The Insiders’ Experience of an Undergraduate Level Ethnographic Fieldwork Training Program in India

Research on fieldwork experiences is not something new to the discipline of Anthropology. However, undergraduate level ethnographic fieldwork training programs in India as a research area still remained unexplored. The purpose of the study described in this paper was to explore the proceedings of undergraduate level ethnographic fieldwork training programs in India. This article uses the authors' own recollections regarding an undergraduate level ethnographic fieldwork training program carried out by a college affiliated with the University of Calcutta. All four authors along with their 21 fellow students have participated as trainees in this fieldwork training program. Through a qualitative analysis of these recapitulated events involving the acts of "preparation before the field trip, " "doing fieldwork" right up to "writing of field reports," the study stresses one of the less emphasized and methodologically significant issues of education and the socialization process the trainee fieldworkers pass through while doing fieldwork. This article illuminates how the real-time field exposure guides naive students to realize the utility of different research tools, techniques, methods, and some of the true requirements of an ethnographic fieldwork. Keywords: Fieldwork Experiences, Undergraduate Level Anthropological Fieldwork Training, Ethnographic Collaboration, Socialization, India Fieldwork as a research method over the years has made a profound impact on the characteristic and growth of the discipline of anthropology. Fieldwork is considered to be one of the most unique methods adopted by anthropologists for finding answers to a wide array of research questions. Besides, fieldwork provides a perfect opportunity for testing different theoretical propositions in light of rich firsthand ethnographic data, which has helped anthropology to become one of the major limbs of social sciences (Srinivas, 1998, p. 136). As Mandelbaum (1963, p. 5) explains, that field training enables anthropologists to develop an expectant awareness of a wide range of possibilities regarding human behavior, which makes them alert and ready to see and seize "diverse explanatory factors about multiple potentialities in culture and behavior," whenever and however they may turn up. Perhaps due to this reason, today it is expected that students, teachers and researchers of any sub-discipline of anthropology needs to have some sort of experience in carrying out intensive fieldworks for fulfilling their research aims and having a firm grip of the subject itself. In a general sense, fieldwork is considered to be a process of social research in which the investigator attempts to enter the universe of meanings and participate in the moral system of the respondents (Wax & Wax, 1980). But, as someone speaks about the process of ethnographic research, issues of "participation" and the "process of immersion" come to forefront, which allow anthropologists to "step into," analyze, understand and write about "the world of morals and meanings" of the respondents. Interestingly, for some people (Lowie, 1937, p. 232; Powdermaker, 1967, p. 19), the process of immersion has been as easy as stepping into a bathtub or leaping into a swimming pool. Others, however, (Dahal, 2004; Van Maanen, 1988), have found it to be much difficult because respondents, due to their cultural barrier, at times judge anthropologists as "anthrofoologists," "management spies," or "government dupes. " Some scholars (Blommaert & Dong, 2010; Patton, 2002; Sambrook & Stewart, 2007) explained that fieldworkers can overcome a few of these issues with a meticulous preparation before the fieldwork. Again others (Faubion & Marcus, 2009; Janesick, 1983; Pollard, 2009), after all their experiences and expertise in teaching different research methods to their students, have concluded that some of these research methods used in fieldwork can only be learned by experiencing fieldwork from start to finish. …