fieldwork

Or maybe it’s a problem with me. At any rate, it seems the more I think about Anthroenology, the more directions I end up going in. I start a blog entry on one particular aspect of the project, and it leads me to think of six different other things that may or may not be worthy of investigation. But they require thinking about. And so I have at least three or four blog posts on various aspects of the project in different states of...

Last week was our last classroom session for the WSET Diploma. Alas, I missed it because of illness. But it seems a good time to reflect on my not-quite-finished two years of fieldwork among the WSET. (With apologies to Evans-Pritchard.)  Like most fieldwork, it seemed at times interminable, and at other times, to go by in a flash. There was culture shock and disorientation. Who are these people? Why do they do these things? There...

‘So, what are your results?’ ‘Ask us again in about, oh, three to five years.’ Thus runs an imaginary, but typical, discussion during fieldwork. Fieldwork is part of a slow process. It takes time, often slowed further by issues of funding and, well, life. But even if Julia and I had all the funding we could wish for, and no other obligations or commitments, we’d still be telling people to give us a few years. That’s a slightly...

There is one aspect of anthropological fieldwork which I do not think I have ever seen discussed. That is fieldwork skills. By this, I do not mean, however, research skills or interview techniques. You may or may not get taught them as an anthropology student. (You should get taught them, of course, but ‘Ought’ and ‘Is’ aren’t the same thing.) Nor am I talking about languages, or learning to take acceptable videos or photos. No, what...

It seems every time I tell myself I’ll be better at blogging, I get worse. It’s with more than a bit of embarrassment that I realise it’s been almost two months since I’ve posted here. Here’s a brief list of what we’ve been up to since my last post. Anthroenology has done two short, but very rewarding periods of fieldwork. In September, we were in Austria, and in October, we spent a few days down in Sussex & Kent. I’ll do...