Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Methodology and Fieldwork: Negotiating Hazardous Fields
- 3 Ethnography, Violence and Memory: Telling Violence in the Naga Hills
- 4 Jhum and the ‘Science of Empire’: Ecological Discourse, Ethnographic Knowledge and Colonial Mediation
- 5 Land and Land-Based Relations in a Yimchunger Naga Village: From Book View to Field View
- 6 The Politics of Time: The Missionary Calendar, the Protestant Ethic and Labour Relations among the Eastern Nagas
- 7 Micro-Politics of Development Intervention: Village Patrons, Community Participation and the NEPED Project
- 8 Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Methodology and Fieldwork: Negotiating Hazardous Fields
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 May 2019
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Methodology and Fieldwork: Negotiating Hazardous Fields
- 3 Ethnography, Violence and Memory: Telling Violence in the Naga Hills
- 4 Jhum and the ‘Science of Empire’: Ecological Discourse, Ethnographic Knowledge and Colonial Mediation
- 5 Land and Land-Based Relations in a Yimchunger Naga Village: From Book View to Field View
- 6 The Politics of Time: The Missionary Calendar, the Protestant Ethic and Labour Relations among the Eastern Nagas
- 7 Micro-Politics of Development Intervention: Village Patrons, Community Participation and the NEPED Project
- 8 Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In many areas of the world, anthropological fieldwork is more dangerous today than it was in the past. There are approximately 120 ‘armed conflicts’ […] and given that about one-third of the world's countries are currently involved in warfare and about two-thirds of the countries resort to human rights abuses as normal aspects of their political process to control their population, it is clear that few anthropologists will be able to able to avoid conflicting situations and instances of socio political violence in the course of their professional lives. (Sluka 1995: 276)
The methodology underlying anthropological fieldwork has undergone great changes over time. In the days of Evans Prichard, Malinowski, et al. it involved the study of ‘primitives’: non-Western culture by anthropologists from a Western perspective. There is hardly any society now, which is ‘closed’. Education has spread far and wide, and people in the so called ‘primitive societies’ now respond to and are aware of outside influence. Fieldworkers of my generation have to be aware of this situation. (Brara 1998: vi)
The chapter will discuss the moral and ethical dilemmas of conducting fieldwork in a social context in which everyday violence and suspicion features predominantly. In this context, methodological practice such as reflectivity, informed consent, fieldworker's responsibility, rapport and reciprocity need to be considered to engage with the ethics of fieldwork. In ethnographic (qualitative) fieldwork, the question of a researcher's subject position becomes fundamental as he or she is expected to engage with and become immersed in the situation and, at the same time, be objective and neutral. This becomes even more difficult in dangerous field sites where the researcher's wellbeing is constantly at risk. The fieldworker is mandated to generate ‘thick description’ (Geertz 1973), and in this process is obliged to spend time with his respondents, friends, interlocutors–informants in a way that goes beyond conventional data collection in qualitative research practice. In the process of recording data, the fieldworker encounters anxiety, dilemmas and undeclared challenges. A range of ethical issues emerges, which that I will discuss in this chapter, as one creates a set goals for fieldwork that cannot be considered during the planning and permission stage.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Politics of Swidden Farming (Jhum)Environment and Development in Eastern India, pp. 25 - 46Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2018