Fieldwork Human GT26

Katz 1994

Playing the Field. Field is socially constructed not a neutral container. "Power to define the field imposes me on the time-space of others". Multipositionality, comparative + non-static sites, ethics

Howard 2020

Covid helps us understand Katz 1994. The spatial markers that artificially built divide between researcher and researched have been dissolved. Now that the field can be a whatsapp, hashtag, zoom call, the idea of the field as a far away container are lost

Postill + Pink 2012, Bonilla + Rose 2015

Social media ethnography- new + unstable research environment - researcher simultaneously observer/participant/artefect- can never leave because data is alway there. Digital space as politcally generative #Ferguson - protests (2 citations)

Kumar 2023

Home as a field. dissolves spatial boundary between researcher and researched- dissolves assumption that unfamiliarity is a prerequisite of producing legitimate knowledge

Guasco 2022

“ethic of not going there” - the reflex to go straight to the field needs to be resisted and scrutinised. There are many contexts where F.W. is extracitve, harmful and unconsented. Links to Tuhiwai Smith’s 8 q’s

McGarrol 2017

Emotional labour in the field (based in health geogs)

Krishnan 2015

Homophobia in the field

Harrowell et al 2018

Making space for failure. researchers face access denial, broken relationships, hostile environments etc. Embrace it- like Billo + Hiemstra 2013- navigate the mess, be flexible

Tuhiwai Smith 1999

Decolonizing Methodologies. "Research" as one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous vocabulary - inextricably linked to imperialism. 8 Key indigenous questions: who is research for, who benefits, who owns it

Reid-Henry 2003

Draws on ANT. Field as networked "assemblage of places, networks, relationships, settings". Fieldwork + knowledge production mutually constitutive. Researcher as "contingent site" - not in control completely of interactions (unlike haraway…)

Kearns 2002

The field is "both a literal place and a key imaginary". Conceptual + geographical. Fieldwork as act of interpretation not observation

Faria + Mollett 2016

Critical feminist reflexivity + politics of whiteness in the field. Power not always with researcher. Race produced through embodied + emotional encounters - awe, disdain, trust, suspicion. Traditonal reflexivity tends to assume dominant power of the researcher where ANT flattens this too much that you can’t analyse injustice.

Abbott 2006

Disrupting the whiteness of fieldwork in geography. UK long-haul field trips perpetuate imperial geography. Gambia/James Island case - "tourist gaze" reproduces racial hierarchy. Need a "crisis of legitimacy"

Sundberg 2003

Masculinist Epistemologies + Politics of Fieldwork in Latin Americanist Geography. Field as masculinist + Eurocentric in origins, what language matters, assumptions

Rose 1997

Situating Knowledges - positionality, reflexivities + other tactics. Reflexivity not just introspection - ethical/political commitment to understanding own role in knowledge production. Goddess trick.- can never understand full positionality

Cupples + Kindon 2003

Dominant image of fieldworker = "lone, male researcher" despite reality of women, accompanying spouses, children, teams

Sparke 1996

Fieldwork as masculinized "character-building rite of passage". Sanctified + engendered as masculine ritual

Bunge 1979

"Cite not sight". Critique of decline of fieldwork in favour of citation/desk-based work. Does not yet question the assumption that going somewhere produces reliable umediated knowledges

de Seta 2020

Three Lies of Digital Ethnography - "Networked Field-Weaver", "Eager-Participant Lurker", "Expert Fabricator". Field as work-in-progress, methodological illusions as heuristics. Echo’s Harrowell et al on ‘failure’ - embrace it

Günel et al 2020

Patchwork Ethnography. Recombinations of "home" and "field" as necessities. Short-term visits w/ rigorous fragmentary data. Maintains long-term commitments while attending to changed working conditions

Clancy et al 2014

SAFE survey. 72% of women 41% men experience sexual harrasment, 21% women experience S.A.

Kaspar + Landolt 2016

Researcher "fashioned into a sexual object in the field… beyond the researcher's control"

Nagar 2014

Collaboration as resistance? Reciprocity is more than co-authorship. Need to resist institutionalisation of reciprocity reduced to authorship. Co-imagination in framing of research question not just in credit at the end

Latour 1997

Circulating reference - the soil samples in Boa Vista. Field as translation chain - matter to inscription, levels of abstraction.

Smith + Katz 1993

Comparative ethnography across disparate sites - illuminates structural patterns of capitalism + marginalisation rather than localising as exceptions.

Mackinder 1887

First reader of Geography at Oxford. Drew on expeditionary nature of geography to legitimate the discipline. Fieldwork as raison d'etre