The Shadow Side of Fieldwork: Exploring the Blurred Borders between Ethnography and Life

The Shadow Side of Fieldwork draws attention to the typically hidden or unacknowledged aspects of ethnographic fieldwork encounters that nevertheless shape the resulting knowledge and texts.

Addressing these invisible, elusive, unspoken or mysterious elements introduces a distinctive rigor and responsibility to ethnographic research.

• Luminaries in anthropology dare to explore the 'unspeakable' and 'invisible' in the ethnographic encounter
• Considers personal and professional challenges (ethical, epistemological, and political) faced by researchers who examine the subjectivities inherent in their ethnographic insights
• Explores the value, and limitations, of addressing the personal in ethnographic research
• Includes a critical discussion of the anthropologist’s self in the field
• Introduces imaginative rigor to ethnographic research to heighten confidence in anthropological knowledge

Athena McLean is Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, Central Michigan University. Dr. McLean’s research has focused on processes of knowledge production and contestation in the areas of aging and psychiatry. She has particular interests in dementia care and advocacy movements in mental health and aging. Her writings include 'Contradictions in the Social Production of Clinical Knowledge: The Case of Schizophrenia', in Social Science and Medicine (1990), and The Person in Dementia: A Study of Nursing Home Care in the U.S. (2007).

Annette Leibing is an anthropologist with research interests in psychiatry, aging (especially Alzheimer), medications, and new medical technologies (such as stem cells). She has taught anthropology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and been a visiting professor in Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University (2002–05). She is Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Montreal. Her latest book, co-edited with Lawrence Cohen, is Thinking about Dementia: Culture, Loss, and the Anthropology of Senility (2006).