Sie sind auf Seite 1von 24
ONE Discipline and Practice: “The Field” as Site, Method, and Location in Anthropology Ail Gupta and James Ferguson 1 INTRODUCTION The practice of fieldwork, together with its associated genre, the work of those remembered Boas, Evans-Pritchard, Leenhardt, etc.) jore widely discussed. In terms of professional soci that makes onea “real anthropolo; iswidely understood to be “based” (as we. whether a piece "e accepted as (that magical word) “anthropological” is the extent to which it depends on experience “in the field.” 2 AKHIL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON Yet this idea of “the field,” although central to our intellectual and pro- fessional identities, remains a largely unexamined one in contemporary an: thropology. The concept of culture has been vigorously critiqued and dis- sected in recentyears (e.g., Wagner 1981; Clifford 1988; Rosaldo 19892; Fox, ed., 1992); ethnographyasa genre of writing has been made visible and crit ically analyzed (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Geertz 1988); the dialogic en- counters that constitute fieldwork experience have been explored (Craps zano 1980; Rabinow 1977; Dumont 1978; Tedlock 1983); even the peculiar textual genre of fieldnotes has been subjected to reflection and analysis, (Sanjek 1990). But what of “the field” itself, the place where the distinctive work of “fieldwork” may be done, that taken-for granted space in which an “Other” culture or society lies waiting to be observed and written? This mys- terious space—not the "what" of anthropology but the “where"—has been left to common sense, beyond and below the threshold of reflexivity. Itis astonishing, but ue, that most leading departments of anthropot- ogy in the United States provide no formal (and very little informal) train- ing in fieldwork methods—as few as 20 percent of departments, according is also true that most anthropological training programs in, and almost no critical reflection on, the selection to one survey! were too great in anthropology for the profession even to permit such ob- vious and practical issues to be seriously discussed, let alone toallow the idea of “the field” itself to be subjected to scrutiny and reflection. tical eye to such questions, our aim is not to breach what pleasure of up- setting traditions. Rather, our effort to open up this subject is motivated by two specific imperatives. ‘The first imperative follows from the way the idea of “the field” f ical academic practices through which anthropological ed from work in related disciplines such as history, soci literature and literary criticism, religious studies, and (especially) cultural studies. The difference bevween anthropology and these other disciplines, it would be widely agreed, les less in the topics studied (which, after all, overlap substantially) than in the distinctive method an- thropologists employ, namely fieldwork based on participant observation. In other words, our difference from other specialists in academic insti sis constructed not just on the premise that we are spe differ: ence, but on a specific methodology for uncovering or understanding that difference, Fieldwork thus helps define anthropology 2s discipline in both senses of the word, constructing a space of possibilities while at the same 1es that confine that space, Far from being a mere re- In turning a! time drawing the search technique, fieldwork has become “the basic constituting exper both of anthropologists and of anth 's and of anthropological knowledge’ = ological knowledge mnstituent element of mused fo mark and police the torethink those boundaries or rework th. Without confronting the idea of “the fi : “the field” of “fieldwork” ess to question tions of the idea of “t has t the opportunity—or, depending on one’s the risk—of opening to question the meaning o anthropology follows from a now widely express of traditional ethnographic methods and cor political challenges of the contempora the lack of ft between the problems taised by a ing world, on the one hand, and the resources provided by a mei nally developed for studying supposedly small-scale s has of course been cvident in anthropological circles: instance, Hymes 1972; Asad 1973). In rec the traditional fieldwork ideal farreaching. Some crities have pointed to problems in the construction of ie texts (Clifford and Mares practices through which rel: phers and their “informant cf. Harrison, ed,, “feldwork* became hegemontcin anthvoyo probiem in dhe fllong er landscapes of group identity —the ethnoseapes ger familiar anthropological objects, ied, spat lows we wil further explore the challenge of with the changed context of ethnographic work, For now ine uo 4 AKHIL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON note a certain contradiction. On the one hand, anthropology appears de- termined to give up its old ideas of territorially fixed communities and sta- ble, localized cultures, and to apprehend an interconnected world in which people, objects, and ideas are rapidly shifting and refuse to stay in place. At the same time, though, in a defensive response to challenges to its “tur!” from other disciplines, anthropology has come to lean more heavily than rent to spend long periods in one local a discipline that loudly rejects received ideas of “the local,” even while ever more firmly insisting on a method that takes it for granted? A productive rethinking of stich eminently practical problems in anthropological methodology, we suggest, will require a thor- ‘oughgoing reevaluation of the idea of the anthropol field” itself, as well as the privileged status it occupies in the construction of anthropolog- ical knowledge. This book therefore explores the idea of “the field” at each of