Fieldwork Contexts Research Articles

Transforming tourism's “field(work) of view”

Academic fieldwork plays a crucial role in scientific advancement, knowledge production, and research training. However, the current investigations into fieldwork often focus on conduct, methods, and techniques, leaving the experience of solo female tourism fieldworkers largely under-explored. Drawing new connections between the intersections of liminality and gender in tourism fieldwork contexts, this study adopts a duo-ethnographic methodology and uses visual memorywork to explore the experiences and evaluate the effects of entering liminal tourism spaces on female scholars conducting solo fieldwork in remote Australia. The study contributes to theoretical advancements in gender studies, reflexivity, liminality, and transformative experiences research. Furthermore, the paper also provides practical implications for institutions and researchers engaged in remote tourism fieldwork.

Learning landscapes through technology and movement: blurring boundaries for a more-than-human pedagogy

ABSTRACT Interest in the role of technology and movement is growing in outdoor environmental education (OEE) research. However, there are many unexamined assumptions involving both non-digital technology and movement for outdoor learners. In this paper, we explore learning landscapes through non-digital technology and movement involving canoe journeys in south-eastern Australia. We examine ways that technology and movement come together to help shape learning orientations through situated examples from OEE fieldwork. Our investigations utilise posthumanist and process-relational theories for exploring onto-epistemological dimensions of outdoor learning. We bring such theory into conversation with photos, videos and student essays to analyse our fieldwork contexts. We highlight that technology and movement cannot be taken for granted; rather, they help constitute the ways we come to know places. We also acknowledge some cultural and conceptual aspects that overlap to influence learning. This paper offers alternative insights for learning landscapes and the mediating influence of technologies.

Legend of the locked doors: The sexualization of archaeological site workers in the Middle East

AbstractSexual violence in fieldwork contexts is an urgent and pervasive problem. In archaeology, much discussion is currently ongoing regarding how to change fieldwork policies and climate in order to end sexual violence in the field. In this context, I examine a legend that circulates among the Bedul Bedouin community in Petra about an American archaeologist who locked women students inside their bedroom at night in order to protect them from endangering themselves by going out at night. While I cannot corroborate the story with former students on the project, studying the contemporary life of this legend can teach us about the confrontations of race, gender, and sexuality that occur on archaeological sites in the Middle East and elsewhere. Examined in the context of research on Muslim masculinities and the myth of Arab men's hypersexuality, I use this legend to argue that our approaches to ending sexual violence in archaeology and other fieldwork disciplines should avoid reifying Orientalist and racial stereotypes if these approaches are going to be effective in making our fields safer.

Come Correct: Itineraries of Discovery in Black Women's Ethnographic Practice

AbstractThis methodological reflection invokes the legacy of Black women anthropologists, who have approached ethnography not as encounters with “The Other” but as part of African Diasporic projects. As two U.S. Black women ethnographers, who understand our fieldwork contexts in West Africa as sites of return, re‐discovery, and struggle, we situate our work within Black feminist genealogies, which refashion anthropological tools to re‐map and reconstitute relations and recognition amongst those we call our kinfolk. We draw on “co‐performative witnessing” (Madison 2007) and “mutual comradeship” (Burden‐Stelly 2018) as counter‐modalities of ethnographic praxis, which follow in this tradition of disrupting and re‐routing the disciplinarily legitimized stakes of ethnography. Specifically, we re‐narrate gatherings, by which we mean moments of being “gathered,” or collected and corrected in love. Within our respective “itineraries of discovery” (Walker 2015) in Liberia and Nigeria, we were confronted with dilemmas of personal and professional benefit in youth performance ethnography and challenged to relinquish political neutrality in activist ethnography. We conclude by amplifying the call of Black women anthropologists and our kinfolk interlocutors that when we come to our ethnographic work, physically, intellectually, and relationally, that we also “come correct.”

