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 uo4 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 appear6 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 |
, has always drawn inspiration from
ample, boasted of his ambition 10 be "the Con
INE AND PRACTICE 52
!any anthropologists are uneasy about
novels ethnographically (cf, Handler and Sey
ere, employ one example to help show the
idintaining this distinction,
Mallabarman’s A River Called Titash was original
and Kalpana Bardhan has rece!
barman was bor
Malos in what is now Bangladesh. He
ceive high school e
ing recreation of the everyday
und the M: 1
the novel as an “alternative” version of
ose representations created by anthropologists, Yer he tor
sabage ethnography by recording the Malo’
ata time wi 01 hanges that sve
tence. Novels such as A River Called Ti
“and “ethnogray
to read A River Called Tt
‘ime, such as Leach’s Po
draws on the kno}
gained from living within a fishing commun
of people, Unlike
fieldworker has experience, obtained by staying a32 AKHIL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON
Jong time, fearning the language well, and participating in everyday life,
which authorizes his or her discourse. Yet, paradoxi that experience
the institutional framework of a doctoral program in an-
ined” observer is
erver is to state the
obvious; yet, surely the claim that training enables certain things to come
{nto light begs the question of what “training” might prevent one from see-
ing. A discipline in which “experience” 1as been surprisingly
unfriendly to the notion that “experiens reconfigured by
memory. Ifan anthropologis
collected during doctoral fi
” an ethnography based on
“background"—growing up, as
ferences berveen
consequences
ly definitive of
is of experience; we intend or
ing such differences as both absolute and abs
anthropotogy’s disciplinary ide
\V. REINVENTING "THE FIELD": METHODOLOGY AND LOCATION
cis clear that anthropologists have in recent years been more and more in-
lined to depart from the conventions of archetypal fieldwork as they have
taken on research projects not easily approached via the traditional model
of immersion within a community (cf. chapter 10). Reflecting on their ex-
periences of testing and even transgressing the disciplinary boundaries se.
‘by the expectations of real Reldwork, "several ofthe contributors to this book
help point the way toward developing of new practices and conventions for
Maliki, Des Chene, and Martin have co
fieldwork. We
dition thatwe
not only leaving room for but properly valuing
and innovative new practices of the field that are evident in the c
tions to this book and elsewhere.
Toward New Practices ofthe Feld: Problems and Strategies
‘One of the most profound issues raised by recent work in anthropology is
{ie question of the spatialization of difference. The unspoken premise that
“home” is a place of cultural sameness and that difference is to be found
“abroad” haslong been part of the common sense of anthropology. Yet some
of our contributors, drawing on recent work on gender and sexualiy, begin,
DISCIPLINE AND PRAC
thelr “eldwork” th the opposite premise—that “home:
2 place of difference. ' is “ome
Tn chapter 9, Kath Weston pons outta
home a gy and lesbian
setles antropologial seni
ographer when “quers stay quccres Nine
cro? Ting to speak x patton
ta "natve— speaking fr her onn people marbecrea ae ake
Ney 909) Asa“Nathe Eimogapher she ma sonae eaeen
and“ Eographer long ihe nuance othe ee eee ge
ind up together,” th in
reaton, feu
the abject onjec
founded Seating fom sucha po
relly constaed inp
ie hybridity of the Native
Jounne Pssiv's research (hs
scarch (chapter 8) among the home
rite some related ines. Like Weston, shescporoen
the es ot home
"i
“Loften felt that my various discipl
T discovered some sort af secret corn!
people like the codes of hoboes ea
able “subculture” would have been
self Yet Passaro resisted the tempt
‘and developed instead an innovati
1g ier styles of
is of volunteer and advocacy work provided a34 AKITL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON
successful, if unorthodox, methodological strategy for an ethnographic
study that ended up yielding powerful and surprising insights into the
predicaments of homeless people (cf. assaro 1996)
In chapter 4, Liisa Malkki discusses a different way in which the method-
logical demandsofone’stesearch may require a reconfiguring of "the fel.”
