Module 1, Lesson 2: What Is Fieldwork Really Like?
Document #2: Doing Fieldwork
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The excerpt below comes from the book Doing Fieldwork: Warnings and Advice, by
Rosalie H. Wax (1971). The author did fieldwork in the 1940s with Japanese Americans
who were confined to relocation centers during World War II, and in the 1960s on
several Native American reservations. In this excerpt, taken from the chapter “The First
and Most Uncomfortable Stage of Fieldwork,” Dr. Wax explains some of the feelings and
experiences of anthropologists’ first days in an unfamiliar culture. She discusses the
kinds of learning and experience that have to occur before a fieldworker can begin to do
their job. (Note that because this is an older text, the language will seem antiquated,
such as the use of “he” to denote all fieldworkers).
…Most field experiences that involve living with or close to the host people fall into
three stages. First, there is the stage of initiation or resocialization, when the fieldworker
tries to involve himself in the kinds of relationships which will enable him to do his
fieldwork—the period during which he and his hosts work out or develop the kinds and
varieties of roles which he and they will play. Second, there is the stage during which the
fieldworker, having become involved in a variety of relationships, is able to concentrate
on and do his fieldwork. Third, there is the post-field stage, when the fieldworker
finishes his report and tries to get back in step with, or reattach himself to, his own
people.
…Usually a beginner arrives in the field ready and eager to begin “gathering data.”
Then, for weeks, and sometimes for months, he gropes and wanders about, trying to
involve himself in the various kinds of human or social relationships that he needs, not
only in order to accomplish his work but because he is a human being. He tries to make
the acquaintance of as many people as possible, and he tries to tell them who he is and
what he hopes to do. He may also try to obtain permission to attend meetings or
ceremonies, or he may tag along, as a quasi participant, with various groups. He may try
to find a good language teacher, a competent interpreter, or, sometimes, a good clerical
assistant. All this time, of course, he is trying hardest of all to find some person or
persons who will advise, assist, and teach him, introduce him, or, as the Indians put it,
“go around with him.”
What happens to the fieldworker and his hosts during this involvement-seeking or roleconstructing period varies with each fieldworker and each situation. Nancy Lurie (1970),
in her study of the Winnebago, seems to have had a remarkably agreeable first field
experience, which she ascribes to the instruction and assistance given her by a wonderful
old man. William F. Whyte also seems to have been relatively lucky. After several
unsuccessful experiments such as knocking on doors and trying to discuss “living
conditions” or approaching strangers in a bar and almost being thrown downstairs, he
encountered Doc, the leader of a street corner gang. Whyte and Doc thereupon began a
relationship which, whatever it meant to Doc, the sponsor-guide, was to be of enormous
assistance to Whyte, the student-researcher. Powdermaker (1966) in her first field trip to
Melanesia also seems to have made out very well, for she mentions only that for a few
hours she felt frightened and isolated.
But initiations so easy as these are, I suspect, rare. Carpenter (1965) tell us that when he
began his work with the Eskimo, he felt for months like a mental defective. Gradually,
however, his “feelings of stupidity and clumsiness diminished, not as a consequence of
learning skills so much as becoming involved with a family, with individuals. If they
hadn’t accepted me, I would have remained less than an outsider, less than human.” I
had a similar experience on my first field trip to the Gila center, where it took me four
months to develop any kind of social relationship, not because the Japanese Americans or
I were socially maladept, but because almost everyone automatically defined me as “a
spy for the administration.” Like Carpenter I often felt like a mental defective, and for
about six weeks I felt as if I were losing my mind…Margaret Mead had even more
difficulty among the Omaha: “This is a very discouraging job, ethnologically speaking.
You find a man whose father or uncle had a vision. You go to see him four times,
driving eight or ten miles with an interpreter. The first time he isn’t home, the second
time he’s drunk, the next time his wife’s sick, and the fourth time, on the advice of the
interpreter, you start the interview with a $5 bill, for which he offers thanks to Wakanda,
prays Wakanda to give him a long life, and proceeds to lie steadily for four hours” (Mead
1966: 313-14).
During this first stage of fieldwork, the fieldworker lives in a kind of social limbo, trying
to behave as if he “belonged” and as if he knew what he was doing. He may give the
superficial appearance of working very hard. He may approach many different people
with his carefully composed description of who he is and what he is doing, carrying his
list of carefully structured, “inoffensive” questions, and may wonder why they giggle,
shake their heads, simply stare at him, or mumble, “I don’t know.” Or, like a young
anthropologist friend of ours, he may energetically explore the paths of his new living
quarters, only to find that most of them lead to his neighbors’ privies (outdoor
bathrooms). Or, in his enthusiasm to participate in the lives of his hosts, he may settle
down unwittingly, as Murray (the author’s husband) and I did, with a family notorious for
its skill in relieving unsuspecting strangers of their money. He may, as we did, take
extremely voluminous notes (sometimes because he has nothing else to do), and months
later find that a good part of these early notes consist of amateurish observations that
could have been made by any outsider—naïve hypotheses about the meaning of things
various people did or said…or, when all else fails, long and detailed descriptions of the
scenery…Painful and humiliating experiences are easier to talk about if one does not take
them too seriously, and it is less distressing to picture oneself as a clown or figure of fun
than as a dolt or a neurotic.
The process by which a fieldworker moves out, and is moved out, of this uncomfortable
and frustrating first stage is complicated, and it varies with each situation and each
individual fieldworker. It may be as complicated and variable as the process by which an
individual infant becomes a socialized and civilized member of his community. It
resembles the latter process in that, among other things, it involves a great deal of
learning or socialization (or, better, relearning and resocialization) on the part of the
fieldworker (and sometimes of his hosts) and the mutual desire and ability to establish
reciprocal relationships of the kind that will help the fieldworker learn what he wishes to
learn and do what he wishes to do. Frequently it is during this period that the fieldworker
also discovers that he cannot possibly do what he had hoped to do and, simultaneously,
that there are many unsuspected avenues of investigation open to him.
Usually the essential factor in this transformation is the assistance and support—the
reciprocal social response—given him by some of his hosts. It is in their company that
he begins to do the kind of “participation and observation” that enables him to
“understand” what is going on about him at his own speed and at his own level of
competence. It is his hosts who will let him know when he behaves stupidly or
offensively, and will reassure him when he thinks he has made some gross blunder. It is
they who will help him meet the people who can assist him in his work, and it is they
who will tell him when his life is in danger and when it is not…He begins to learn how to
accept obligations and how to repay them, when to ask questions and when to keep his
mouth shut—in short, how to stay out of the most obvious kinds of trouble. Indeed, in
the literal, ancient, and comforting sense of the phrase, he now begins “to know what he
is doing.”
From: Wax, Rosalie H. (1971). Doing Fieldwork: Warnings and Advice. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Module 1, Lesson 3: What Is Fieldwork Really Like?
Student Handout #8: Doing Fieldwork Questions
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DIRECTIONS:
Read Document #2, Doing Fieldwork, which accompanies these questions. Write
answers to the questions below, using your own words. Identify any words in the
document that you don’t know.
1. What are the three stages of fieldwork?
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2. What do you think are the EMOTIONS of a new fieldworker? Why?
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3. Does the author seem to suggest that first days in the field are easy or difficult?
What examples does she give?
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4. What does the author mean by “social limbo”? Give examples.
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5. How is learning a new culture as an anthropologist like an infant becoming
socialized?
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6. Why are hosts, or trusted members of the new culture, so important to the
anthropologist’s research?
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