Fieldwork Connections
Subtitle: The Fabric of Ethnographic Collaboration in China and America
Edition: English Ed edition
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: June 15, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 384
ISBN-13: 9780295986685
Subjects: Asian studies; Ethnography; Social Science; Archaeology / Anthropology; Sociology; Anthropology - Cultural; Social Science / Anthropology / General; anthropology; Asian studies; Anthropology - General; Asia - China; Biography; China; Ethnologists; Ethnology; Field work; Seattle; Sichuan Sheng; Washington (State)
First sentence: Quotes: 
"I used Fieldwork Connections in my Chinese Ethnographies course last quarter, and the students really liked it. Both the students and I thought that it gave them a much better idea of field research methods and issues than other ethnographies had done. They also liked the comparison of different researchers experiences with each other, in China, and in the US. It sparked some very productive seminar discussion about research methods and ethics. I strongly recommend it. " - Melissa J. Brown, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, Stanford University

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reviews: 
"This is a jargon-free, readable revelation of the quotidian details and myriad tasks behind gathering ethnographic data, as well as the questions ethnographers must regularly ask. . . . a remarkably interesting, accessible account of how ethnographers work." - Publisher's Weekly 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents: 

Preface to the English Edition
Acknowledgments
PART I: ORIGINS
1 Growing up Half Yi / Bamo Ayi
2 In the Shadow of the Han / Ma Lunzy
3 A White Guy Discovers Anthropology / Stevan Harrell
PART II: CHINA
4 Yinchang: My First Fieldwork, 1987-88 / Bamo Ayi
5 Getting Started in Southwest China, 1987-88 / Stevan Harrell
6 Chasing after Bimo, 1992-93 / Bamo Ayi
7 Getting Started Again, 1991 / Stevan Harrell
8 First Contact, 1991 / Ma Lunzy
9 Almost Real Fieldwork, 1993 / Stevan Harrell
10 In the Month of the Snake , 1993 / Ma Lunzy
11 Fieldwork with Muga, 1994 / Bamo Ayi
12 Getting Further Implicated, 1994 / Stevan Harrell
13 The Last Time I Led the Horse, 1994 / Ma Lunzy
14 The Bimo in the Modern World, 1994-95 / Bamo Ayi
PART III: AMERICA
15 The First International Yi Conference, 1995 / Ma Lunzy
16 Seattle First Free Methodist Church, 1996-97 / Bamo Ayi
17 Collecting Mountain Patterns, 1999 / Ma Lunzy
18 Conceptualizing Mountain Patterns, 2000 / Bamo Qubumo
19 Celebrating Mountain Patterns, 2000 / Stevan Harrell
Epilogue: Fieldwork Connections and the Process of Ethnography / Stevan Harrell
Cast of Characters
Chinese and Nuosu Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Description: Fieldwork Connections tells the story of the intertwined research histories of three anthropologists working in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China in the late twentieth century. Chapters are written alternately by a male American anthropologist, a male researcher raised in a village in Liangshan, and a highly educated woman from an elite Nuosu/Chinese family. As decades of mutual ethnographic research unfold, the authors enter one another's narratives and challenge the reader to ponder the nature of ethnographic "truth."
The book begins with short accounts of the process by which each of the authors became involved in anthropological field research. It then proceeds to describe the research itself, and the stories begin to connect as they become active collaborators. The scene shifts in the course of the narrative from China to America, and the relationship between the authors shifts from distant, wary, and somewhat hierarchical to close, egalitarian, and reciprocal.

The authors share their histories through personal stories, not technical analyses; their aim is to entertain while addressing the process of ethnography and the dynamics of international and intercultural communication.
Notes: Bamo Ayi is an anthropologist and scholar of comparative religion. She is deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Department, State Nationalities Commission, and professor of philosophy at Central Nationalities University, Beijing. Stevan Harrell is an anthropologist and translator. He is professor of anthropology at the University of Washington. Ma Lunzy is an ethnologist, historian, author, and curator. He is deputy director of Liangshan Minorities Research Institute.