The Shadow Side Of Fieldwork: Exploring The Blurred Borders Between Ethnography And Life

"The Shadow Side of Fieldwork" draws attention to typically hidden or unacknowledged aspects of ethnographic research that nevertheless shape knowledge, texts, and methodologies. These are the invisible, unspoken, elusive, and mysterious areas where life and research overlap, private experiences and formal ethnography blur, and research boundaries seem to dissolve.

Containing essays by such variedluminaries as Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Vincent Crapanzano, among others, this book penetrates a variety of shadows in ethnographic field encounters. The authors recount personal and professional challenges that led them to confront the complex sources or paradoxical nature of their insights. By turning attention to the shadow sides of fieldwork and thoroughly exploring what they find there, the writers, as responsible researchers, strengthenconfidence in ethnographic knowledge. "The Shadow Side of Fieldwork" helps students and scholars to understand the submerged influences inherent in their research, and is essential reading for anyone involved in ethnographic fieldwork.

"The" "Shadow Side of Fieldwork" draws attention to the typically hidden or unacknowledged aspects of ethnographic fieldwork encounters that nevertheless shape the resulting knowledge and texts. Addressing these invisible, elusive, unspoken or mysterious elements introduces a distinctive rigor and responsibility to ethnographic research.
Luminaries in anthropology dare to explore the 'unspeakable' and 'invisible' in the ethnographic encounter
Considers personal and professional challenges (ethical, epistemological, and political) faced by researchers who examine the subjectivities inherent in their ethnographic insights
Explores the value, and limitations, of addressing the personal in ethnographic research
Includes a critical discussion of the anthropologist's self in the field
Introduces imaginative rigor to ethnographic research to heighten confidence in anthropological knowledge