University).

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Cyberspace invites the rethinking of the concepts culture and location. But it also demands a re-examination of the idea of 'the field' in virtual-or what is also called cyber-ethnography. This article focuses on one way of locating the field in cyberspace by exploring the concept of home as it is conceptualized by the ethnographer and imagined and negotiated by those with whom she works. The article suggests a critical way of approaching belonging on-line, and examines the epistemological position of anthropology at home when applied to cyberspace. On a theoretical level, this article brings together the growing field of cyber-studies and critical feminist and post-colonial perspectives.

The politics of localization: controlling movement in the field.

Akbar Keshodkar (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford).

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Romantic notions of the field, as depicted in works such as those of Evans-Pritchard and Malinowski, where an anthropologist is able to set up a hut in the middle of a village, conceal the complexities encountered by researchers in attempts to localize themselves in the field. In the post-colonial, globalizing world today, the field is marked by various unequal power relationships. Reflecting on my fieldwork experience I shall examine how questions of race and ethnicity affect a researcher's ability to acquire various apprenticeships for understanding how 'things are done' (Jenkins 1994: 442) and effectively conduct fieldwork. I worked in the ethnically divided society of Zanzibar, where I was categorized as a local Asian and my ability to move through the social landscape was tied to my ethnic origins. Placed within such contested landscapes, where the researcher becomes a part of the politicized field, traditional training in fieldwork methodology proves useless. In such situations, the researcher is required to re-examine approaches to fieldwork and re-evaluate their position vis-à-vis the rest of the community. As ethnic/racial categories through which the locals classify the researcher dictate the nature of data collected, the paper will explore issues that a researcher must attempt to comprehend when placed in such a situation and discuss how questions of power are integral for negotiating one's position in such a politicized field.

At work in the field: problems and opportunities associated with employment during fieldwork.

Adam R. Kaul (Durham University).

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This paper explores the advantages and drawbacks of gainful employment whilst conducting ethnographic fieldwork. Examples are drawn from the author's fieldwork in a heavily visited tourist destination in western Ireland. Whilst there are potential problems that arise due to employment, the benefits are such that it should not be discouraged outright. Moreover, it needs to be discussed as a potential condition of fieldwork. I found that although employment was initially necessary simply to fund my time in the field it became an intensely useful vehicle for gaining access to local knowledge. Employment allows the field researcher to move into and explore emic categorizations of people, and in this case, observe the interactions between permanent residents and tourists. Employment is very rarely discussed in the literature on anthropological methodology, and this paper is intended to continue a growing dialogue about the pragmatic, day-to-day experience of the field.

Finding a middle ground between extremes: notes on researching transnational crime and violence.

Hannah E. Gill (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford).

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Women anthropologists working in areas of conflict and risk must address specific practical and philosophical concerns, including the ethical issues involving the exposure of patterns of crime and violence in a community, limitation of movement and constant surveillance, and mistrust relating to the anthropologist's background. These issues are addressed in the context of the author's field research with a transnational migrant community in the Dominican Republic.

Devising a new approach to capitalism at home.

Kaori O'Connor (University College London).

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In this paper I argue that if anthropology is to secure its future, it has to return to one of its historic projects, that of seeking to understand our own society. As Boas (1904: 522) put it, anthropology must study human culture in all the variety of its forms, past and present-including the society in which we ourselves live. In our society today, nothing is more central to everyday life than capitalism, its workings and its products. I describe my own doctoral research in which the concept of capitalism as a cultural system, as developed by Sahlins (1976, 1996, 1998) and by Mintz (1986), is used to undertake a cultural analysis of the relationship between products, corporations and society. In doing so, I point to ways in which anthropology can provide unique insights into commerce. My work focuses on a single producer, product and cohort of consumers-the elite American corporation E. I. du Pont de Nemours (Dupont), the man-made fibre Lycra, and the so-called 'baby boomers', born in Britain and America between 1946 and 1964. By examining the history of this corporation, its invention and marketing of the fibre, and the significant role played by Lycra in the material life of this specific cohort, I was able to trace changes in social values through changes in products, gaining insights not easily obtained by direct observation or conscious explanation. By concentrating on the baby boomer cohort of consumers born between 1946 and 1964, I was able to explore changing attitudes to age in Anglo-American society, where the aging of the population is an urgent concern.

Fieldnotes on some cockroaches at SOAS and in Stavanger, Norway.

Ingie Hovland (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London).

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This paper explores various aspects of doing 'anthropology of home'. An anthropologist of home does not go 'elsewhere' to produce the experiential shifts that can lead to anthropological knowledge. She experiences shifts at home. In this paper I am interested in exploring precisely these experiential shifts-these 'dislocations'-and how they might be instrumental in producing anthropological insight. I want to suggest that 'dislocation insights', as I call them, can come about not just when crossing geographical distance but also when confronted with familiar categories that suddenly become strange, when confronted with yourself in a new way, or when confronted with the unheimlich-the unhomelike-at home.

Under the shadow of guns. Negotiating the flaming fields of caste/class war in Bihar, India.

George Kunnath (School of Oriental and African Studies).

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This paper emerges out of my year long (August 2002 to September 2003) fieldwork among the Dalits in Jehanabad district of Bihar, India, where caste and class violence has claimed hundreds of lives since the 1970s. The Marxist rebels, the private armies of the upper caste landlords and the police have turned this region into what is known as the 'killing fields of Bihar'. Conducting fieldwork in a context of an ongoing caste and class war has thrown up a number of questions that challenge the conventional fieldwork practices in anthropology and opens new avenues for exploration. This paper, after laying out the context of the research, examines and discusses the issues of the researcher's identity, anthropological objectivity, ethics, fieldwork methods and personal commitment in the 'fields under fire'.

Studying-up those who fell down: elite transformation in Nepal.

Stefanie Lotter (University of Heidelberg).

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This article discusses the methodological challenges of studying elites, and argues that both the negotiation of access and the position of the researcher in relation to the studied elite group are vital to the research outcome. Unlike previous studies that took the stance of associating with the elites, this article favours a perspective 'from below' borrowing conceptually from 'subaltern studies' to reveal the working of gatekeepers and the study of imposed hierarchy as an inherent part of the representation of an elite culture. Studying the Rana, an elite clan past its prime, this study shows that an approach beginning with the declined periphery and proceeding to the power centre presents an extensive view on the working of elites.