Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Signe Howell ,  Aud Talle ,  Terence Turner ,  Howard Morphy
Publisher:   Indiana University Press
Imprint:   Indiana University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9780253223487

ISBN 10:   0253223482
Pages:   286
Publication Date:   15 December 2011
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Awaiting stock  
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Table of Contents

"Preface Introduction \ Signe Howell and Aud Talle Part 1. Change and Continuity in Long-term Perspective 1. Forty-five Years with the Kayapo \ Terence Turner 2. ""Soon we will be spending all our time at funerals"": Yolngu Mortuary Rituals in an Epoch of Constant Change \ Frances Morphy and Howard Morphy 3. Returns to the Maasai: Long-term Fieldwork and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge \ Aud Talle 4. Contingency, Collaboration, and the Unimagined over Thirty-five Years of Ethnography \ David Holmberg 5. Nostalgia and Neocolonialism \ Peter Metcalf Part 2. Expansion in Time, Expansion in Space 6. Cumulative Understandings: Experiences from the Study of Two Southeast Asian Societies \ Signe Howell 7. Repeated Returns and Special Friends: From Mythic Encounter to Shared History \ Piers Vitebsky 8. Compressed Globalization and Expanding Desires in Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands \ Edvard Hviding 9. Widening the Net: Returns to the Field and Regional Understanding \ Alan Barnard Afterword: Reflecting on Returns to the Field \ Bruce Knauft List of Contributors Index"

Reviews

<p> This book demonstrates the extraordinarily powerful bonds that can growbetween long-term ethnographers and the people they study. In doing so, it offers apenetrating vision of the resilience and vulnerability inherent in people's creativeefforts to remain true to their core cultural values. -- Sharon Hutchinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison--Sharon Hutchinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison

<p> This book demonstrates the extraordinarily powerful bonds that can grow between long-term ethnographers and the people they study. In doing so, it offers a penetrating vision of the resilience and vulnerability inherent in people's creative efforts to remain true to their core cultural values. --Sharon Hutchinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison--Sharon Hutchinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Author Information

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.

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