Doing Fieldwork: Editors’ Introduction

Abstract

The Geographical Review 91 (1-2):iv-viii, January- April 2001 Copyright[copyright symbol] 2001 by the American Geographical Society of New York Field-work is essentially personal observation and recording; it brings reality to geographical study; it helps the geographer to acquire his all-important understanding eye for country; and thus it enriches his descriptive and explanatory powers. I would say that an essential part of the training of a young geographer is for him to choose some small accessible unit area that attracts him; acquire a pair of stout boots, perhaps the geographer's first item of equipment; study in the area itself the association of physical and human conditions which there prevail, and in fact give the area its individuality; and record the information which he collects in a series of original maps. --F. J. Monkhouse, 1955 Geographical fieldwork, as the following collection suggests, has roamed well beyond Monkhouse's avowedly stout-booted past. Fieldwork in geography is just not like that any more (Rose 1993; PG 1994; Katz 1996; Sparke 1996; Driver 2001). Interviews and children, laptops and urban settings, local collaborators and researcher reflexivity--and of course women--are integral to the world of geographical field studies. We can nowadays relish more nuanced strains of field behavior, and with reason: The realm of geography is broader, and that makes the study of field practice itself an interesting task. This thematic issue of the Geographical Review, in part a sesquicentennial celebration of the 1851 founding of the American Geographical Society, lauds fieldwork as an undertaking while also examining its varieties and its sometimes-suspect practices. The vehicle for this tour d'horizon is a series of short articles--truthfully, personal essays--highlighting the diverse array that is contemporary fieldwork in geography. Together they capture a range of work from established to emerging scholars, in academic geography and well beyond, and the authors present us with challenging and interesting situations that bear on practices and experiences of the field. Here colleagues share insights and trials, and relate lessons and advice we all wish we might have had before decamping to the field. The collection is not intended as the kind of rollicking self-excoriation that anthropology and other disciplines have put themselves through and that has tended to constrain, if not actively bottleneck, fieldwork in those disciplines. For various reasons, geographers have concentrated on different problems, done so critically only relatively recently, and been perhaps less inclined to identify behavior that other disciplines might find exceptional. Evident in these fifty-s ix essays is the breadth and depth of geographers' engagement with fieldwork in all its forms, showcasing a diversity of geographical viewpoints and experiences along with bountiful creativity and demonstrating to the broader community the strength of geographers' commitment to fieldwork. Collected by invitation from a working roster of considerably more than one hundred active scholars, this series of essays, or indeed any finite list, despite our concerted attempts to make it otherwise, cannot truly be inclusive of all that is fieldwork in contemporary geography. Representing mainly North American (and to a lesser degree British and Continental) geography, most of the authors here (like most of those who attend meetings of the Association of American Geographers) are white and North American; nearly half are women. Yet the ambit of these scholars' work is global: Spain to India, Sri Lanka to Kenya, Russia to Peru, Morocco to Macedonia, Canada to Thailand, China to Montserrat, the United States to the United Kingdom. Others outside the academy make use of fieldwork practices, in literature and journalism, marketing and government. The line between truly accomplished fieldwork in academia and these other fields can be porous. …