CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr.

Richard Fadok

Overview

Fieldwork—the scientific practice of studying a “field” outside the laboratory—is a means for
collecting data in situ. In anthropology, the term “fieldwork” refers to the process of investigating
social phenomena as they occur in the day-to-day lives of humans in the real world, and in real-time.
Since the early 20th century, anthropologists have relied on open-ended, long-term fieldwork, often a
year or more in extent, to immerse themselves in other perspectives, other modes of being human.
Although anthropologists today have radically different ideas about what constitutes “the field” than
their predecessors, the truth remains that fieldwork is the signature methodology of anthropology as
a discipline of knowledge.

Historically, fieldwork denoted the research component of doing anthropology, and

“ethnography” the writing (consider: we read “ethnographies.”) Etymologically, this makes perfect
sense: Ethnography is a combination of the roots eth(n)os and graph, or the writing of a people and
their customs. Over the past few decades, this distinction has imploded, and “ethnography” is now
commonly used outside anthropology to describe any methodical examination of human experience,
not just in the allied fields of sociology and geography but increasingly in business, management, and
design.1 For our purposes in this course, you are welcome to use these two terms interchangeably.

So how does fieldwork… work? Fieldwork is a qualitative methodology that attends to

what the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski called “the imponderabilia of everyday life.”2 From
detailed descriptions of how people behave in the world (their actions) and how they make sense of
that behavior (its meaning), fieldworkers reason inductively from the ground up. In other words, the
fieldworker builds theory from the immediate reality of human social life within one or more locales,
or “sites.” They do so by situating their findings with a broader contextual frame: economic systems,
technological infrastructures, or international geopolitics. By “tacking back-and-forth” between local
and global levels of analysis, anthropologists aim to ground abstractions like “the state,” or “capital,”
in the concrete facts they have witnessed first-hand in their field. The strength of an anthropological
approach is its ability to trouble our common-sense views of the world, our grand, master narratives.
Holding theory accountable to the “ordinary,” as Haraway would say, often produces surprising new
takes upon the received wisdom that we habitually reproduce. It can, the popular saying goes, “make
the familiar strange.”

At the core of fieldwork is the fieldworker’s body, their recording device. By watching
people go about their daily activities, most often joining alongside them, and listening to how they
talk about and reflect on these pursuits, anthropologists generate data. “Participant observation” and
interviews are the two most common techniques that anthropologists use. Over the term, you will
have the opportunity to practice these two techniques by conducting a month-long fieldwork project
at a local site of your choosing. This will help us make apparent the latent sociomaterial structures in
the built environment that shape how people interact with other animals—the sites of encounter, or
“contact zones,” that mediate “when [and how] species meet.” This assignment is noticeably shorter

1 There have been many debates over the expanding “creep” of “ethnography” as a catch-all descriptor, particularly
whether “ethnography” even means the same thing anymore as it travels outside anthropology for commercial purposes.
For additional discussion, please consult the “Further Reading” section below.
2 The epistemological status of fieldwork as a qualitative methodology does not make it any less rigorous. Over the past

century, anthropologists have elaborated a robust discourse around the practicalities of method, as well as its politics and
its ethics. Look to the “Further Reading” for a discussion.
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

than traditional fieldwork. Instead, we will collectively and experimentally create provocations, lures,
and invitations to re-think space, to perceive it differently, and to imagine it otherwise. In so doing, I
hope you will gain a sense of expertise over the procedures of knowledge-making. Together, we will
explore the connection between anthropology and design: how anthropology can inform design, and
vice versa, how design can inform anthropology.

The remainder of this guide will focus on 1) site, including questions of access and ethics
and 2) participant observation. As the term progresses, we will discuss interviewing and how to write
through questions of narrative, figuration, contextualization, and theorization (as de-familiarization).

Site, Access, & Ethics

In recent years, anthropologists have criticized the idyllic and exoticized notions of the “field”
that they had inherited from years past—colonial notions of timeless villages in far-away lands.
Although cross- and inter-cultural understanding still animates the anthropological enterprise, the
discipline now includes studies of government offices, venture capital firms, scientific laboratories,
design studios, and countless other “fields” in locales around the world. During this course, we will
examine Philadelphia as our field, and each of you will scrutinize one aspect of its built environment.
We will collaborate to make hypotheses about human-animal relations in Philadelphia as one analytic
inroad into theorizing the contemporary city in the Anthropocene.

