ONE Discipline and Practice: “The Field” as Site, Method, and Location in Anthropology Ail Gupta and James Ferguson 1. INTRODUCTION ‘The practice of fieldwork, together with its ass has perhaps never been as central to the discipline of anthrey (oday, i Principles and profess tellectually, ethnography has long ceased to be conceived o| scription," raw material for a natural science of human beh via the literary turn (from “thick description” to historic one (political economy and the turn tor stream social/cultural anthropology as practiced in leading departme the United States and the United Kingdom: has come to view ethnograp explication asa worthy and sufficient intellectual project in its own right. deed, itis striking that the generalist and comparati inated anthropology atmidcentury (c.g., Radclifle-Brown, 1 George Murdock) seem in the process of being mnemonically pruned from the anthropological family ree, while the work of those remembered as great fieldworkers (Malinowski, Boas, Evans-Pritchard, Leenhardt, etc.) co to be much more widely discussed. In terms of professional socialization and traning, too, ethnogra Work is at the core of what Stocking has called anthropology’s fundamen! “methodological values'—"the taken-for-granted, pretheoret tions of what itis to do anthropology (and to be an anthropologist)” (1ggza: 282). {in social/cultural anthropology knows, itis fieldwork that makes one a ‘real anthropologist,"and truly anthropologi ‘swidely understood to be “based” (as we say) on fieldwork. suggest that the single mos of research,2 AKHIL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON Yet this idea of *the field,” although central to our intellectual and pro- fessional identities, remains a largely unexamined one in contemporary an- thropology. The concept of culture has been vigorously critiqued and dls sected in recent years (eg, Wagner 1981; Clifford 1988; Rosaldo 198ga; Fox, ed, 1991); ethnography asa genre of writing has been made visible and crit ically analyzed (Clifford and Marcus 1986, Geertz 1988); the dialogic en- counters that constitute fieldwork experience have been explored (Crapan- zano 1980; Rabinow 1977; Dumont 1978; Tedlock 1983); even the peculiar textual genre of feldnotes has been subjected to reflection and analysis (Sanjek 1990). But what of “the field” itself, the place where the distinctive work of “fieldwork” may be done, that taken-for-granted space in which an “Other” culture or society lies waiting to be observed and written? This mys terious space—not the “what” of anthropology but the "where"—has been left to common sense, beyond and below the threshold of reflexivity It is astonishing, but true, that most leading departments of anthropol- ogy in the United States provide no formal (and very little informal) train- ing in fieldwork methods—as few as 20 percent of departments, according to one survey. It is also true that most anthropological training programs cersas suitable for Ieisas were too great in anthropology for the profession even to permit such ob- vious and practical issues to be seriously discussed, let alone to allow the idea of “the field” itself to be subjected to scrutiny and reflection. In turning a critical eye to such questions, our aim is not to breach what amounts to a collectively sanctioned silence simply for the pleasure of up- setting traditions. Rather, our effort to open up this subject is motivated by two specific imperatives. ‘The first imperative follows from the way the idea of “the Feld” fi practices through which anthropological iplines such as history, soci- ature and literary criticism, religious studies, and cultural studies. The difference between anthropology and these ines, it would be widely agreed, lies less in the topics studied (which, after all, overlap substantially) than in the distinctive method an- thropologists employ, namely fieldwork based on participant observation. In other word: ference from other spe senses of the word, constructing a space of possibilities while at the same 1es that confine that space. Far from being a mere re- time drawing the search technique, fieldwork has become “the basic constituting exper both of anthropologists and of anthropologi ” eo i ological knowledge” (Stocking Since fieldwork is increasingly the sing ropological tradi ies 0 itis impossible to rethink those boundaries or rework th fronting the idea of “the field of “fieldwork” are thus poli twined; to think critically about one re other. Explo thus carries wit tations of the iden of depending on oes pol the ik—of opening o question the meaning of eo eae tenis a anchropolgits Th etn he second