the two lev- els described above. Some of the authors investigate how “the field” came to be part of the commonsense and professional practice of anthropology, and view this development in the contexts both of wider social and politica developmentsand of the academy's micropolities. Other auth ‘whose own work stretches the conventional boundaries of flect on how the idea of “the field” has bounded and normalized tice of anthropology—how it enables certain kinds of knowledge while block: ing off others, authorizes some objects of study and methods of analysis while excluding others; how, in short, the i to define and patrol the boundaries of what is often knowingly referred to as “real an- thropology.” In the remaining sections of this chapter, we develop some general obser- vations about how the idea of “the field” has been historically constructed and constituted in anthropology (Part II) and trace some key effects and sequences of this dominant concept of “the field” for professional and intellectual practices (Part Ill). We want not only to describe the configu- fe that have prevailed in the past butalso to help »nfigurations to meet the needs of the presentand the future isa (arguably the) central component of the anthropo- rework these better. “The fiel logical tradition, to be sure; but anthropology also teaches that traditions are always reworked and even reinvented as needed. With this in mind, we search (in Part IV) for intellectual resources and alternative disciplinary prac- tices that might aid in such a reconstruction of tradition, which we provi= sionally locate both in certain forgotten and devalued elements of the an- thropological past and in various marginalized sites on the geographical and disciplinary peripheries of anthropology. Finally, in Part V, we propose a re- DISCIPLIVE AND PRACTICE — 5 forr ‘on of the anthropological fieldwor and defetishize the concept of “the field,” whi and epistemological strategies that foreground questo. ‘onstruction of situated knowledges, hropology ough to havea unique or di scts it apart from other disciplines is not a here are many any given piece of work than whether or ogy. But we accept James long as the current config thropology" it “belongs” ifford’s point (chap rration of disci 0 us to attempt to redefine the not honored commitment to the local but with an attentiveness to eee ‘and political location andl a will We suggest, is central to many of the ovative ree of anthropological fieldwork practices in recent years, lustrated in this book. The fact that " Wve transparency obscures the complex processes that ao structing it In fact, it isa highly overdeter difference. To begin with, itis tori take place? Th nptions is it possible for the wor Tay of field sites? ventions and inherited a through the anthropological lens, as an to appear 6 ARHIL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON Natural History and the Malinountian “Feld” king about these questions is to note hows the id 0, though scholars of the history (ed, 1983, 1991, 1gg2a), Henrika Kuklick (1991, ogy such as George Stoc and chapter 2 of this book), and Joan Vincent (iggo) have already made im portant contributions toward that task. Instead, we wish to raise, in a ge it, a more restricted and focused set of questions about the ips that led to the constitution of anthropology 2s 2 n fieldwork as the distinctive key relations knowledge that depen: roduced into anthropology by the former zoologist A. C. Haddon, was de- rived from the discourse of field naturalists (Stocking 1992a; Kuklick, chap- ter 2). As Stocking observes, Haddon conceived his first fieldwork in the rarely within the terms of natural history: “to study the fauna, je mocle of formation of coral reefs” (19922: 21). Indeed, Kauklick (chapter 2) vividly demonstrates that the anthropological “discov ery’ of fieldwork needs to be set in the context ofa more general setoftrans- formations in the late nineteenth- and early gventieth-century practices of, botany, and ge- found both its distinctive ob- in “the detailed study of limited areas” (Kak lick, chapter 2; cf. Stocking s9gea). Anthropology’s origin as a naturalistic science of the carly human is therefore closely tied to the eventual role of fieldwork as its dominant sry practice. To do fieldwork was, in the Many early twentieth-century fieldworkers ex that their fact not living in a ds was self-consc cha state from the observation and questioning of natives the patently “unnatural” conditions of a postconquest colonial wor ‘Tomas (1992) shows, for example, how Radcliffe Brown complained that the informants he met on a penal settlement {established by the colonial gow man Islands to imprison those who rose agains it in sn Mutiny of 1857) no longer remembered “the things of the time’; he therefore tried to interview others who “do not know a single word of any language but their own" (in Tomas 1991: 96). His eventual plan, ‘was to go to the Nicobars where the data were les likely ta be co: d asattempt to reconstruct ing under DISCIPLINE AND PRACTICE by the natives’ previous contact with y ntact with white people like himself (Tomas 1 95-96). The early Boasians in the United States faced sim ‘ecking to build comprehensive desrip iad been substantially decimated by conquest, genocide. With the Malinowskian revolution in heleweek® aah salism came to be asserted in an even stronger form, Betting of conquest and colonialism, fieldworkers incre: Simply to reconstruct the natural state ofthe p with ext method (Vincent 19912 55), Ye lopment pant observation rembering just ho lick shows (chapter than sim: lectual merits of his program, that enabled cure the support of the Rockefeller Foundation for his vs ‘ogy, which only then (Le., after 1930) enabled