You should pick a site that enables you to narrate a story about the spatial dimensions of
“becoming with” in the greater Philadelphia area. You should be able to visit this site for one hour
every week for four weeks. We will approach this site with two sets of questions: How does the built
environment mediate human-animal relationships, and, conversely, how do relationships of humans
and animals alter the built environment? You should select a site that affords some insight into these
questions. I am leaving the phrase “built environment” ambiguous to accommodate a wider range of
projects at varied scales. For instance, you might look toward a technological artifact like the pigeon
spikes of Week One. Alternatively, you might choose to interrogate a system of artifacts, also known
as an infrastructure, such as bridges, sewers, and buildings. Whatever you select, it should reflect and
index some human-made design intervention. We will be analyzing your “space,” broadly construed,
as an active contributor to human-animal relations—not a mere vessel or container for the behavior
you observe.

The species you choose and the size of the site are also up to you. Will you trace human-
pigeon-falcon multispecies relations, as Maan Barua (2021) did in the essay we read? Will you work
across multiple sites, in what’s named “multi-sited ethnography,” to track pigeon spike distributions
throughout the city and how they differentially implicate humans, animals, and related communities?

All projects, however, must be conducted in public areas. Obtaining “access” to private
sectors (think homes, offices, and churches) is not only logistically challenging, usually involving a
discussion with “gatekeepers” and the cultivation of rapport, but it also raises a host of ethical issues
that concern human subjects research and institutional review board (IRB) approval.3 This is not to
say there are no moral considerations to be had, and indeed you should heed how your access to the
space—even a “public” space—is dependent on your intersecting positionalities both as a researcher

3 For a more in-depth discussion of “access,” consult the literatures at the end of this document.
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

and as a person. Are the people in your study from a marginalized group?4 Over the duration of this
course, we will pause to ask ourselves about our own role in fieldwork. Anthropologists describe the
self-facing part of this line of questioning as “reflexivity.” How does your own identity or experience
affect how you engage with others? What drew you to this site? How does it make you feel? Does it
influence how you think and write about the topic? What attitudes and preconceptions do you bring
to your fieldwork? Equally, how has fieldwork altered those very same attitudes and preconceptions?
We will continue to ask these questions over the semester, especially as we begin to write and design.

Participant Observation

Participant observation—the observation of participants in a social setting—is an art of attention,

or “noticing,” in Anna Tsing’s words. You are paying mind to what people say, what people do, and
what people say about what they do. We will adopt the stance that the goal of fieldwork is to inhabit
an adequate orientation to the world, to attune to the same set of concerns and problem spaces that
other people hold. We cannot definitively know “what it is like to be” another, but we can strive for
“correspondences,” as the anthropologist Tim Ingold is apt to say, between our views and theirs.

You will do this by “following” people around in your fieldsite. To state this clearly: I do
not mean this literally. You are not stalking them! Instead, your objective is to “follow,” with your
vision, hearing, and other senses, what people “are up to,” to immerse yourself in their perceptual
worlds, or at least infer.

One set of questions you should ask yourself center on the question, “Who?” Who
frequents your site? What can you glean about their identity? What would you need to know to make
those conclusions? Do any characteristics, traits, or qualities mark them? Do they, perhaps, share an
obvious profession or other practice (e.g., shared costume, tools, or other signifiers of membership)?

After you’ve made some initial observations of the people at your site, you should ask
yourself what they are doing, as well as how and when. Do these people share a language, either
verbal or bodily, or skills? Do they have any texts (books, pamphlets, graffiti, etc.?) Does their talk
or text have any distinctive words? What knowledge do they have? What are they doing? What sort
of tasks, activities, rituals, and interactions define their social intercourse? Are people living, working,
and/or playing? Are they involved in any events? How are those events organized in space and time?
Is there a regularity to their behavior? Does it seem to conform to any obvious rules? Do they face a
problem or issue that you can detect? Are there any patterned differences within this group of people
on the basis that governs their behavior (e.g., age, race, gender, class, etc.)? Do they express obvious
feelings as they behave?

Remember that we are especially interested in comprehending the relationship between

people and place—the “where” question. What are the defining features of this place? How are
people distributed across this place? How does the place and its materiality seem to affect people?
How is the place divided? What role might design have played in its organization? Is there a noted
influence of the form of this place on the behavior of people? Ultimately, we want to fill out Wolch
et al.’s heuristic of the transspecies city. What do you need to know in order to get there? Do people
seem to work with or against the intended design of the site?

4 Please reference the literature on “studying down,” “studying up,” and “studying sideways” below.
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

As you observe, use all of your senses! Look but also listen, smell, touch, and taste, if
appropriate. Fieldwork is a multi-sensorial practice. What are your sensory impressions of this place
and its inhabitants?

Start asking yourself what is distinctive about your site—its particularity and peculiarity.
Conversely, what is normal about it? Do you think the people in your site would agree with that?

