Relatedness and Long-Term Fieldwork in Anthropology

Description

Since the dawn of cotemporary anthropology long term fieldwork has been treated as both initiation rite for an aspiring anthropologist and as a necessary methodological tool to do proper ethnographic analysis. However, while kinship and relatedness of the research subjects has been central in anthropological agenda, almost no attention has been paid to the ties of the researcher herself. In this presentation I argue that long-term fieldwork is more often than not antagonistic to relatedness-linked human ties in the personal and academic lives of the anthropologist. . The presentation is part of an on-going research and is based on series of in-depth (primarily online) interviews with antrhropologists across the globe. . Interviews demonstrate that it is not always easy to reconsile fieldwork with personal life. Most fieldworkers enter their long-term fieldwork projects alone while their partners stay at home. This is often detremental for relationships.  Another consequence of this is that the long-term fielwork is adjusted to the life-stage of the anthropologist - one does proper long-term fieldwork while young and single while in later stages this seems to be impossible or unnecessary. This in turn has also unintended methodological consequences where research is done on the basis of more short-term trips. 1) The aspect of researcher's personal kin ties should be integrated in curriculum of teaching anthropological method in order to prepare the researchers better for this "rite of passage" 2) methodological consequences of the life-stages and long-term fieldworks should be theoretically explored.(this presentation is part of the side-event "Kinship and Relatedness"

Period	29 Mar 2023
Event title	RSU Research week 2023: PLACES
Event type	Conference
Conference number	3
Organiser	Rīga Stradiņš University
Location	Rīga, LatviaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International