This post reflects on the Field Study Handbook as a practical resource for anthropologists and other qualitative researchers. Challenging questions can arise from anthropology’s engagement with the corporate world where the exploration of everyday needs goes hand in hand with their creation. Chipchase is acutely sensitive to these concerns. The Handbook isn’t a manifesto for how ethnography can be used by corporations. It’s a guide for researchers working to provide insights derived from understanding how people live their lives for a range of clients, whether these are companies, nonprofits or government organizations. The Handbook is consistently attuned to the ethical issues at stake. The preface sets out these aspirations clearly.  In the author’s words this is  a  `how to book that covers the practicalities of running field research. More importantly, it’s a why-to book, that questions then helps you align personal and organisational intent’ (Chipchase 2017: xvi).

The Handbook is not an academic text. It is aimed at the design researcher community. Preoccupation with design leads, ironically, to disjuncture between the book’s form and its usability for actual field researchers. The Handbook is beautifully designed in terms of layout and illustrations.  The large hardback format, weighing in at 1.666 kg or 3 pounds 10 ounces, means you probably won’t be taking it to the field with you. The price point of $125 US puts it beyond the reach of the most academic researchers. This is a pity. If this were a pocketable paperback or an eBook it would be a really useful addition to every fieldworkers toolkit. And much of its content will be missed by potential users across all research sectors.

Although the Handbook  is oriented towards team based research it has much to offer sole researchers doing the kind of fieldwork which is foundational to anthropology. Reading this book gave me a clearer understanding of how ethnographic research is carried out in the commercial world and the iterative process which is the backbone of good ethnographic work, whether conducted rapidly by groups of people or by individuals over an extended time frame. In showing how to organize multi person teams to do ethnographic fieldwork  I gained a heightened appreciation of the multiple skills that solo anthropologists need to produce good research and how many of these skills can transfer outside the academy.

The Handbook is clearly written and logically structured through the different stages of a research project. The first few chapters deal with planning, including pitching and contracting with clients, selecting fieldwork locations and recruiting participants. Fieldwork is as much about unlearning as it is about learning. Chipchase advises choosing `somewhere you don’t know so well, you have less to unlearn’ (Chipchase 2017: 329). Better insights can be gained outside of capital cities. There are practical suggestions about using social media to get up to speed on what’s happening before arrival, making links with the local partners with whom one will be working as well as relevant details about fieldwork in different locations, such as the differences between airport and local times and the widespread refusal accept pre 2006 US notes across many countries in Sub Saharan Africa (something I have experienced many times).

The book is packed with thoughtful advice about working with  local researchers and participants. Respect for the informant is paramount. Data management and confidentiality are addressed at length.  The reflections on informed consent are highly pertinent to our profession, not only because of University ethical review procedures, because they highlight what can sometimes feel like an uncomfortable gap which the open endedness of anthropological analysis creates between the acquisition and eventual use of ethnographic data. For academic anthropologists the final work in which interview material is used may be very different from the objectives of the initial fieldwork. Chipchase emphasizes  the importance of intent and the boundaries this imposes, as well as possible ways of enabling informants to review the data collected. A ‘full circle’ approach to research is a recommended option where ‘prior to leaving the session, the participant is encouraged to review and, if they wish, delete any of the data the team collected about them’ (Chiphase 2017: 302). Of course, this isn’t always possible for the kind of fieldwork many of us carry out which often has a large informal component, but the concerns with participants’ well being and that `data gathering should exist within social norms’ should guide any fieldwork.

Several chapters address the how- to of field research and of organizing the material. Tried and tested techniques for learning about a context quickly are accessibly outlined, such as watching how people queue in public places, spending time at transport hubs and testing the boundaries of social norms through investigating, but not transgressing, the borders of acceptable behavior, through buying pornography for example. The behavior of the researcher also matters. The Handbook is refreshingly honest about the core interpersonal skills and behaviors needed to be an effective ethnographic researcher, including suggestions for how these can be developed. There are tips for organizing multiple types of data, including photographs, and an excellent guide to structuring the interview process. Commissioned research has certain advantages over solo fieldwork in that multi person teams can cover more ground and note taking and interviewing can be shared. The time and cost constraints on commercial work lead to a more explicit concern with efficiencies and a consideration of the optimal methodological instruments for a given situation. An infographic provides a visual comparison of the time it takes to use different note taking and transcription methods, summarizing in two square inches what many of us learned through hours and hours of hard work, namely the additional time costs of audio or visual recording if transcription follows compared with taking notes directly to a laptop.

The Handbook is 500 pages plus of insights, techniques and tips. I’ve already used some of them in my own work and I’ve recommended it to colleagues in a commercial think-tank and to members of a multidisciplinary team of health researchers with whom I’m currently working. I’m planning on doing some fieldwork in the Autumn and while this edition is way too big to fit in my, or anyone’s, bag I’ll be using many of its ideas. A new edition is in process which will be smaller and more portable. It will be out later in the year. Check out the link for updates.

Maia

Maia Green works on the anthropology of international development and issues of social transformation in East Africa. She has written on diverse topics ranging from anti-witchcraft practices to the proliferation of NGOs. Maia Green teaches at the University of Manchester.

manchester.academia.edu/MaiaGreen

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Pretty much everything we are going to do could be done in a plain text file. The key difference is that these apps allow you to add tags to individual paragraphs, while most text editors which support tagging only allow you to tag individual documents.¹ There isn’t really much more to it than that, but as you will see, it can be a powerful tool for doing research.

Let’s make a short sample conversation:

Q: What are your favorite fruits?
A: Apples, oranges, and pears.
Q: What do you like about those fruits in particular?
A: I associate apples with my home, where we had an apple orchard. Oranges… because we used to eat them on holidays. And pears – actually, I didn’t used to like pears, but for a while I lived in France and I got a taste for them there.
Q: I see, it sounds like apples have particularly strong associations for you?
A: That’s true. I always associate the smell with my childhood.
Q: But not oranges?
A: No, not as much.

Now let’s tag the text. We could add tags after the text, but instead we are going to try, as much as possible, to add the tags right in the text itself, as that will make it easier to highlight what we are looking for. (Note that in two cases the keyword is in the question, but not the response, so I’ve added the tag after the text.)

Q: What are your favorite fruits?
A: #Apples, #oranges, and #pears.
Q: What do you like about those fruits in particular?
A: I associate #apples with my home, where we had an apple orchard. #Oranges… because we used to eat them on holidays. And #pears – actually, I didn’t used to like pears, but for a while I lived in France and I got a taste for them there.
Q: I see, it sounds like #apples have particularly strong associations for you?
A: That’s true. I always associate the smell with my childhood. #apples
Q: But not #oranges?
A: No, not as much. #oranges

Now, we just copy and paste this into Dynalist.² (Below is a picture, but you can visit the actual outline here.)

Dynalist highlights the tags automatically. Clicking on any one will filter the text for that word. Even better, we can combine tags, searching for either both #apples AND #oranges, or either #apples OR #oranges (pictured below):

And if we want, we can expand the search to look for the same tag across all our documents. You can also export the search results to a new document containing just the selected text. And for those who like the mind map features of some professional QDA apps, Dynalist and other outliners can also export an OPML file which is readable by almost any Mind Mapping app.

List of posts in this series

• Free Your Mind, the Text Will Follow (Working With Text 1)
• RegEx 101 (Working With Text 2)
• Text-laundering (Working With Text 3)
• Lazy PowerPoint (Working With Text 4)
• Roll Your Own QDA (Working With Text 5)

Kerim

P. Kerim Friedman is a professor in the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures at National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan. His research explores language revitalization efforts among indigenous Taiwanese, looking at the relationship between language ideology, indigeneity, and political economy. An ethnographic filmmaker, he co-produced the Jean Rouch award-winning documentary, ‘Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!’ about a street theater troupe from one of India’s Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs).

kerim.oxus.net/

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