In time, you should ponder why people are acting as they do, moving from concrete
observations to abstract emotions, motives, beliefs, and evaluations. What do these activities mean
to people? This is challenging with public fieldwork, but there are always workarounds. Perhaps the
people at your site speak audibly enough to hear them. What do they discuss? Are there any phrases
or utterances that are distinctive? Perhaps, too, you can find ancillary texts or other media that could
reveal their point of view: maps, tables, photographs, or narratives. What categories do these people
use to describe their experience? In anthropology, we name these categories “emic” when they show
an insider’s perspective. How do these categories deviate from other discourses around the site, such
as news articles, governmental reports, or academic literatures? We name these outsider perspectives
“etic.” Are there any interesting points of friction between the two? What can you determine about
the values these people hold? How are their values shaped by their built environment? How, in turn,
do their values shape the built environment?

Once you have figured out what interests people at your site, attend to what they ignore.
Determine what is unsaid and unsayable, unseen and insensible. Alternatively, are there conflicts
between what they say and what they do, or between what some people say versus others? Is there
any contradiction? Tensions, lacunae, and contradictions are often very ethnographically revealing.

Take care to attend to your site without judgment, at least during fieldwork. A critical
assessment might come later in the process of writing ethnography.

You should write your observations in your notebook (or note app). With time, you will
make numerous observations, and the sheer number will elude memory unless you foster a habit
of writing “fieldnotes.” By periodically reviewing your fieldnotes, you will be able to note patterns at
the site, interpret them, identify shortcomings or lingering questions, and ultimately draw some kind
of conclusion. To put it another way, fieldwork is not only a dialogue between you and the people in
your field; it is also a dialogue between you and yourself vis-à-vis your fieldnotes. It is both iterative
and interactive. Because it is highly personal, do not be afraid to express your fieldnotes in your own
voice. They should sound like you speak and think—not like what you think they should sound like!
Your observations might not have any obvious theme at first. Keep recording the facts, even if it is a
taken-for-granted fact. We want to try to move beyond our inherited notions and frames.

In my field-writing practice, I have three distinct kinds of notes: jottings, fieldnotes, and
memos. Jottings are key words that I scribble down when I am rushed. They function as memory
aids when I later elaborate them into full notes. You should not assume you will remember what they
mean later. I have made that mistake too many times to count. Fieldnotes are the second category in
my scheme, and they consist of longer phrases or sentences. Mine tend to alternate between details
of what I observed and my reflections on them. A short-hand here is fine, especially with names and
other recurring words. Every week or two of my fieldwork, I will write brief one- to three-paragraph
memos that summarize and thematize my observations. These should point to future research ideas,
questions, and connections as you work through the empirical material. Depending on your project,
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

you should practice taking notes during your site visits and expanding on them after. Assignments in
this class will simulate memo-writing.

Fieldwork has long been a solitary pursuit: Mentors have sent students into the field
with scant direction apart from a handful of scattered tips and tricks. In the past couple decades,
anthropologists have become interested in collaborative fieldwork. Building on that approach, we
will collaborate in this course to articulate a shared theory of “bestial urbanism,” or the Multispecies
Metropolis. Based on our differing sites and interests, we will co-produce a mosaic appreciation for
the contemporary city. In addition, many of you have partnered with your peers. For those of you
undertaking a group project, I recommend that you each assume a theme, question, or set of themes
and questions that will guide your individual observations. When you reconvene as a group, you can
compare and contrast your notes. In this manner, you can not only support one another during the
process but also learn from what you didn’t notice. Your passions and proclivities will be a strength,
and a source of expertise.

Interviews

In tandem with participant observation, fieldworkers typically rely on conversations with people
within their fieldsites to glean information about social phenomena. Through the sharing of stories
with one another, we gain rich, detailed, and personal insights into why humans behave the way they
do, their individual and social reasons, and how they portray—sometimes idealistically—their actions
and experiences in the world.

Talking takes two conventional forms: informal and formal. Over the course of one’s
fieldwork, one meets people, learns about their lives, and asks them questions, all very casually.
Sometimes, the fieldworker might have questions about their observations and conversations that
cannot be answered or addressed during these informal meetings. This situation might warrant an
interview: the second primary research technique in the anthropologist’s methodological toolkit.

For your fieldwork in this course, you will conduct at least one interview. Fieldworkers
usually solicit interviews only after they have established trust in the community and especially with
the interviewee. This is because interviews are coproductions between two people. Your relationship
with the interviewee will shape the interview: If the person you are interviewing does not trust you,
they are less likely to share information with you. Because of the limited time we have this semester,
we will necessarily have to request interviews with near-strangers. Please keep this mind as you begin
to interpret your findings: How might your positionality shape what kind of stories are told to you?5

How do you identify an interviewee? Before you make any decisions, I recommend you
return to your fieldnotes. What have you observed thus far? What remains partial, incomplete, and
uncertain? Are these remaining questions due to the way you are conducting the study, or would it
make sense to ask someone at this point? If so, whom? Do you want an “insider’s” perspective on
the subject? Is that insider “representative” of others, or do they hold a unique point of view? Does
it make more sense, perhaps, to get an “outsider’s” viewpoint—someone who disagrees or otherwise
feels differently about the topic? In the literature on methodology, this is the problem of “sampling”

5There is a lengthy history of discussing “insider” and “outsider” points of view in anthropology. For an introduction,
see the bibliography below.
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

the field: How does your sample fit within the whole? These sorts of considerations should drive the
way you “recruit” participants into your study. Who can best answer your questions?

