Anthropology Inside Out

Book excerpt: Fieldworkers' notebooks are full of sensations and observations in which the subjectivity of the ethnographer seeps through. Not really science. Much closer to life. Yet in classical anthropology they are invisible to the reader. In this book the focus is reversed, turning Anthropology Inside Out as it explores the vibrant backstage life of field notes. What happens when we put them centre stage? Aimed at both curious novice and experienced practitioner, the chapters read as a catalogue of experimental practices teetering on the edge of the tradition: intuitively observational drawings; notes pervaded with paranoia; collective notetaking; crisis-ridden personal confessions; layers of notes in photographs and archives; old flip-flops that trigger memories in mind and body. This exploration of what field notes are, can do and could be, concludes with a constellation of shimmering notes on notes from Michael Taussig, a meta-commentary on anthropologists' fetishistic relationship with the most personal of professional tools. 'This extremely timely and original book starts a long overdue discussion within anthropology. The authors are to be commended for filling a gap in the methodology literature, which was so glaring until now as to be invisible to most of us.' Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo 'The book is steeped in love for the materiality of the process of learning about life - inner life as well as the life out there. The chapters open up for reflections on the artistic and scientific aspects of the anthropological endeavour and become experimental in their expansion of the genre of anthropological work and thinking.' Professor Inger Sjørslev, Senior Lecturer Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen