The Mystique of Fieldwork

Abstract

In 1969 Donald MacRae, in a lively article in New Society, attempted to find the key that separated sociology from anthropology. He concluded that anthropologists ‘have, in principle, all undergone the ordeals of a common rite de passage, i.e. they have all undergone at least a year of field work in some exotic area. The field notes of this year are their store of magic potency, their manna. It is the magical element in this that makes them spend it so economically; spiritual capital is not lightly to be wasted’ (1969, p. 562). Now, some 30 years later — as this book demonstrates — not only anthropologists ‘go to the field’ to learn about their chosen subject. If one adds that although all anthropologists do fieldwork, all fieldwork is not anthropological, we run the risk of incurring MacRae’s further dictum that anthropologists (like other tribes made up of warring moieties) ‘unite before any outside threat and are appropriately savage to intruders or threatening groups’ (1969, p. 562).