In the case of multispecies ethnography, it is likely that you will want to speak with an
ethologist of animal behavior. If you decide to go down this route, ask yourself whether this person
represents a viewpoint shared by others, or whether their “expert” knowledge constitutes a different
“community of practice.” What is the relationship between the two? To think anthropologically you
must learn to think relationally, or comparatively, between groups. How can you accommodate their
difference in power and authority into your analysis?

Once you have selected your interviewee, you must prepare for the interview proper.
Included among your tasks are, first, determining a time as well as a location that will work for your
interviewee. Remember that they are doing this voluntarily to support your research, and you should
work to make them comfortable (within reason, of course). The next stage of your planning consists
of conducting background research on your interviewee, especially if they are a public figure. What is
their profession; what organizations are they associated with; have they said anything about the topic
before; and so on? This preparatory work will not only give you material to reference during the talk:
for instance, “I saw you said X before. Could you elaborate on that?” It will also show that you value
their time—that you’ve “done the work.” If you ask questions that this person has already addressed
elsewhere, or questions that are too generic, they might not think you respect them. What would this
specific person be able to answer best?

On dress: During my training, I often heard that I should try to imitate the attire of
whomever I was interviewing. In other words, I should wear business attire to interview a design
practitioner or business professional and everyday clothes for other interviews. This advice follows
the social fact that our self-presentation—our dress, our posture, our tone, our gestures—shapes the
image we convey to the world. While this is true in some sense, I feel that you should wear what you
are comfortable wearing. If you want to “dress up” to “study up,” that is fine, but it is also perfectly
fine to present however you wish.

Writing an “interview guide” is the last stage of preparing for your interview. Most often,
anthropologists conduct what are called “semi-structured interviews.” With a “structured interview,”
also known as a “quantitative interview,” you read off a set of questions to the interviewee, who will
answer them in turn. This is not unlike a survey, with the important distinction that it is done face to
face. Diagnostic interviews in mental health care are examples of structured interviews. Not unlike a
structured interview, you will also prepare questions beforehand for your semi-structured interviews.
These, however, are intended to serve as prompts for discussion. They should be open-ended, which
will facilitate a free-flowing conversation between you and your interviewee.6 The goal of this type of
interview is to create a space for the sharing of stories—stories that will help you to understand their
life and experience of it. The questions you prepare will function as rails to help steer the discussion,
but they should not delimit what can and cannot be said.

There are many schools of thought about what kinds of questions to ask. In general, it is
advisable to ask questions, especially at the beginning of the interview, that allow you to get a picture
or snapshot of some normal aspect of this person’s life. For instance, “Could you tell me about your

6For this reason, among others, we often refer to our interviewees as “interlocutors,” rather than “informants,” which
implies a one-way transfer of information.
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

[background or day at your work/home/this site]?” Once you have a rough map of their histories,
activities, and concerns, you might pose questions that either invite them to elaborate (“Can you talk
more about X?”), or draw connections that help you organize this knowledge (“Was X an interest of
yours at Y time?”). Alternatively, you might wish to delve into their feelings about a topic they raised
or alluded. “What was that like?” (“How did that make you feel?” often comes across too clinical…),
“How would you characterize that moment for you?”, or “What [appealed/bothered/etc.] you about
that instance?” are all effective styles of questioning.

A few miscellaneous interviewing tips I have learned over the years:

1) Do not pose questions that can be answered with “yes” or “no” unless you explicitly ask
them to explain their reasoning.
2) Avoid multiple questions at once. Move slowly and methodically.
3) Intentional silence can give your interviewee time to process.
4) Refrain from leading questions: “Did that experience upset you?”
5) “Why?” can seem like a judgmental question. Try: “What were your reasons for X?”
6) Share an artifact you found, (contradictory) opinion you read, or current event, and ask
your interviewee to comment on it.

With your interview guide in hand, you are ready to start. After you have met your
interviewee and greeted one another, you should begin the consent process. I have provided you
with a template that you can use. Because interviewing necessarily entails human subjects research,
we are ethically, and institutionally, required to receive informed consent from our interviewees.7 It
is for this reason that participants in your study must be over 18 years old. Your interviewee should read
the form (or you can outline its main points) and then sign it. Please send me a copy of your consent
forms. In addition to the form, which articulates the purpose and potential uses of the interview, you
should also summarize the questions that you will ask, clarify that you could quote them in the paper
but not in the design project, and indicate that you will not be recording, which poses storage issues in
the future. Although these instructions are specific to interviewing, whenever you speak with anyone
in the field, you should be forthright about who you are and your reasons for being there.

