Ipseom

This great online guide to anthropological fieldwork comes to us courtesy of Dr. Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi, Associate Professor Of Anthropology, Truman State University. Covering all aspects of planning (proposals, pep, field site selection), field methods, and the writing of fieldnotes and final reports, Dr. Zimmer-Tamakoshi’s Web pages are rich in beautiful photographs from her own trips as well as insightful essays on the the art, science and profession of anthropology. What is more, Dr. Zimmer-Tamakoshi makes a point of leveraging the Web’s multimedia potential by including sound-enhanced visual clips from her own fieldwork among the Gende tribe of New Guinea. Dr. Zimmer-Tamakoshi also provides an in-depth glossary of anthropological terms, an extensive bibliography of key references, and a sensitive essay on what it is like to leave the field—not to mention a culture into which one has thoroughly immersed, an original friends to which one has become attached, and ancient ways of thinking one has come to appreciate and understand—and return home to the culture shock of what some call the civilized world. But as Zimmer-Tamakoshi points out, fieldwork never really ends. In finding a distant land and people to become intimate, the good anthropologist adopts (in part, at least) a new culture, develops a new family, and wins a second home, to which he or she can and should always plan to return.