The acoustic playback technique in avian fieldwork contexts: a systematic review and recommendations for best practice

Acoustic playback is commonly used to study wild birds, with applications as diverse as investigating behaviours, ascertaining the presence of rare and elusive species, and attracting individuals to a location. The number of studies employing playback is growing larger every year because it is easy to apply, increasingly affordable and very effective. However, the way that it is used and reported varies significantly across researchers and species. This lack of a protocol for reporting acoustic playbacks inevitably slows the progress of the field, as studies cannot be easily compared. In 1991, some of the most knowledgeable researchers in the field of animal communication met at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) at Thornbridge Hall in the UK to consider the design of playback experiments. The proceedings of the meeting were published in 1992 and contain crucial guidelines regarding this use of playback. In this paper we review the literature for papers published since that milestone that use acoustic playback in ornithological fieldwork contexts. We use the RepOrting standards for Systematic Evidence Syntheses (ROSES) to evaluate the description of the methods used. The main goal of this review paper is to identify a shared set of rules for employing and reporting the playback technique in such contexts to promote reproducibility and comparability. We found 625 peer‐reviewed articles in three on‐line databases, of which 419 reported field (rather than captive) studies employing avian playback. The biggest hindrance to reproducibility is the availability of the acoustic tracks used by authors; 4% (15 articles) of our sample made their tracks publicly available. We found that only one article provided enough details for their playback application to be fully reproducible. Further, only five articles (0.92%) provided enough information for reproducibility, even if we assume information about track preparation and recording details to be unnecessary when tracks are available. Based on our synthesis of the literature, we provide a set of recommendations for the reporting of playback uses to promote reproducibility, including sample paragraphs of description as supplementary material. We strongly recommend that tracks used for such experiments are deposited in dedicated on‐line repositories for the use of other researchers. While our focus is avian fieldwork applications of the playback technique, we believe that our findings can be easily transferred to other animal systems subject to acoustic playback.

Word learning in the field: Adapting a laboratory-based task for testing in remote Papua New Guinea.

Adapting laboratory psycholinguistic methods to fieldwork contexts can be fraught with difficulties. However, successful implementation of such methods in the field enhances our ability to learn the true extent and limitations of human behavior. This paper reports two attempts to run word learning experiments with the small community of Nungon speakers in Towet village in the Saruwaged Mountains, Papua New Guinea. A first attempt involved running a cross-situational task in which word-object pairings were presented ambiguously in each trial, and an explicit word learning task in which pairings were presented explicitly, or unambiguously, in each trial. While this quickly garnered a respectable 34 participants over the course of a week, it yielded null results, with many participants appearing to show simple patterned responses at test. We interpreted the null result as possibly reflecting the unfamiliarity of both the task and the laptop-based presentation mode. In Experiment 2, we made several adjustments to the explicit word learning task in an attempt to provide clearer instructions, reduce cognitive load, and frame the study within a real-world context. During a second 11-day stay in the village, 34 participants completed this modified task and demonstrated clear evidence of word learning. With this success serving as a future guide for researchers, our experiences show that it may require multiple attempts, even by experienced fieldworkers familiar with the target community, to successfully adapt experiments to a field setting.

Exiting fieldwork “with grace”: reflections on the unintended consequences of participant observation and researcher-participant relationships

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to illustrate the methodological importance of how researchers exit fieldwork to draw attention to implications for participant and researcher well-being.Design/methodology/approachReflecting in detail on one researcher’s final six-months exiting fieldwork at a retirement village, this paper critically examines the unintended consequences of participant observation and researcher-participant relationships.FindingsThe paper illustrates that difficulties to exit fieldwork can be unintended consequences of participant observation activities and developing researcher-participant relationships. The findings also discuss how fieldwork exit can impose upon participant and researcher well-being.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings are built upon fieldwork at a retirement village where the researcher served as a volunteer. Thus, the discussion focusses on participant observation activities that are likely to lead to close researcher-participant relationships. However, this paper aims to serve as a useful resource for researchers when considering how to exit their unique fieldwork contexts “with grace”.Practical implicationsThe paper provides practical suggestions to help marketing researchers such as ethnographers, manage fieldwork exits with participant and researcher well-being concerns in mind.Social implicationsThe practical suggestions provided by this paper aim to enable marketing researchers to exit fieldwork contexts “with grace” through reflection and proactive management of the social impacts of their research activities.Originality/valueEven though researchers acknowledge fieldwork is social and personal by nature, little research attention has been paid to the management of researcher-participant relationships and the exit stage of fieldwork. This paper discusses and addresses this blind-spot in marketing research.

Narrating victimhood: dilemmas and (in)dignities

This article was named the runner-up for the 2019 Enloe Award. The committee commented: This article addresses several provocative questions about the emphasis on “victimhood” in feminist studies of conflict and transitional justice. The author situates her own researcher positionality in the politics of knowledge production about women’s narratives of “victimhood” in Colombia’s transition from violence, reflecting on methodology and theorizing her active role in generating accounts, co-producing and participating in hierarchies, and imposing meaning onto fieldwork contexts. The article offers creative ways to rethink and reimagine the political, discursive, and spatial dimensions of gender, violence, the state, the transitional justice industry, and the politics of victimhood and agency. ABSTRACT Feminist researchers are increasingly paying attention to the politics of victimhood during transitions from violence. In this article, I address the dilemmas of researching victimhood when the researcher herself is part of the production of its politics and hierarchies. Based on in-depth fieldwork in Colombia, I examine dilemmas related to (1) directing the research gaze during transitions from war; (2) investigating violence without requiring people to re-narrate harms suffered during armed conflict; (3) engaging with both voluntary and imposed silences; and (4) navigating the complicated tug of loyalties among conflict-affected actors. I argue that ethics and methods are inseparable from each other, from the findings of the research, and from the meaningful study of power and violence. Collectively, these insights contribute to an ongoing interdisciplinary conversation about power and politics in the study of violence.

Sticking points: Sites for developing capacity to enact socially just instruction

Preparing preservice teachers (PSTs) to enact socially just instruction, especially in fieldwork contexts, remains a challenging, understudied goal addressed by this research. Analysis of data from two qualitative studies reveals how Daybook conversations served as pedagogical and discursive spaces that helped PSTs negotiate conflicts, or sticking points, which emerged in their fieldwork. Their rehearsals during these conversations enabled PSTs to create space for instructional experimentation to enact socially just instruction. The article offers possibilities for modeling with and for PSTs how their teaching can work to disrupt systems of inequity across relationships, diverse teaching contexts, and time.

When reciprocal violence turns into mutual acceptance

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify practices aimed at “passing the test” in fieldwork contexts characterized by reciprocal forms of symbolic violence.Design/methodology/approachIt is based on an analysis of a fieldwork experience in an intentional community of activists inspired by anarchist ideas.FindingsThis study suggests that in a context of reciprocal violence, the researcher must qualify the specific threat that her presence poses and develop a set of behavioral practices aimed at neutralizing this threat in order to gain acceptance and gather valuable data. Three sets of practices – showing tenacity, disclosing oneself and adjusting while staying consistent – helped the researcher in crafting an acceptable status in the field.Originality/valueIdentifiable moments of hostile challenges should be addressed rather than avoided. They constitute indeed key gateways for understanding the culture and socializing processes of the observed group, and lead to relevant ethical questions regarding the ethnographer’s position.

A Roadmap to Applied Digital Heritage


 The recent “digital turn” in archaeology has driven methodological advances and opened new research avenues, with wide ranging impacts at multiple scales. The proliferation of methods such as 3D imaging, remote sensing, laser scanning and photogrammetry has led to the datafication of archaeology [Caraher 2016: 467, Mayer-Schönberger et al. 2013: 73]. This process is most evident in research on digital surveying, data visualization, digital archiving, mapping, and image processing, which prioritize the creation and manipulation of large digital datasets. These research avenues often generate more intellectual traffic than “slow archaeology” routes [Caraher 2016], which adopt a reflexive approach to knowledge production, embrace the inherent complexity of digital datasets, emphasize craft modes of archaeological documentation [Perry 2015], and “highlight the value of small and properly contextualized data” [Kansa 2016: 466]. Confronting the growing tension between big data and slow archaeology will be an iterative process. It will evolve as researchers and other stakeholder groups assess the value of digital approaches to preserving, communicating, and interpreting the past as it relates to the present. This special issue of Studies in Digital Heritage is the outcome of a symposium at the 2018 Society for American Archaeology (SAA) conference in Washington, D.C., entitled “Digital Heritage Technologies, Applications, and Impacts.” The articles within contribute to this dialogue by critically assessing the challenges and successes of recent digital heritage projects in museums, teaching and fieldwork contexts.