ian to perspective. (For example, all Rockefeller-fanded ternational African Instivute were required to spend seminar (Stocking 1992a]). Mal may have owed more to his in ‘who continued his legacy than observation itself (cf, Kulick thing inherent in exte Vincent 1990). hropol as primatology the requirement th natural surrour just as zoological be considered inferior to those conducted on an. Md. The naturalistic gente of ethnography was an attempt to §AKEOL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON recreate that natural state textually, just as the dioramas painstakingly com- structed istory museums aimed not only to describe but also to recreate the natural surroundings of primates and other animals (Haraway 1989: 26-58). Thus, when Ulf Hannerz (1986) complained chat ethnogra- phy was still obsessed with “the most other of others,” he was critiquing a long- standing ethnographic attitude that those most Other, and most isolated. from “ourselves,” are those most authe rooted in their “natural” set. tings (cf. Malkki 1992). ‘This conception, of course, was and is undergirded by the metaphor of the “field” co denote the sites where anthropologists do their research. The ‘word field connotes a place set apart from the urban—opposed not so much (0 the transnational metropolises of late capitalism as to the industrial 1ggib). Going to the “field” suggests a trip to a place that is agrarian, pas toral, or maybe even “wi implies a place that is perhaps cultivated (a y does not stray too far from nature. W fon with nature. As a metaphor we work by, “the sumptions of anthropology. are not being. pastoral and agrar- and debates have been developed (Far than comparativists in other ich a regional science. From this, oo, there follows the builtin neces ‘of travel: one can only encounter difference by going elsewhere, by going. field” more precisely a8 a site constructed, ing entanglements of anthropological notions of “culture the institutional politics of “area studies tes. The notion of culture areas, suppl plehood and ethnicity fe.g., “the urd language (eg, "Bandi-speaking Afri ‘Thomas 198ga] or “Black Afvica’ late a set of societies up of area studies centers ten by the U.S. govern the emphasis placed on tegic and geopolitical priorities. As terests shift, so do funding priorities and the definition of areas the! A few years ago, for instance, there was an effort to carve outa neware: rer Asia,” which would be distinct from East ‘one hand, and the Middle Afghanistan and the fear of the possible ascendane: im the regions adjacent to what was titutional mechanisms that define areas, they intersect Produce “fields” that are available for research ‘Thus, no major funding agency supports research on “the Mes whereas Western Europe (which, besides [ef. Rosaldo 1988), is part of NATO) is a less appro- "as the many European rruggle to find jobs in an thropology departments can attest"! 50. AKHIL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON in national verms that ade no sense pri 0s. Thus Vietor Turner was not, ashe would be styled today, a “Zambianist” but an “African Continuity in an African Society was "A Study of Nedembu Village reader would have to comb thet ‘was in fact conducted in whatwas research freely crossed between the predilections, and carer omcomes feexpee tions. Yet just as Fvans- work was enabled by the brute fact of colonial c the field sites in which contemporary anthropo the geopolitics ofthe postcol formed field si ganized knowledge along colonial lines hav ones that organize it along national ones." ibfields” such as “legal ant ‘psychological anthropology,” and 50 through which such issues and debates 1 be expected to in- hat of a psychologi- fields" has broken "eld" and “f defined subli ‘once helped to define and bound field sites. 412 ARHIL GUPTA AND JAMES FERCUSON plications of the anthropological concept of “the field” ‘thout taking account of the deep-seated images of the “real fieldworker,” the “eal anthropologist.” that constitute a significant patt of the “common, in the Gramscian usage of che term) of the discipline, In sketching some of the key consequences ofthe construction of the field ‘of anthropology through the practice of fieldwork, we focuson three themes in particular: frst, the radical separation of “the field” from “home,” and the related creation of a hierarchy of purity of field sites; second, the val- orization of certain kinds of knowledge to the excl third, the construction of a normative anthropological subject, an anthro- pological “self” against which anthropology sets 7 agai these are not simply historical associations, but archetypal ones that subtly but powerfully construct the very idea of what anthropology is. We will argue that even ideas abo by contemporary anthropologis ‘embedded in our professional practices, “Piel” and “Home” The di and “home” rests on their spat 8 oF studies, surrounded by other texts in the midst of theoretical conversation with others of one's kind. More: ‘over, the two forms of activity are not only one com- ‘monly “writes up” after coming back from “the field,” Temporal succession therefore traces the natural sequence of sites that completes a spatial jou ney into Otherness. ‘The second place the sharp contrast berween “fel ° pressed isin the standard anthropological tropes of entry into and exitfrom “the field." Stories of entry and exit usually appear om the margins of texts, providing the narrative with uncertainty and expectation at the beginning and closure at the end, According to Mary Louise Pratt (1986), the function, of narratives of entry and exit is to authenticate and authorize the material DISCIPLINE AND PRAC} 2 that follows, most of which used to be Jective, di Tormal love of |