How to Explain Access to the Field. Lessons from Fieldwork among the Yedina (or Buduma)of Lake Chad

In their articles, researchers describe how the identity that is assigned to them by the social group they are studying is the key criterion for determining a researcher’s ability to gain access to the field. They often explain this identity in relation to the historical external relations of the society being investigated. In this article, I will also attempt to portray the identity that the Yedina assigned to me during my field research, and which fundamentally determined my possibilities of gaining access to the field. However, at the same time, I wish to explain this identity not only in the context of the historical external relations but also in the light of the social, economic, and political structures of this ethnic group. In this way, I hope to show that the reasons for assigning identities to anthropologists require a much more in-depth discussion than has so far been the case in the aforementioned discourse

Ethnology · Geography · Political science · African history and culture analysis · History