Understanding Social Roles in a Continuum: An Experience From Two Cultural Groups in Ethiopia

Based on an ethnographic fieldwork experience among two culturally different ethnic groups in Ethiopia, this article proposes an understanding of social roles in the field in a continuum. The two groups are known as Gumuz and Agaw. In my fieldwork with the Gumuz, I was an “outsider” and the Gumuz social boundary did not allow me to socialize unless through a certain institution known as mijim. In my fieldwork with the Agaw, I was an insider because I was born and grew up among this community. The Agaw social boundary was so open and, contrary to the Gumuz, I had to resist social roles. I propose that arguments that are advocated by scholars on extreme sides of taking or refusing social roles based on perceived advantages or disadvantages are untenable. Social roles are complex because social and cultural contexts do vary and are also complex. I argue that blanket suggestions of either acceptance or refusal of social roles cannot yield successful fieldwork. A social role is a continuum and fieldworkers fall on the line the fieldwork contexts require, and the use of them depends on personal skills of a researcher.

Situated Comparison: A Methodological Response to an Epistemological Dilemma

AbstractEthnographic knowledge production exists in implicit tension with the tenets of a critical disciplinary politics normalized in the reflexive critiques of the late 20th century. Anthropologists have responded with numerous theoretical ‘turns,’ which in different ways attempt to reconcile the conflicting imperatives of critical attention to histories of power and inequality, with rich and nuanced accounts of cultural worlds and peoples’ agentive roles in them. This article proposes Situated Comparison as one possible methodological approach to this epistemological dilemma. We propose explicit attention to multiple local understandings of categorical social differentiation, which we compare on a plane of epistemic equality with academic theories of those same boundaries. Examples from two disparate fieldwork contexts—classed ideas of ethical sociality in the rural American South; and guanxi and social intimacy in Shanghai, China—demonstrate the potential of this methodology for reflexive engagement with ideas of personhood and self across lines of difference.

Transthoracic sonographic assessment of B-line scores during ascent to altitude among healthy trekkers

Sonographic B-lines can indicate pulmonary interstitial edema. We sought to determine the incidence of subclinical pulmonary edema measured by sonographic B-lines among lowland trekkers ascending to high altitude in the Nepal Himalaya. Twenty healthy trekkers underwent portable sonographic examinations and arterial blood draws during ascent to 5160 m over ten days. B-lines were identified in twelve participants and more frequent at 4240 m and 5160 m compared to lower altitudes (P < 0.03). There was a strong negative correlation between arterial oxygen saturation and the number of B-lines at 5160 m (ρ = −0.75, P = 0.008). Our study contributes to the growing body of literature demonstrating the development of asymptomatic pulmonary edema during ascent to high altitude. Portable lung sonography may have utility in fieldwork contexts such as trekking at altitude, but further research is needed in order to clarify its potential clinical applicability.

Introduction: Public Archaeologies of Death and Memory

This Introduction to AP’s third special issue seeks to provide context and rationale to the study of ‘public mortuary archaeology’ before reviewing the development of the volume. Building on the presentations of the first Public Archaeology Twitter Conference of April 2017, these articles comprise a wide range of original analyses reflecting on the public archaeology of death, including evaluations of fieldwork contexts, churches and museums. These articles are joined by discussions of the digital dimensions to public mortuary archaeology, an appraisal of ancient and modern DNA research as public mortuary archaeology, and the relationship between mortuary archaeology and palliative care. Together, the articles constitute the state of current thinking on the public archaeology of death, burial and commemoration.

