Ethnographers in the Field: The Psychology of Research

222 Pages·08.141 MB·English

by  John L Wengle

Ethnographers
in the Field

John L. Wengle
Ethnographers
in the Field
The Psychology of Research
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa
Copyright © 1988 by
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wengle, John L., 1956-
Ethnographers in the field.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Anthropology-Field work-Psychological aspects.
I. Title.
GN33.W46 1988 301'.0723 87-19218
ISBN 0-8173-5176-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8173-5176-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8173-8504-0 (electronic)
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following individuals and publishers for
permission to reprint from their works:
A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term. Bronislaw Malinowski. 1967. New York:
Harcourt, Brace, and World. Reprinted by permission of Valetta Malinowski and John
Hawkins &. Associates, Inc. An Asian Anthropologist in the South. Choong Soon
Kim. 1977. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Used by permission. Crossing
Cultural Boundaries: The Anthropological Experience. Solon T. Kimball and James B.
Watson, eds. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing. Used by permission. "Into the
Heart of Sisala Experience." Bruce Grindal. 1983. Manuscript. Used by permission.
Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family. Jean Briggs. 1970. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press. Used by permission. Reflections of a Woman Anthropolo-
gist: No Hiding Place. Manda Cesara. 1982. New York and London: Academic Press.
Used by permission. Return to Laughter. Elanor S. Bowen. 1954. New York: Harper
and Brothers. Reprinted by permission of Laura Bohannon. They Studied Man. Abram
Kardiner and Edward Preble. 1961. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. Reprinted by per-
mission of Harper &. Row.
To My Parents and Family
To Berta
To Ryan (for all the unknown help)

Contents
Preface ix
Prologue xv
Part I: Understanding Fieldwork
1. On Death and Fieldwork 3
2. Fighting Back: Identity Maintenance in the Field 20
Part II: Plain Old Everyday Fieldwork
3. The Typical Field Experience 41
Part III: Fieldwork as a Study in Extremes
4. A South American Odyssey 87
5. Trauma in the Field: Reflections on Malinowski's
Fieldwork 107
6. Death and Rebirth in Fieldwork: An Archetypal Case 130
Part IV: Conclusion
7. Notes and Fragments 153
Appendix: Sample Questionnaire 170
Notes 173
References 183
Index 193
vii

Preface
This book is an exploration of anthropological fieldwork. It is not,
however, of the kiss-and-tell genre that has become so popular re-
cently, nor does it belong to the "how anthropologists know what
they know" class of books; epistemological concerns are discussed
throughout the book, but they do not dominate the text. Rather, my
primary purpose is to understand and then to elucidate certain psy-
chological ramifications of an initial and traditional fieldwork expe-
rience among professional anthropologists. I have attempted, mostly
through interviews, to determine the psychological changes that
typically affect the advanced graduate student who has undertaken
fieldwork to gather the material necessary to complete a disserta-
tion and, at the same time, training in anthropology. In using the
adjective traditional, I simply mean that the student did not study
his or her own culture or people, but rather studied a foreign culture,
and did so alone. My hope is that this book will better enable us to
understand the psychology of fieldwork and therefore to gain a com-
prehensive knowledge about the nature of anthropological endeavor.
The book is divided into four parts. In Part I, "Understanding
Fieldwork," I present the basic idea that underlies and animates my
thinking about fieldwork, namely, that the process of fieldwork sub-
jects the anthropologist to an attack against his or her sense of self
and that, in tum, the anthropologist defends against this attack
through the activation of certain behaviors designed to maintain and
bolster the threatened self-representation. As will be apparent from
this brief description, I tend to concentrate almost exclusively on
the dark and unflattering aspects of fieldwork. I chose this perspec-
tive-it would be more correct to say that the perspective chose
me-primarily because whatever else fieldwork is, it is always, to
some degree, identity-dystonic. Also, of course, I chose this perspec-
tive because it speaks more directly to my own experiences than the
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