Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Postsocialist States - Softcover

De Soto, Hermine G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299163741 ISBN 13: 9780299163747

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000

Synopsis

In Fieldwork Dilemmas ten anthropologists disclose the political and physical dangers inherent in field research. Focusing on former socialist states, they vividly depict the upheavals of everyday life in eastern Euorpe, revealing how their informants and the communities in which they live undergo political and economic dislocations, plummeting living standards, emerging gender inequalities, and ethnic and nationalist violence.

Reports from Armenia, Bulgaria, eastern Germany, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, and Uzbekistan show how fieldworkers struggle to reconcile previous experiences with postsocialist stereotypes about Soviet culture, the West, and the effects of the penetration of capitalism into noncapitalist societies. These fieldwork dilemmas are analyzed by anthropologists who are learning to position themselves professionally and personally in the field under often unstable, unpredictable situations. This volume will interest not only anthropologists but fieldworkers of all kinds, and not only scholars of eastern Europe but all those who study rapid societal changes.

About this title

About the Author

Hermine G. De Soto is a staff anthropologist at the World Bank. She is the editor of Culture and Contradiction: Dialectics of Wealth, Power, and Symbol and co-editor of The Curtain Rises: Rethinking Culture, Ideology, and the State in Eastern Europe. Nora Dudwick is a staff anthropologist at the World Bank, where she focuses on issues of poverty and social development in post-socialist countries. She has contributed to several books, including Post-Soviet Women: From the Baltic to Central Asia.

Reviews

De Soto and Dudwick, both staff anthropologists at the World Bank, have compiled ten reports on the physical and political dangers inherent in doing fieldwork in post-Socialist Eastern European states that are undergoing rapid sociocultural changes. Treating topics that include war, friendship, gender, poverty, religion, and identity, the contributors (all anthropologists) address methodological questions concerning safety, objectivity, and the ethical dilemmas faced by the informants, fieldworkers, and communities. The dynamic relationship between citizen and state is examined within the complex context of painful transition. The issues discussed are relevant to all the social sciences (particularly to those researchers interested in the relationship between ideology and ethnography in terms of the ongoing struggle to rebuild a society). Extensive notes and references are included, as well as arresting photographs by the fieldworkers. This provocative and unique work is recommended for all large anthropology collections.DH. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299163741
• ISBN 13: 9780299163747
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288