Some Recollections on Fieldwork in the Twenties

Bibliographic Data

ID2581670
AuthorsE E Evans-Pritchard, E E Evans‐pritchard (corresponding author)
Year1973
Volume46
Issue4
Pages235
Publication date1973-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3316666
OpenAlexW2322526446
LanguageEN
Citations received6

I was recently asked by my friend Meyer Fortes to give a talk at Cambridge to his students about what fieldwork was like in Africa-the Sudan in my case-half a century ago, to me only yesterday, but to students of today, no doubt the distant past. What I have jotted down is a little bit of anthropological history. That I must speak about myself, obviously, cannot be avoided. I have recently published in the journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford some reflections on what may be said to be some of the more theoretical points with regard to fieldwork and how one started about establishing a relationship with the persons involved in such studies. It is equally important that we record what were the material, physical circumstances in which the fieldworker of the past conducted his research, because these circumstances surely have to be taken into account in evaluating its results and assessing their significance. No student of today could have much idea of many of the practical difficulties and problems the anthropologists of the past were faced with. Have we, for example, any means of knowing the situation in which Radcliffe-Brown conducted his research in the Andaman

Genealogy · African history and culture analysis · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · History

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub