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Fieldwork Quotes

Browse 28 quotes about Fieldwork.

Fieldwork Quotes

“Those working in slaughterhouses, for example, are often underpaid and overworked, lack insurance, and are required to use dangerous equipment without adequate training. Turnover and rates of injury for jobs in anymal industries are among the highest in the United States. Slaughterhouse employees are almost always poor, they are often immigrants, and they are inevitably viewed by their employers as expendable. Moreover, if we would not like to kill pigs, hens, or cattle all day long, then we should not make food choices that require others to do so. Our dietary choices determine where others work. Will our poorest laborers work in fields of green or in buildings of blood? Fieldwork is difficult, but I worked in the fields as a child, and I am very glad that I never worked in a slaughterhouse.”

CompassionPovertyEthicsSocial JusticeImmigrantsVeganismFieldworkSlaughterhouse
Book:Animals and World Religions
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“Then, as we turned the final curve past the abandoned little hamlet of Ballydubh, with the village almost out of sight, he forced me to turn around and take in the full sweep of the mountains and the sea. "And there", he said, "is your An Clohan. You had best said good-bye, now.”

CulturePoliticsLossEthicsMadnessAngerFieldworkRevisiting
Book:Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland
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“We must do the impossible and start before we begin. Before making that first phone call or visit, freewrite (see Elbow, 1981): Write fast and furiously without worrying about spelling or grammar or coherence. Ask yourself, What images do I hold of the people and the place I am about to study and how do I feel about those images? How did I come to study this setting at this time? Ask yourself about the needs you expect this setting to fulfill: Do I have an axe to grind? Do I have a mission? Am I looking for a cause or a community? Do I expect this study to help me resolve personal problems? Am I hoping to create a different self? What political assumptions do I have? What kinds of setting activities or subgroups might I avoid or discount because of who I am or what I believe?”

NeedsWritingWorryEmotionsSettingImpossibilityFieldworkFreewriteStart Before We Begin
Book:Emotions and Fieldwork
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“It is unfortunate that some of us worry about losing data but not our thoughts about the data. If we believed in the premises of sociology—that interaction is patterned, that people share meanings, beliefs, and behaviors—then we would trust that the patterns we missed while we were writing will still be there when we return to the field. We are more likely to forget our insights into what we observed.”

ThoughtsEmotionsPatternsDataInteractionSociologyPremisesInsightsFieldworkThe Field
Book:Emotions and Fieldwork
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“I fetched a pair of metal tweezers from my pack and carefully plucked a leaf from the frost. It was lovely, segmented like a maple and white as the trunk and boughs, though it also had a coating of short white hairs, like some sort of beast. I placed the leaf within a small metal box I habitually use to collect such samples, many of which have found their place in the Museum of Dryadology and Ethnofolklore at Cambridge.”

TreeSampleLeafFieldworkOtherworldly
Book:Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
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“In a real sense, the important question is never one of validity or truth. Truth exists in the realm of mathematics and in the philosophy of logic, not in perceptions of reality. For those who would understand the world about them, the question is not one of truth, but of utility. Do our investigations deepen our understanding, further our ability to ask more refined questions, and lead to better predictions of events? If so, then the research is justified. If not, it remains but sophistry.”

CultureAnthropologyFieldworkCultural Anthropology
Book:Mad Dogs, Englishmen, and the Errant Anthropologist: Fieldwork in Malaysia
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“es inútil concentrarse en exclusivamente en nuestro propio "proyecto de investigación". Es preciso tener una curiosidad incesante por todo, aguzar ojos y oídos y tomar notas sin excluir nada. Esa es la gran bendición de este tipo de trabajo. La experiencia de extrañeza hace que todos nuestros sentidos sean mucho más sensibles que lo habitual, y nuestra afición a la comparación se profundiza. Por eso, el trabajo de campo es también tan útil cuando volvemos a casa. En el ínterin, hemos desarrollado hábitos de observación y comparación que nos instan u obligan a comenzar a advertir que nuestra propia cultura es igualmente extraña, siempre que observemos con cuidado, comparemos sin cesar y mantengamos nuestra distancia antropolóogica.”

ResearchCuriosidadFieldworkInvestigaciónTrabajo De Campo
Book:A Life Beyond Boundaries
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“es inútil concentrarse en exclusivamente en nuestro propio "proyecto de investigación". Es preciso tener una curiosidad incesante por todo, aguzar ojos y oídos y tomar notas sin excluir nada. Esa es la gran bendición de este tipo de trabajo. La experiencia de extrañeza hace que todos nuestros sentidos sean mucho más sensibles que lo habitual, y nuestra afición a la comparación se profundiza. Por eso, el trabajo de campo es también tan útil cuando volvemos a casa. En el ínterin, hemos desarrollado hábitos de observación y comparación que nos instan u obligan a comenzar a advertir que nuestra propia cultura es igualmente extraña, siempre que observemos con cuidado, comparemos sin cesar y mantengamos nuestra distancia antropológica.”

ResearchCuriosityCuriosidadFieldworkInvestigaciónTrabajo De Campo
Book:A Life Beyond Boundaries
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“I was a lousy academic. I spent most of my time in the cafeteria. But I met fantastic people from all kinds of fields; law, medicine, history, and they eventually dispersed all over the world to do their fieldwork. I liked the way these people committed to the long term in a sincere, visionary way. Their projects weren't about "next season." They were ten-year commitments. They were lifestyle choices that had traditions of fieldwork built into them - moving around, living on location, discipline, a real rigor for research.”

PeopleWorldWayYearsKindLongRealMovingLawChoicesNextTermFieldsDisciplineMetsTenProjectsResearchCommitmentBuiltTraditionSeasonsMedicineCommittedLifestyleAll KindsFantasticLong TermMy TimeSincereAcademicLocationVisionariesLiving OnRigorCafeteriaLifestyle ChoicesFieldwork
Author:Aleksandra Mir
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“Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think.”

IfsThinkingWayWantNeedsWritingStoriesMightHappensAbleFictionCasesNovelCreativeMastersExerciseSouthFishesSentencesBiologyNeglectCopiesSouth AfricaPublishNon FictionCopyingBodyguardPaleontologyButtocksFieldworkHamstringsCoetzee
Author:Marlene van Niekerk
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“I have learned things from the game. Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience. I have learned the value of investing time and emotion in things I cannot control, and of belonging to a community whose aspirations I share completely and uncritically.”

SchoolValuesGamesGivenSportsCommunityEmotionShareTasteDegreesPagesEuropeInvestingAspirationBritainBelongingI Have LearnedLocationSociologyFieldwork
Author:Nick Hornby
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“The Restless Anthropologist is a rich, powerful, and compulsively readable collection of essays by anthropologists who look back at the multiple relationships between their serial fieldwork experiences and their lives. Illustrating the dense interweaving of the personal and the professional that is the hallmark of anthropology as a vocation, these essays are at once affectively deep reflections, and clear-eyed assessments, of lives often lived 'between here and there.' Alma Gottlieb's idea to stimulate these articles and bring together this collection was inspired.”

LooksIdeasTogetherPowerfulRichClearReflectionInspiredCollectionsArticlesMultipleEssaysVocationRestlessHere And ThereAnthropologyAssessmentDenseSerialsHallmarkAnthropologistsIllustratingFieldwork
Author:Sherry Ortner
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