Revision summary
Early anthropology used travellers, missions, and questionnaires. Torres Strait and Boas professionalised field collecting. Malinowski’s Trobriand stay became the charter of immersion. Indian village studies localised the tradition. Reflexivity and multi-sited work are the late evolution.
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.
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