Rural Change in the Kosi River Basin: A Capital Goods Perspective

This paper sets out to reflect on research in the early 1970s to develop a policy model in the Leontief macroeconomic tradition for the Kosi command area, and investigate the relevance of such models to today’s policy debates for the overall Kosi River basin. The earlier research was set in the context of the ‘generation of problems’ arising from the Indian Green Revolution. Many of the debates at the time concerned policies for the promotion of capital goods in rural areas, such as different types of irrigation technologies, tractors, harvesters, threshers and processing technology, and policies to encourage rural industries to support alternative patterns of rural mechanization. The authors describe the academic and fieldwork contexts of the earlier research; then, in order to ground this paper in a contemporary context, the authors briefly describe the spread of some capital goods in recent years on both the Nepal and Bihar sides of the Kosi river Basin. The authors then review contemporary literature to see what academic research is being done now on the Kosi River basin and find a large hydrology and socio-economic literature. However, as far as the authors can tell, this research is not focusing on macro Leontief economic modelling for policy purposes or on studies to understand the spread of rural capital goods and the growth of small and medium rural industries. The authors conclude by suggesting that Leontief economics needs reviving together with cost-effective field studies of the spread of rural capital goods and the growth of associated rural industries.

Linguistic diversity in first language acquisition research: Moving beyond the challenges

The field of first language acquisition (FLA) needs to take into account data from the broadest typological array of languages and language-learning environments if it is to identify potential universals in child language development, and how these interact with socio-cultural mechanisms of acquisition. Yet undertaking FLA research in remote field-based situations, where the majority of the world’s languages are spoken and acquired, poses challenges for best-practice methodologies assumed in lab-based FLA research. This article discusses the challenges of child language acquisition research in fieldwork contexts with lesser-known, under-described languages with small communities of speakers. The authors suggest some modified approaches to methodology for child language research appropriate to challenging fieldwork situations, in the hope of encouraging more cross-linguistic acquisition research.

Validity and reliability of the munsell soil color charts for assessing human skin color.

Skin pigmentation is a key factor for ultraviolet radiation exposure-related cancers and can make a significant contribution to the patterns of other diseases. For surveys, and to appropriately target cancer control activities, valid and reliable measures of skin color are required. Validity and reliability of the Munsell Soil Color Charts were investigated for skin color assessment. The unexposed skin color of 280 university students was measured by spectrophotometer to calculate an Individual Typology Angle (ITA) value, and categorized by two independent raters according to the Munsell system (the latter was repeated after a 7-day interval). Interrater and intrarater reliability for the Munsell charts was found to be acceptable [intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) of 0.85 and 0.86, respectively]. When ITA values were converted to the six Del Bino skin color categories, weighted κ for agreement between raters, within rater, and between Munsell chip and spectrophotometer were 0.63, 0.60, and 0.61, respectively. A tendency toward overestimation of the extremes of skin pigmentation was evident, particularly for the "brown" and "dark" skin types. Study findings suggest that the Munsell Soil Color Charts represent a reliable and valid measurement strategy when assessing skin type. The Munsell Year 2000 Soil Color Charts may provide a useful instrument for fieldwork contexts. Subsequent classification of individuals into skin cancer risk categories, rather than the use of precise ITA values, may be sufficient for targeting public health messages for skin cancer prevention and other health risks.

Ethics and/or Ethics in Qualitative Social Research: Negotiating a Path around and between the Two

This article explores the process of university Ethical Review both as lived experience and as part of institutional governance at an English university. The article uses Blackburn's distinction between ethics and Ethics (Ethics—A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001) as a framework to examine the themes of ‘vulnerability’, ‘power’ and ‘relationships’. These themes are analysed closely both within the institutional and the fieldwork contexts, attempting to include the perspectives of all those involved in the research ethics process. The article does not seek to draw any definitive conclusions but rather to stimulate, and add to the iterative discussion on the process of Ethical Review within institutions. Nonetheless, it does conclude by making some suggestions concerning the way in which the lived experience of ethics could better inform the practice of institutional Ethical Review.

The atheist anthropologist: Believers and non-believers in anthropological fieldwork

Following a reflection triggered by a fieldwork episode, this paper discusses issues of faith, belief, and personal conviction within anthropological fieldwork and specifically within research carried out in contexts of belief and religious practice. Incorporating fieldwork and biographical accounts taken from research within the (Gypsy) Filadelfia Evangelical Church, I discuss the involvement of personal beliefs and attitudes in anthropological theory and practice, its consequences on the production and circulation of anthropological and interpersonal knowledge, and its importance for the construction of personal relationships within fieldwork contexts. I outline the dynamic and somewhat paradoxical character of this process by comparing two different but sequential field contexts – Lisbon and Madrid.