The Secret Lives of Anthropologists
Lessons from the Field

This book addresses the difficult conditions researchers may face in the field and provides lessons in how to navigate the various social, political, economic, health, and environmental challenges involved in fieldwork. It also sheds important light on aspects often considered "secret" or taboo.

From anthropologists just starting out to those with over forty years in the field, these researchers offer the benefit of their experience conducting research in diverse cultures around the world. The contributions combine engaging personal narrative with consideration of theory and methods. The volume emphasizes how being adaptable, and aware, of the many risks and rewards of ethnographic research can help foster success in quantitative and qualitative data collection. This is a valuable resource for students of anthropological methods and those about to embark on fieldwork for the first time.

Introduction Bonnie L. Hewlett Part 1: Paths into the Field 1. Learning Fields Vishvajit Pandya 2. Stumbling Around the Sacred: Some Personal Observations Benjamin Grant Purzycki 3. From the Orinoco to Sorority Row: Searching for a Field Site as an Evolutionary Anthropologist Nicole Hess Part 2: Gendered Relations and Other Challenges in the Field 4. Doing Ethnomusicological Research as a White Woman in Cameroon and the Central African Republic Susanne Fürniss 5. A Boss, a Mother, a Red Antelope, and All the Things in Between Sylvie Le Bomin 6.Culturally Appropriate Solutions to Fieldwork Challenges Among the Mbendjele BaYaka Hunter-Gatherers of the Congo Basin Daša Bombjaková Part 3: The Observer and the Observed: The Metamorphosis of Research, Methods, and the Researcher 7. My Life in the School of Hard Knocks: How an Aspiring Anthropologist Became a White Cameroonian Robert Moïse 8. Spā߀min, Ethnographers and Mixed Methods Robert Quinlan 9. Mothering in the Field: Participant Observation on Cultural Transmission Victoria Reyes-García 10. The Quiet Joy of Fieldworkers in the Kalahari Akira Takada Part 4: Dangerous Fields 11. The Origins of Surviving Fieldwork - Nancy Howell 12. When All Hell Breaks Loose: Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork Amid Gunplay, Catastrophe, and Mayhem J. Christopher Kovats-Bernat Part 5: Ethics, Advocacy, and Other Everyday Moral Dilemmas of Research 13. Surviving Agta Fieldwork Thomas N. Headland with Janet D. Headland 14. Do You Consent to Participate in the Research Study? Paul Verdu 15. Who Owns the Poop? And Other Ethical Dilemmas Facing an Anthropologist Who Works at the Interface of Biological Research and Indigenous Rights Alyssa Crittenden 16. But What if the "Field" is a Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory? How it Happened, What it’s Like. The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ugly James J. McKenna Appendix: Regional Packing List and Other Favorite Items in the Field

Bonnie L. Hewlett is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Washington State University, Vancouver. Her work focuses on topics relating to bio-cultural contexts of infectious diseases, hunter-gatherers, adolescent development, social learning, and the health and experiences of Ethiopian orphans, birthmothers and fathers. She has conducted field research in Gabon, Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Central African Republic.