Prologue

The primary objective of this book is to provoke a sustained consideration on the part of anthropologists of the ways in which the self can be a resource in doing ethnography, both in the field and in the study.The project began, as so many do, in the conversations between the two editors, who felt that, despite a plethora of writing on the periphery of this key issue, there was no text that addressed directly the question 'To what extent can the self of the anthropologist be used as a resource in doing ethnography?'We invited a number of scholars to contribute essays that would illuminate the key issues raised by asking and attempting to answer this question.Typically, we did not get the essays we expected.What we have is an extraordinarily diverse range of responses, each of which naturally reflects the interests, concerns and puzzlements of the author.In hindsight, and given our own proclivities, we should not have expected anything different.All of those who were invited to participate are included in the collection, except Nazalie Iqbal, who was attempting to complete her doctoral thesis.In order to generate further dialogue we organised a panel at the EASA Conference in September 2006, held at Bristol University.Most of the contributors presented a version of their chapter.We were also joined by Anne Larsen and Lynette

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