Her research among Hutu refugees in Tanzania led her to question one a
pect of the fieldwork tradition that is commonly celebrated as a great
‘irtue—its emphasis on the ordinary, the everyday, and the routine. As she
points out, such an emphasistends to direct away from those things
that the refigees she worked sith cared about most—the extraordinary and
exceptional events that had made refugees of them, and the atypical and
transitory circumstances of their lives in a refugee camp. She observes that
a division of labor betveen anthropology and journalism has made a
‘extraordinary happenings into "stories" to be covered by journ:
everyday oc
able forlongeterm anthropological i
direct an anthropologieal gaze on singular, exce
nary events? What sorts of fieldwork would be appropriate to studying the
“communities of memory" formed in the aftermath of such events? A dif-
For Mary Des Ghene in chapt
‘work and history, and the way knowledge gained through archival research
terial is widely valued in anthropology asa supplement (oF
bbut considerable anxiety is provoked if it begins to take center stage. Des
Chene asks how different the two modes of acquiring knowledge really are,
skillfully distinguishing the real differences from the mythol
feldwork-based knowledge as necessarily truer or less met
types. She also confronts the question of how ethnographic methods can be
adapted for studying spatially dispersed phenomena, rising the issue of mul-
cultural processes that are not well localized spatially. She points out that
‘even many ethnographers of science have retained an idea of a “scientific
community” as spatially bounded, to be examined through the
‘methods of the community study. The reaction of one such tradi
Gl fa from the Mainonskan archenpe, But Mar
vyelopments in science are also occurring si
ty and that we need diferent models and metaphors than Unoseprosided
DISCIPLINE AND PRACTICE 35
sp such changes. She proposes several new metay
: used her own research, layin
ex long proces occur neither in asin
ted global space, butin many different space
from each other. 7
Retheorising Fieldwork: From Spatial Sites to Political Locations
We begin our own efforts
tn discret and sepa
wel to .
ve theveisto enter smother
eave that world and arrive
located.” To challenge is petare
of diserete, origi ‘eure
fieldwork as involving the movement in and out of ae,
'Amico-Samel (199160) asks when
Jamaica,
chifany of thee thre exper
‘dwork still carry the connota i,
faced ethnogra
"erhaps we should say th:
Echnography's great
‘oped sense of loc
power relations, But
‘nays contained at least some recognition,
“about somewhere” and “from somewhere,” and th.
and life experience are somehove central tothe ki
rough the anthropological notion of “the fe!
0 often been elided with locality, and a shift of loc
duced to the idea of going “elsewhere” to look
Taking as a point of departur
veloped in recent feminist seh36 AKHIL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON
think the anthropological fieldwork tradition in quite a fundamental way,
Preserving what we think are its real virtues, We wish to be clear that,
however significant the problems with “the field” are, there remain many
aspects of the fieldwork tradition that we continue
its faults) to serve as an extraordinarily useful corrective to th
rocentrism and pos
lieve 2 well-develop.
‘upon these aspects
individually
1, The fieldwork tradition counters Western ethnocentrism and vahies
detailed and intimate knowledge of economically and politically mar-
ed places, peoples, histories, and social locations. Such margin-
alized locations enable critiques and resistances that would otherwise
never be articulated (hooks 1990; Spivak 1988). Since anthropology
departments continue to be among the few places in the Western
academy not devoted exclusively or largely co the study of the lives and
icies of elites, they con: important nodes for por
tically engaged intervention in many forms of symbolic and epistemic
domination. We emphasize once again that our analysis of anthro
pology’s “hierarchy of purity” of field sites is nat meant to suggest
anthropologi iger work in far-flung and peripheral
places—only that tis necessary to question the way that dominant cor
ceptions and practices of “the field” have constructed such places, AS
Anna Tsing (1993) has recently demonstrated, by bringing marginal:
ity itself under the anthropological lens, instead of simply taking
granted, itis possible to write about “out-of-the-way places" without
tancing, romanticizing, or exoticizing them.
