Fieldwork is the hallmark of

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Last updated: August 3, 2019

Fieldwork is the hallmark of cultural anthropology. Whether in a Kasol village inHimachal Pradesh or on the streets on New Delhi, India, the anthropologist goeswhere people live and does field work. This means watching ceremonies, washing clothes,observing play, learning their language, asking questions about their culture, takingfield notes, and lot of other things. This vast range of activities oftenrecondite the most fundamental task of all field work – doing ethnography. Thischapter details the vital task of anthropological field work.

Ethnographyis the subset of social research. The term ‘ethnography’ originated in thenineteenth century in Western anthropology, where ethnography was an evocativedescription of the culture of group of people, generally one placed in theoutskirts of the west. During the nineteenth century ethnography was divergentwith, and was typically seen as balancing to, ethnology, which constituted tothe past and relative study of non-western societies and cultures. Ethnologywas regarded as the center of anthropological work, and drew individualethnographic accounts which were primarily shaped by travelers andmissionaries.

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Over time, the word ethnology did not get any support sinceanthropologists began to do their own fieldwork, with ethnography coming torefer to an integration of both empirical investigation and the theoretical andrelative elucidation of social association and ethnicity. Dueto the above change, since the early twentieth century, ethnographic fieldworkhas been vital to anthropology. In fact, carrying out such work, typically in asociety very different from one’s own, became a rite of passage required forentry to the tribe of anthropologists. The mandatory requirement of field work wasto live with a group of people for longer durations, sometimes more than a yearor more, so that they could record and infer their unique way of life, and theattitude and ethics integral to it.Cultureis described in the work of ethnography.

The endeavor of ethnography is to assessanother way of life from the native point of view. The goal of ethnography, asMalinowski (1994) puts it is to grasp the native’s point of view, his relationto life, to realize his vision of his world. Field work then involves thedisciplined study of what the world is like to people who have learned to see,speak, think, hear, and act in ways that are different. Instead of studyingpeople, ethnography means learning from people.

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