Reflections on ethnographic fieldwork across a lifetime

Abstract

In this ‘Tale from the Field’, I reflect on the practice of ethnographic fieldwork with folk puppeteers over time, using my own experiences in a single fieldwork site at two points, 38 years apart. I describe my fieldwork as a graduate student in 1982 and as a professor towards the end of my career in 2020. I reflect on differences based on digital communication equipment and on my own changing positionality. My 2020 fieldwork was interrupted by the covid-19 confinement which adds a new wrinkle to contemporary participant observation.