Fieldwork’sstres
valuable methodology for
‘understanding social and cultural life, both through the discovery of
a i
DISCIPLINE AND PRACTICE 5
stood. Fieldwork, in
vated and slized.
What emerges,
forms of fieldwork.
ied methodology
188) has called “situated knowledges.”
With fess ofa sense of “the f
We mi
is ceasing to be fetishized;
the members of a community are inerea
reading newspapers, analyzing gover!
ognizabie asa flexible and oppor
ing more complex our understanding of v
‘ments through an aitentiveness to the differe
from different social and pol
ethnography today is proceeding along
Vionalized disciplinary tramework of
an ethnographie work th:
rials (cf. chapter g),438 ARHIL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON
Any serious decentering of “the field” has the effect, of course, of further
ies. Genres seem destined to continue to blur. Yet instead of assum
ing that truly anthropological truths are only revealed in “the field,” and
attempting to seal off the borders of anthropology from the incursions of
culeural studies and other disciplines, it anight be a far healthier response to
ink “the field” of anthropology by reconsidering what our commitment
to fieldwork entails.
Such a rethinking of the idea of “the field,” coupled with an explicit at
temtiveness to location, might open the way for both a different kind of an-
thropological knowledge and a different kind of anthropological subject. We
have attempted to demonstrate that the uncritical loyalty to “the field” in
anthropology has long authorized a certain positionality, a particular loca:
speak about Others. Without an explicit consideration
ject and the kind of knowledge that ethnographic work
produces—by what method? for whom? about whom? by whom? to shat
end? —we anthropologists will continue to valoriz
guage of meritocracy, a very particulars
location. Practicing decolonized anthro
means asa first step doing away with the
conventional anthrop
‘we anthropologists at
* But a heightened sense of location me
ly ‘anthropotogic
‘we study and the methods we employ are
‘a recognition that
vention, Rather than viewing ethnograpl
search for the service of universal bummani
asaway of pursuing specific political aims while simultaneously seeking lines
DISCIPLINE AND PRA‘
of common political purpose with allies who stand els
building what Haraway (1988) has termed “web-lik
‘ween different social and cultural locations. Appl
pecially activist anthropology hi
graphic practice to a specific and ex;
Feason, they have been c¢
thropotogy (cf, Ferguson
suggested isnecessary, since even the most political
sill conceive of themselves as occupying an
privileged position, Rather than viewing anthropologists as posses
knowledge and insights that they can then share with or put to work for
‘ous “ordinary people," our approach insists that anthropological
coexists with other forms of knowledge. We see the political task n
ing” knowledge with those who lack i, but as forging links beaween differoxt
knowledges that are possible from different locat
te
2 research area less as a “field” for the
and political issues of location surely takes,
history model of
ine has for so long relied f
tion. Ata time of rapid and contentious disciplinary
change, it might be argued, such a reworking of one of the few apparently
solid points of common reference can only exacerbate the confusion. But
what such worries ignore is the fact that the classical idea of
aeady being challenged, undermined, and rewo
ethnographic practice, a8 several oft
‘other works discussed in this chapter
line challenges existing conven:
the refusal to interrogate those coriventions seems less
ciplinary confusion and discord than to gener:
ty, anthropology’s fieldwork tradi
is able to chang late
‘circumstances. For that fo happen, as Malinowski himself pointed out, such40 AHL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON
A wadition must be aggressively and imaginatively reinterpreted to meet the
needs of the present.
NoTES
chapter we use “anthropology” as x shorthand for
hropology leaving to one side the very interesting issies raised by
sof “field” and “eldwork” in the other subfields of anthropology archae-
the discipline is
re, which we discus
swexplore how and
ignored, and with what consequences,
5. The survey
pology hasa long {ifoften underappreciated) history of atten
from news, and anthro.
her (ef. Gupea
(non)unity of ies “subfields.” The peri
red," holistic,” “Tour Feld” anthropology cannot disguise the abv
Jumping of social and cultural studies of Third World peoples together in a single