Rick Feinberg, Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, authored "Introduction: Pay Attention and Go with the Flow" in First Fieldwork: Pacific Anthropology, 1960-1985, 1st Edition, (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press) Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi (Ed.), (2018), 1-18.
Summary: First Fieldwork: Pacific Anthropology, 1960–1985 explores what a generation of anthropologists experienced during their first visits to the field at a time of momentous political changes in Pacific island countries and societies, and in anthropology itself. Looking back on the richest of fieldwork experiences, the contributors uncover essential structures and challenges of fieldwork: connection, context and change. What they find is that building relationships and having others include you in their lives (once referred to as “achieving rapport”) is determined as much by our subjects as by ourselves. As they examine connections made or attempted during first fieldwork and bring to bear subsequent understandings and questions—new contexts from which to view and think—about their experiences, the contributors provide readers with multidimensional perspectives on fieldwork and how it continues to inspire anthropological interpretations and commitment. A crucial dimension is change. Each chapter is richly detailed in history: theirs/ours; colonial/postcolonial; and the then and now of theory and practice. While change is ever present, specifics are not. Reflecting back, the authors demonstrate how that specificity defined their experiences and ultimately their ethnographic re/productions.
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