Describe the evolution of Fieldwork tradition in Anthropology

Model answer

Introduction

Fieldwork became anthropology’s craft over a century. It moved from travellers’ notes to a professional stay, then to reflexive and multi-sited work.

Body

Before the year in the village

Missionaries, administrators, and Morgan’s questionnaires gathered data at a distance.
Rivers on the Torres Strait expedition (1898) brought genealogical method and a team survey.
Boas on the Northwest Coast combined museum collecting with repeated visits.

The classical stay

Malinowski in the Trobriands made participant observation, the native language, and the tent the charter.
Radcliffe-Brown in the Andamans, Mead in Samoa, and Evans-Pritchard in Nuerland spread the model.
Srinivas and the Indian village school brought the tradition home.

Later turns

Team projects, Chicago urban work, and Whyte’s Street Corner Society widened the ‘tribe’ field.
Writing Culture made the stay a written, power-laden encounter. Women and indigenous anthropologists named the old male colonial gaze.
Marcus multi-sited fieldwork follows people, things, and NGOs across borders.
Ethics boards and long-term restudies, as in Firth’s Tikopia returns, now mark the craft.

Flow diagram

flowchart TD
  E[Expedition Rivers Boas] --> M[Malinowski immersion]
  M --> V[Village India Srinivas]
  V --> R[Reflexive multi-sited]

Conclusion

The fieldwork tradition evolved from notes and expeditions to Malinowski’s immersion, then to village India, cities, and multi-sited, reflexive research. The constant is presence among the people studied.

Students also ask

Did Malinowski invent living with people?

He canonised it. Others had stayed; he made the method a profession.

Is armchair anthropology gone?

Comparative work remains, but a PhD still usually wants a field corpus.

When UPSC asked this

Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.

Discuss the contemporary challenges in fieldwork method in anthropological research.

Fieldwork tradition in anthropology

Classical fieldwork assumed a bounded site; present fields are mobile, institutional and digital. Marcus offers multi-sited ethnography, but breadth can cost immersive depth. Consent must be ongoing; genomic, visual and online data create re-identification risks. Writing Culture made textual authority and representation explicit. Positionality, researcher safety and unequal risk to local assistants require planning. Collaborative design, data minimisation, language competence and return of findings strengthen—not dilute—participant observation.

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Q7(b) · UPSC Mains 2022 · Anthropology GS 1 · 15 marks

Write the historical development of field work tradition in anthropology till recent times