For the interview itself, keep in mind that this interpersonal event should encourage
interviewees to share stories about their life history, including beliefs, reasons, and emotions. It is,
therefore, very important that you create a relationship between the two of you that is comfortable,
productive, and friendly. You are not there to judge them but to learn about their experience. If you
like, you might even say this explicitly. You can also demonstrate it through your words and through
your body language. One of the best ways to show this is to spend some time at the beginning of the
interview developing rapport. Ask your interviewee about their day, share something about your day,
or tell a joke (if relevant and appropriate). This sets the mood and conveys your intention to be their
conversation partner, not just an interrogator or data miner. As the interview commences, you ought
to give your interviewee the freedom to chart the course of your conversation, with gentle nudges in
the direction you find most compelling. Often times, the most surprising information comes when a
research participant goes off on a “tangent.” One way to encourage or invite your interviewee to talk
more about a particular subject is to follow up with questions, especially about repeated phrases they
use. You might also try restating what they said, in their words or by paraphrasing. This will allow an

7 For histories of human subjects research protocols, as well as important discussions of rationales for, and exceptions
to, the protocol I have outlined, consult the readings below.
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

opportunity for correction. No matter how you go about the interview, your behavior should convey
that you are “active listening.” Eye contact, nodding, and voiced um-hums go a long way toward this
objective.

Everyone brings an individual style to the interview. You will eventually figure out what
works best for you. This is a skill that takes a considerable amount of practice, so do not become
frustrated if your first interview does not go exactly as planned, as long as you were respectful to the
interviewee. To conclude your interview, wrap up the conversation, thank your interlocutor for their
time and generosity, and reiterate that you are available if they have any additional questions. I often,
after an interviewee, hear suggestions for future participants to contact. This is called “snowballing,”
and through this approach, you can progress and add more nuance to your research.

Postscript: Interview Ethics

The history of scientific, particularly, medical experimentation on human bodies is long, dark,
and quite literally torturous. It encompasses Nazi experiments during World War II, the Tuskegee
syphilis experiment, the Guatemalan prison experiment, and the Stanford prison experiment, to
name only four over the past century. In 1974, the U.S. National Commission for the Protection of
Human Subjects convened to develop a set of ethical principles that would protect human subjects
and guide academic research. The result of this convention, the 1979 Belmont Report, codified human
dignity and harm protection as its two guiding morals.

The Belmont Report also called for a federal system of regulation, now known as the Office
for Human Research Protections (OHRP), and a university-based system of regulation, commonly
known as the Institutional Review Board (IRB). All research that falls under the purview of “human
subjects research” must seek IRB approval, whether conducted by faculty or students. There are two
important elements to this definition:

(1) “Human subjects,” defined as “a living individual about whom an investigator (whether
professional or student) conducting research obtains information or biospecimens through
intervention or interaction with the individual, and uses, studies, or analyzes the information
or biospecimens; or obtains, uses, studies, analyzes, or generates identifiable private
information or identifiable biospecimens” [emphasis added]
(2) “Research,” defined as a “systematic investigation designed to develop or contribute to
generalizable knowledge”

Because anthropological fieldwork, especially interviews, tend to elicit “information”

“about” “living individuals” through “interaction” with them, it matches the first part of the phrase.
Usually, an interview undertaken in a classroom setting for the sake of pedagogy does not constitute
an act of “research” because it is not “generalizable.” That said, we are organizing an exhibition that,
because it is public (i.e., outside the classroom), is “generalizable.” For the projects, therefore, do not
include any information gathered from your interview, as a general rule of thumb. Interview data can
inspire your work, but you should not explicitly reference it. There is, of course, any exception to the
rule, which is an “information-gathering interview.” In this style of interview, you do not collect data
about individuals, but from them about other topics (e.g., animals, designs, locations, activities, etc.). It
is imperative that these data are factual, and do not involve a person’s thoughts about those subjects.
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

Keep these definitions and exceptions in mind as you enter the field, but do not stress! As
your instructor, I have built several “checks” into the process to ensure that we are treating research
subjects with dignity and without harm.

Multispecies Ethnography

Most fieldwork (and therefore most instructions for fieldwork) is human-centered. That said, it
shouldn’t be too difficult to ask most, if not all, of the questions above with respect to human and
animal interactions (i.e., “more-than-human sociality”). How are the who, what, how, when, where,
and why affected by the becoming-with of different species? How are nonhuman animals implicated
within human social worlds? How do they “touch”? What questions do not apply? What would you
need to know from an ethologist or other biological specialist? What “ethno-ethological” method do
you need? Is Anna Tsing’s “critical description” enough? Is there sign of “unintentional design” and
“nonhuman sociality” at your site?

