The Secret Lives of Anthropologists

This book addresses the difficult conditions researchers may face in the field and provides lessons in how to navigate the various social, political, economic, health and environmental challenges involved in fieldwork.

Autorentext

Bonnie L. Hewlett is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Washington State University, Vancouver. Her work focuses on topics relating to bio-cultural contexts of infectious diseases, hunter-gatherers, adolescent development, social learning, and the health and experiences of Ethiopian orphans, birthmothers and fathers. She has conducted field research in Gabon, Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Central African Republic.

Inhalt

Introduction Bonnie L. Hewlett Part 1: Paths into the Field 1. Learning Fields Vishvajit Pandya 2. Stumbling Around the Sacred: Some Personal Observations Benjamin Grant Purzycki 3. From the Orinoco to Sorority Row: Searching for a Field Site as an Evolutionary Anthropologist Nicole Hess Part 2: Gendered Relations and Other Challenges in the Field 4. Doing Ethnomusicological Research as a White Woman in Cameroon and the Central African Republic Susanne Fürniss 5. A Boss, a Mother, a Red Antelope, and All the Things in Between Sylvie Le Bomin 6. Culturally Appropriate Solutions to Fieldwork Challenges Among the Mbendjele BaYaka Hunter-Gatherers of the Congo Basin Daa Bombjaková Part 3: The Observer and the Observed: The Metamorphosis of Research, Methods, and the Researcher 7. My Life in the School of Hard Knocks: How an Aspiring Anthropologist Became a White Cameroonian Robert Moïse 8. Sp ßEURmin, Ethnographers and Mixed Methods Robert Quinlan 9. Mothering in the Field: Participant Observation on Cultural Transmission Victoria Reyes-García 10. The Quiet Joy of Fieldworkers in the Kalahari Akira Takada Part 4: Dangerous Fields 11. The Origins of Surviving Fieldwork - Nancy Howell 12. When All Hell Breaks Loose: Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork Amid Gunplay, Catastrophe, and Mayhem J. Christopher Kovats-Bernat Part 5: Ethics, Advocacy, and Other Everyday Moral Dilemmas of Research* 13. Surviving Agta Fieldwork Thomas N. Headland with Janet D. Headland 14. Do You Consent to Participate in the Research Study? Paul Verdu 15. Who Owns the Poop? And Other Ethical Dilemmas Facing an Anthropologist Who Works at the Interface of Biological Research and Indigenous Rights Alyssa Crittenden 16. But What if the "Field" is a Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory? How it Happened, What it's Like. The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ugly James J. McKenna* Appendix: Regional Packing List and Other Favorite Items in the Field