Chronicling Cultures
Long-Term Field Research in Anthropology
Contributions by Robert V. Kemper, Wade Pendleton, T Scarlett Epstein, Ulla C. Johansen, Douglas R. White, Louise Lamphere, Evon Z. Vogt, Richard B. Lee, Megan Biesele, Thayer Scudder, Elizabeth Colson, Lisa Cliggett, George M. Foster, Peter S. Cahn Edited by Robert V. Kemper, Anya Peterson Royce
Publication date:
01 May 2002Length of book:
392 pagesPublisher
AltaMira PressISBN-13: 9780759101937
Some field sites have hosted anthropologists for as long as half a century. Chronicling Cultures collects articles from principals of many of the longest and best-known anthropology projects from four continents—the Kung, Harvard Chiapas Project, Gwembe Valley, Tzintzuntzan, and Navajo among others. These projects have brought a new understanding of change and persistence in communities over time. They have forced researchers to develop methods of involving local communities in research, of using data over generations of scholars, and of resolving ethical issues of research versus advocacy. The projects range from individual scholars who return 'home' year after year to large-scale institutionalized projects involving many researchers and numerous studies. This volume will be an important addition to the literature on fieldwork, on the history of ethnology, and on ethnographers' role in their host cultures.
...superbly evoke[s] the fieldwork endeavor, its unique promise for illuminating the human condition, the several challenges that it entails, and the fundamental epistemological, methodological, and ethical issues that attend it....of great value to both professionals and students. The Kemper and Royce volume encapsulates a good deal of the most important and insightful anthropological work of the past half century or so and does so in a way that enables the reader to glimpse the human dimensions of these inescapably deeply personal endeavors.