Contacts

Dr. Dane Ward, Department of Biodiversity, Earth, and Environmental Science, Drexel University
Email address: dcw33@drexel.edu

Further Reading8

General

Pertti Alasuutari et al., eds., The SAGE Handbook of Social Research Methods
M.H. Agar, “Ethnography,” International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2004)
Paul Atkinson et al., eds., Handbook of Ethnography (2001)
Carol Bailey, Guide to Qualitative Field Research (2018)
Howard Becker, Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You’re Doing It (1998)
H. Russel Bernard, Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (2011)
H. Russell Bernard and Clarence Gvarlee, Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology (2014)
H. James Birx, 21st Century Anthropology: A Reference Handbook (2010)
Jan Blommaert and Dong Jie, Ethnographic Fieldwork: A Beginner’s Guide (2010)
Alan Bryman, ed., Ethnography (2001)
Elizabeth Campbell and Luke Lassiter, Doing Ethnography Today: Theories, Methods, Exercises (2015)
Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater and Bonnie Stone Sunstein, Field Working: Reading and Writing Research
(1997)
Samuel Gerald Collins and Matthew Slover Durington, Networked Anthropology: A Primer for
Ethnographers (2015)
Charlotte Davies, Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others (2008)
Mitchel Duneier, Sidewalk (2004)
Robert Emerson, ed., Contemporary Field Research: A Collection of Reading (1988)
Johannes Fabian and Vincent de Rooij, “Ethnography,” The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis
(2008)
Richard Fardon et al., eds., The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology

8 This is an incomplete list that does not include literature on apprenticeship, observant participation, auto-ethnography,
linguistic anthropology, network analysis, or material culture analysis.
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

David Fetterman, Ethnography: Step-by-Step (2020)

Uwe Flick, The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection (2018)
Don Fowler and Donald Hardesty, Others Knowing Others: Perspectives on Ethnographic Careers (1994)
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973)
Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (1985)
Clifford Geertz, Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics (2000)
Erving Goffman, “On Fieldwork,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (1974)
Hugh Gusterson, “Ethnographic Research,” Qualitative Methods in International Relations: A Pluralist
Guide (2008)
Barbara Hall, How to Do Ethnographic Research: A Simplified Guide (2011)
Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, Ethnography: Principles in Practice (2007)
Dick Hobbs and Richard Wright, The SAGE Handbook of Fieldwork (2006)
John Honigmann, Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology (1973)
Tim Ingold, “That’s Enough about Ethnography!” Hau (2014)
Bruce Jackson, Fieldwork (1987)
Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)
Daniel Miller, “Anthropology Is the Discipline but the Goal is Ethnography,” Hau (2017)
Sidney Mintz, “Sows’ Ears and Silver Linings: A Backward Look at Ethnography,” Current
Anthropology (2000)
Horace Mitchell Miner, “Body Ritual among the Nacirema,” American Anthropologist (1956)
Mike Morris, Concise Dictionary of Social and Cultural Anthropology (2011)
Kirin Narayan, Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov (2012)
Karen O’Reilly, Key Concepts in Ethnography (2009)
Robert Park, The City (1925)
Ellen Perecman and Sara Curran, A Handbook for Social Science Field Research: Essays and Bibliographic
Sources on Research Design and Methods (2006)
Nigel Rapport, Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts (2014)
Antonius Robben and Jeffrey Szluka, Ethnographic Fieldwork (2007)
SAGE, Approaches to Fieldwork (2015)
SAGE, Fieldwork (2005)
SAGE, Ethnography (2001)
SAGE, Ethnography: Methods Map (2015)
SAGE, Representing Ethnography (2008)
SAGE, Ethnography in Context (2011)
Jean Schensul, ed., Ethnographer’s Toolkit (2010)
David Silverman, Qualitative Research: Issues of Theory, Method, and Practice (2011)
Society for Cultural Anthropology, Ethnography: Series (2016)
George Stocking, “The Ethnographers Magic,” Observers Observed (1983)
Annette Weiner, The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea (1988)
Oswald Werner, Systematic Fieldwork (1987)
Raymond Williams, “Anthropology,” Keywords (1983)
Margery Wolf, A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility (1992)

Sites

Simon Coleman and Pauline von Hellermann, eds., Multi-Sited Ethnography: Problems and Possibilities in
the Translocation of Research Methods (2011)
Carol Greenhouse and Elizabeth Mertz, eds., Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

of Dramatic Political Change (2002)

Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, eds., Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science
(1997)
Ulf Hannerz, “Being There… and There… and There! Reflections on Multi-Site Ethnography,”
Ethnography (2003)
George Marcus, “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited
Ethnography,” Annual Review of Anthropology (1995)
Donald Messerschmidt, ed., Anthropologists at Home in North America: Methods and Issues in the Study of
One’s Own Society (1981)
Laura Nader, “Up the Anthropologists: Perspectives Gained from Studying Up,” Reinventing
Anthropology (1972)
Sherry Ortner, “Access: Reflections on Studying Up in Hollywood,” Ethnography (2010)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World (2006)
Anna Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (2004)
David Zeitlyn, “Anthropology in and of the Archives: Possible Futures and Contingent Pasts.
Archives as Anthropological Surrogates,” Annual Review of Anthropology (2012)

Collaboration

Timothy Choy et al., “A New Form of Collaboration in Cultural Anthropology: Matsutake Worlds,”
Cultural Anthropology (2009)
Luke Eric Lassiter, The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography (2005)
Reuben May and Mary Pattillo-McCoy, “Do You See What I See? Examining a Collaborative
Ethnography,” Qualitative Inquiry (2000)
Paul Rabinow and George Marcus, Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary (2008)

Politics and Ethics

Caroline Brettell, ed., When They Read What We Write: The Politics of Ethnography (1993)
James Clifford and George Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (1986)
Erin Debenport, “Comparative Accounts of Linguistic Fieldwork as Ethical Exercises,” International
Journal of the Sociology of Language (2010)
Norris Brock Johnson, “Sex, Color, and Rites of Passage in Ethnographic Research,” Human
Organization (1984)
Rena Lederman, “The Perils of Working at Home: IRB ‘Mission Creep’ as a Context and Content
for an Ethnography of Disciplinary Knowledge,” American Ethnologist (2006)
Rena Lederman, “Comparative ‘Research’: A Modest Proposal Concerning the Object of Ethics
Regulation, American Ethnologist (2006)
Kirin Narayan, “How Native Is a ‘Native’ Anthropologist?” Situated Lives: Gender and Culture in
Everyday Life (1997)
Jennifer Shannon, “Informed Consent: Documenting the Intersection of Bureaucratic Regulation
and Ethnographic Practice,” PoLAR (2007)
John Van Maanen, “The Moral Fix: On the Ethics of Fieldwork,” Social Science Methods (1982)

Participant Observation

Thomas Arcury and Sara Quandt, “Participant Recruitment for Qualitative Research: A Site-Based
Approach to Community Research in Complex Societies,” Human Organization (1999)
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

Howard Becker and Blanche Greer, “Participant Observation and Interviewing: A Comparison,”
Human Organization (1958)
Michael Burawoy, “The Extended Case Method: Race and Class in Postcolonial Africa,” The
Extended Case Method (2009)
Kathleen DeWalt and Billie DeWalt, Participant Observation: A Guide for Fieldworkers (2011)
Greg Guest, “Sampling and Selecting Participants in Field Research,” Handbook of Methods in Cultural
Anthropology (2015)
Sherryl Kleinman, “Fieldworker’s Feelings: What We Feel, Who We Are, How We Analyze,”
Experiencing Fieldwork: An Inside View of Qualitative Research (1991)
Mitch Duneier, “How Not to Lie with Ethnography,” Sociological Methodology (2011)
Julie Hemment, “Public Anthropology and the Paradoxes of Participation: Participatory Action
Research and Critical Ethnography in Provincial Russia,” Human Organizaiton (2007)
Janet McIntosh, “Maxwell’s Demons: Disenchantment in the Field,” Anthropology and Humanism
(2004)
SAGE, Observation Methods (2013)
Stephen Schensul et al., “Ethnographic Sampling,” Essential Ethnographic Methods (1999)
James Spradley, Participant Observation (1980)

Fieldnotes

Robert Emerson et al., Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (1995)

Roger Sanjek, ed., Fieldnotes: The Making of Anthropology (1990)
Luis Vivanco, Fieldnotes: A Guided Journal for Doing Anthropology (2016)

Interviews

Charles Briggs, “Learning How to Ask: Native Metacommunicative Competence and the
Incompetence of Fieldworkers,” Language in Society (1984)
Svend Brinkmann, Qualitative Interviewing: Conversational Knowledge through Research Interviews (2022)
Svend Brinkmann and Steinar Kvale, Doing Interviews (2018)
Kathleen Gerson and Sarah Damaske, The Science and Art of Interviewing (2020)
Raymond Gorden, Basic Interviewing Skills (1998)
Jaber Gubrium et al., eds., The SAGE Handbook of Interview Research: The Complexity of the Craft (2012)
Michele Koven, “Interviewing: Practice, Ideology, Genre, and Intertextuality,” Annual Review
of Anthropology (2014)
Susan Harding, “Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion,”
American Ethnologist (1987)
David Higginbotham and Christopher Engelke, “A Primer for Doing Talk-in-Interaction Research,”
Argumentative and Alternative Communication (2013)
Margarethe Kusenbach, “Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Research Method,” Ethnography
(2003)
Nancy MacKay et al., Community Oral History Toolkit (2013)
David Matsumoto et al., eds., Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications (2013)
Ray Pawson, Theorizing the Interview (1996)
SAGE, Interviewing I (2003)
SAGE, Interviewing II (2009)
Irving Seidman, Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social
Sciences (2019)
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

