Many anthropologists return to their original fieldwork sites a number of times during their careers, but this experience has seldom been subjected to analytic and theoretical scrutiny. The contributors to Returns to the Field have all undertaken multitemporal fieldwork-repeated visits to the same place-over periods ranging from 20 to 40 years among minority groups in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Melanesia. Over the years of contact, these anthropologists have witnessed dramatic changes, but also the perseverance of the people they have worked with. In vivid and personal essays, the authors examine the ramifications of this type of fieldwork practice-the kind of knowledge it produces, what methodological tools are appropriate, and how relationships with people in the field site change over time.

How revisiting fieldwork sites shapes anthropologists' interpretations

About the Author

Signe Howell is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. She is author of The Kinning of Foreigners: Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective; The Ethnography of Moralities; Societies at Peace: An Anthropological Perspective; and Society and Cosmos: Chewong of Peninsular Malaysia.

Aud Talle (1944-2011) was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and author of The Power of Culture: Female Circumcision as Tradition and Taboo (in Norwegian) and Women at a Loss: Changes in Maasai Pastoralism and Their Effects on Gender Relations.

Reviews

Overall, this is a great collection of essays that hang together well and - for once! - address the common theme that the edited volume is ostensibly about. At the same time, each is strong enough that it could be read separately. If you are interested in the topic or the contributors, it is definitely worth picking up.

* savageminds.org *

This is an important book because we need a disciplinary conversation about our myths. . . . [I]s more always better? Are there limits to the value of returns to the field? What are the costs and who will bear them? Returns to the Field has done us the valuable service of allowing this conversation to begin.

* Social Anthropology *

[V]aluable insights can be gained by returning to the field-whether physically or intellectually-to reflect upon the inevitable shifts in the researcher's intellectual transformation, disciplinary trends, and even popular understandings of key events and narratives that have been documented. Summer/Fall 2014

* Oral History Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9780253223487
Author Signe Howell
Format Paperback
Page Count 286
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 431g