Fieldwork is not what it used to be

The book has been on my desk for a while, waiting for the perfect reading motivation that is the reading group. I’m now a couple of chapters in… enough to be quite intrigued about the book’s aims. It takes on a very particular slice of academic work–paying a lot of attention to the professional ‘craft’ of fieldwork, as Marcus calls it. I’m about to start the empirical chapters, and I’m curious to read on:  To what extent are the implications of particular ways of developing this craft linked to the kinds of knowledge produced by ethnographers?

Next book…

will be ‘Partial Connections’, by Marilyn Strathern. Supplemented with a delicious piece by Anna Tsing, presented at the annual meeting of the Danish Association for science and technology studies, and brought to our attention by Dina Friis.

Ethno Reading Group Meeting

Although it’s been quiet on the blog, rather a lot has been happening lately, ethnography-wise, and I’m hoping to write some more about these many developments in the coming days.

But looking ahead for now… A few of us will be meeting on 20 November to pursue the ethno reading group activities we started last spring. We’ll discuss Coming of Age on this occasion.

Interestingly, this social science book was reviewed in Nature, (review provided courtesy of Tom Boellstorff).