Susan Silbey, “To Bring Out the Best… To Undo a Little Pain,” When Talk Works: Profiles of
Mediators (1994)
James Spradley, The Ethnographic Interview (1979)
Victor Turner, “Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of Religion,” Forest of Symbols (1967)

Sensory Ethnography

Marvin Delgado, Urban Youth and Photovoice: Visual Ethnography in Action (2015)
Alice Gubrium and Krista Harper, Participatory Visual and Digital Methods (2013)
David Howes, “Multisensory Anthropology,” Annual Review of Anthropology (2019)
David Howes, “The Misperception of the Environment: A Critical Evaluation of the Work of Tim
Ingold and an Alternative Guide to the Use of the Sense in Anthropological Theory,”
Anthropological Theory (2022)
Tim Ingold and David Howes, “Worlds of Sense and Sensing the World,” Social Anthropology (2011)
John Jackson, “An Ethnographic Flimflam: Giving Gifts, Doing Research, and Videotaping the
Native Subject/Object,” American Anthropologist (2004)
Daniel Makagon and Mark Neumann, Recording Culture: Audio Documentary and the Ethnographic
Experience (2009)
Elizabeth Jane-Milne et al., eds., Handbook of Participatory Video (2012)
Claudia Mitchell, Doing Visual Research (2011)
Fred Myers, “Representing Culture: The Production of Discourse(s) for Aboriginal Acrylic
Paintings,” The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology (1995)
Luc Pauwels and Dawn Mannay, The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods (2020)
Sarah Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography (2013)
Sarah Pink, “Interdisciplinary Agendas in Visual Research: Re-Situating Visual Anthropology,”
Visual Studies (2003)
Sarah Pink, “Multimodality, Multisensoriality, and Ethnographic Knowing: Social Semiotics and the
Phenomenology of Perception,” Qualitative Research (2011)

Multispecies Ethnography

Matei Candea, “Difference Species, One Theory” (2012)

Fayaz Chagani, “Can the Postcolonial Animal Speak?” (2017)
Annalisa Colombino and Heide Bruckner, Methods in Human-Animal Studies: Engaging with Animals
through the Social Sciences (2023)
Kathryn Gillespie, “For Multispecies Autoethnography” (2022)
Lindsay Hamilton and Nik Taylor, Ethnography after Humanism: Power, Politics, and Method in Multi-
Species Research (2017)
John Hartigan, “Knowing Animals” (2021)
Anja Kannigieser and Zoe Todd, “From Environmental Case Study to Environmental Kin Study,”
History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History (2020)
Juno Parreñas, “Multispecies Ethnography and Social Hierarchy” (2015)
Shiho Satsuka, “Sensing Multispecies Entanglements” (2018)
Heather Anne Swanson, “Methods for Multispecies Anthropology” (2017)
Anna Tsing, “Arts of Inclusion, or How to Love a Mushroom,” Mānoa (2010)
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruin
(2015)
CONDUCTING FIELDWORK | Space/Power/Species Dr. Richard Fadok

Virtual Ethnography

Tom Boellstorff, Coming of Age in Second Life (2008)

Tom Boellstorff et al., Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method (2012)
Gabriella Coleman, “Ethnographic Approaches to Digital Media,” Annual Review of Anthropology
(2010)
Nigel Fielding et al., eds., The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods (2017)
Angela Garcia et al., “Ethnographic Approaches to the Internet and Computer-Mediated
Communication,” Journal of Contemporary Anthropology (2009)
Christine Hine, Virtual Ethnography (2000)
Larissa Hjorth, ed., The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography (2017)
Graham Jones and Bambi Schieffelin, “Enquoting Voices, Accomplishing Talk: Uses of Be + Like in
Instant Messaging,” Language & Communication (2009)
Annette Markham, “Internet Research,” Qualitative Research (2011)
Dhiraj Murthy, “Digital Ethnography,” Sociology (2008)
Jennifer Reich, “Old Methods and New Technologies: Social Media and Shifts in Power in
Qualitative Research,” Ethnography (2015)
Roger Sanjek and Susan Trainer, eds., eFieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology in the Digital World (2016)

Applied Ethnography

Pertti Pelto, Applied Ethnography: Guidelines for Field Research (2013)