imperative for begnsing to discuss dhe idea anthropology follows froma nowsdely cree of wadional echnographic metheve ne poltal challengesof te contemporarrocreien the lack of ft between the probleme raoed by eset world, on the one hand. andthe tally developed for navn hasof course been evident 1485), some Practices through which relationships are exeaned ben Pers and thei informansin te fel (Ci GE Hartson, ed, 3991) Othershave egos in he fae thatthe worl bei 2 cortesponding hegemonic ina ography takes patie of antropel ave to respond. The landscapes of roup identity ibs ikerer the wor are no longer ily Wy homogeneous The ek felipe comes the unravel pees undrum: what, : ‘experience ina globalrd,deterrivataed world? gpa fae App: In what follows, we wl further expore the cal vith the changed context of ethnographic wok: For sow itt nice4 AKHIL GUPTA AND JAMES FERGUSON note a certain contradiction, On the one hand, anthropology appears e- termined to give up its old ideas of territori ble, localized cuttures, and to apprehend an interconnected world in which people, objects, and ideas are rapidly shifting and refuse to stay in place. At the same time, though, in a defensive response to challenges to its “turf” from other disciplines, anthropology has come to lean more heavily than periods in one locat- ized setting. What are we to do with a discipline that loudly rejects received ideas of “the local,” even while ever more firmly insisting on a method that takes it for granted? A productive rethinking of such eminently practical problems in anthropological methodology, we suggest, wil ‘oughgoing reevaluation of the idea of the anthropological well as the privileged status it occupies in the construction of anthropolog- ical knowledge This book therefore explores the idea 0 ls described above. Some of the authors investigate how “the field” came to be part of the commonsense and professional practice of anthropology, and view this development in the contexts bot developmentsand of the academy's micropoli ‘whose own work stretches the ¢* flect on how the idea of “the ficld” has bounded and normalized tice of anthropology—how it enables certain kinds of knowledge ing off others, authorizes some objects of study and methods of analysis while excluding others; hows in short, the idea of “the field” helps to define and patrol the boundaries of what is often knowingly referted to as “real an- ‘hropology. In the remaining sections of this chapter, we develop some general obser- vations about how the idea of “the field” has been historically constructed and constituted in anthropology (Part Il) and trace some key effects and \ces of this dominant concept of “the field" for professional and {intellectual practices (Part III). We want not only to describe the configu: rations of field and discipline that have prevailed in the past but also to help rework these configurations to meet the needs of the presentand the future better, “The field” is a (arguably the) central component of the anthropo- logical tradition, to be sure; but anthropology also teaches that traditions are always reworked and even reinvented as needed. With this in mind, we search (in Part IV) for intellectual resourcesand alternative disciplinary prac- tices that might aid in such a reconstruction of tradition, which we provi= sionally locate both in certain forgotten and devalued elements of the an- thropological pastand in various marginalized sites on the geographical and disciplinary peripheries of anthropology. Finally in Part V, we propose a re- formulation of the anthropological ropological fieldwork and defetishize the concept of “the field,” whi and epistemological strategies that foreground questions o mand the construction of situated knowledges, Whether anthropology oughd to h 8 ‘havea unique or distinc sets it apart from other disciplines is not a realigning our own locatie with other locations. Wwe suggest, is central to many of the of anthropological fieldwork prac Iustrated in this book fieldwork" has caused a good many recent t A serious consideration of what the « ment to “field” and “fieldwork”. a commitment might be conceptualized, c derstanding of such tensions and ways in which they 1H. GENEALOGY OF A “FIELD SCIENCE” Anyone who has done fieldwork, or st ‘one does not just wander onto a “field site” to eny relationship with “the natives.” “The ive twansparency obscures the complex structing it, In fact ighly overdletert difference, To begin wit prior con into differentcultures, areas, and sites that Possible. How does this te ventions and inherited as through the it possible for the w lens, as an array of