By: dadakim

dadakim — Fri, 20 May 2011 19:12:41 +0000

What a thoughtful post. I have been wrestling with a solid, standard method for fieldwork, and have only been pointed in the direction of texts on “ethnography.” Though I’ve kept my own haphazard sets of “field notes”, I was concerned that without a proper method that could be replicated by others that such information –though illuminating for me– might not be considered persuasive evidence by colleagues. As a political scientist, there are few in our discipline who engage in ethnography, and only a few more that keep “field notes”. Fieldwork is seen as merely collecting survey data (or, more rarely, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions) and/or observable data (i.e. number of political parties in a country, election returns, etc.). All that you have writen here, however, is great food for thought as I prepare my syllabus for a new class, “Political Science Research in the Field.” Thank you!

By: Western Dave

Western Dave — Fri, 13 May 2011 18:42:58 +0000

I wish you had written this 10 years ago when I was trying to explain my history dissertation in job letters. I had no language to describe what I was trying to do nor how my project took shape except to say that it was “sort of anthropological but not really” and that I was “kind of an oral historian but mostly used other methodologies.” And I described my two years of research as “fieldwork.” Even though much/most of it was archival, although hardly traditionally archival sources. Oh and almost nothing I put in my dissertation prospectus turned into anything useful in my dissertation since the sources I expected to find didn’t exist and the sources I did find took my in strange and unexpected directions.

Comments on: A Generalist’s Work, Day 4

By: dadakim

By: Western Dave