Starting Fieldwork: Methods and Experiences

Judith E. Marti

thg 9 2016 · Waveland Press

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Published posthumously, this incisive work represents the culmination of a career anthropologist’s passion for teaching and mentoring. With a warm, reassuring writing style, Marti describes fieldwork techniques, some of which distinguish anthropology from the other social sciences and all of which are relevant and extraordinarily useful to young researchers with limited experience. Her narrative adeptly intertwines the experiences of seasoned anthropologists with those of novices in order to illustrate the various methodological techniques.

Starting Fieldwork optimizes foundational methods covered in larger works. Further, it exposes readers to additional contours of the fieldwork enterprise, such as participant-observation in virtual places, museums and archives as field sites, the camera as methodology, photographs as evidence, the importance of note taking, and how reflexivity can enhance research. Marti’s approach to and treatment of the complexities involved in doing fieldwork, including discovering the “hidden” in plain sight, will inspire and boost the confidence of prospective fieldworkers.