The World Observed: Reflections on the Fieldwork Process

Book Overview

The retrospective universe is always ineluctable. It's the future that's blank and the present that's ambiguous. In real time, a depressing number of apparently wonderful ideas are duds, and a blessed... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252065336
• ISBN13: 9780252065330
• Release Date: July 1996
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Observations on this book

The editors, Bruce Jackson and Edward Ives, asked excellent ethnographers to write articles that recount their "tales from the field." The writers often focused on the little epiphanies that provided flashes of insight into the process of doing fieldwork and writing an ethnographic study. The result is an excellent volume of essays. The sixteen articles provide insight into a wide variety of topics and range of techniques used in serious fieldwork from disciplines such as ethnomusicology, folklore, cultural anthropology, history, and sociology. Barre Toelken's essay on his research into the coyote stories within Navajo culture opens the volume with a fascinating consideration of what it means to negotiate research interests with respect for a culture and its traditions. The issues that are sometimes created in this process, Toelken shows, can result in serious consequences. Ellen Stekart's essay on completing fieldwork on ballad-singing in southern Indiana provides an interesting example of ways in which other genres, such as storytelling, are related to the process of establishing and maintaining rapport. Lynwood Montell's discussion of Kentucky shape-note and gospel singing traditions is another remarkable essay as his congenial style and fine scholarship shows how he shifted from being an outside-observer into a participating member of the singing community. Sandy Ives and Neil Rosenberg's essays are also finely crafted and insightful forays into the world of observing musical traditions within vibrant communities. I also appreciate the way that the book concludes with Bruce Jackson's now-classic essay "The Perfect Informant." This essay brings together a number of the themes, and it's a fascinating piece of writing. The entire volume is well worth reading for anyone who does fieldwork as well as for anyone who reads the studies of those engaged in ethnographic and oral history. Many of the essays will also appeal to those who have a general interest in expressive culture but are not necessarily engaged in ethnographic study.