Category Archives: anthropology

09/9/24

Where is ‘The Field?’

Anthropologists do their research in ‘the field.’ This is to set it apart from where we write up our research results.  That is we make a distinction between where and when we conduct our research and the place and time within which we write up our findings.  In recent decades this fairly simplistic distinction between field and home has become complicated by critique (Geertz 1988), advances in information technology, and changes in research practices.  Nonetheless, practicing anthropologists still refer to their place of research as the ‘field’ and what we do in the field as ‘fieldwork.’

My impressions and observations of many years of research in the Bigoudennie (an area within Brittany, France) are recorded in notebooks, files and in the photos I took during my time in there.  Glancing through my family photo albums I see the passage of many years in Brittany recorded from the perspective of the everyday life of a family.  These photos mark the events, trips, birthdays, guests, anniversaries and other everyday moments of parenthood and family.  The place, that is to say the “field-site,” enters this record as glimpses of landscape and blurred backgrounds against which the normal life of a family progresses.  Later photos, taken on return visits, tend to capture reunions with friends in their homes.

My experience being in the Bigoudennie is overwritten by my experience as a father and as a partner to my spouse.  We attended the public-school festival like the other parents.  Some sunny afternoons we might pile into our car and take a picnic on the beach, along some nearby lakeshore or in a neighboring wood.  On my way home from the daily commercial fish auction I often stopped to pick up a few things at the supermarket or bakery.  These are not earth-shattering events.  They are part of a family life, which continues irrespective of whether or not one is in France, Canada, the United States, or elsewhere.

One of our early arrivals in Brittany is captured in a series of pictures of my sons, playing on a beach near our first temporary lodgings.  It is late in the afternoon and the setting sun colors the landscape.  In one picture, the boys are standing behind an inscription etched in the sand: “Jarek and Tristan, Oct. 16, 1994, Brittany.”   This photo masks the anxiety of navigating along highways and county lanes, searching out what is for us, strangers here, difficult and incomprehensible.  Now, having finished with the necessities of shopping, signing leases, and cleaning up, we have retreated to this beach to relax and take stock of the place we shall call home for the next year or more.

In one of the few photos of which I am in the picture I am standing on the edge of a quay in the Port of Lesconil.  One boy is perched near the edge of the dock.  I am holding the other on the seat of an adult’s bike.  Off to the side, an old-style dragger is coming alongside the dock.  The white-washed sides of stone houses are just visible across the harbor. While my presence is clearly expressed, the skipper of the dragger is barely a silhouette framed in the window of his wheelhouse.  The clues to his identity are locked within the silhouette of the boat and in its registration number. Much can be learned from a reading of the boat: age, rigging, gear-type, crew size, port of registry, etc….  However, these faceless and objective data push the skipper and his crew even further into the shadows.

My field work experience in Brittany mirrors the classic demarcation between away and home, the field and the place where one writes up one’s work.  Before and along side my Breton research I did work in my home community on the north coast of BC. My master’s degree focussed on industrial fisherfolk I grew up among. This work continued to work with family and community from my home First Nation, Gitxaała (see People of the Saltwater).

‘The field’ of my north coast research intersects with my family, friend, and life networks. Here, even when I stop writing I remain enmeshed in ways that I am not in my Breton work. For many decades the discipline of anthropology down-ranked research at home. I ended up doing my doctoral research in Brittany, not BC, based on the strong advice of my mentors (and they were right for a doctoral student at that moment of time). My professional research since being hired at UBC has, however, mainly focussed on work about my home (First Nation and non-Indigenous), the intersection between First Nations and the nation state, and on the people who study First Nations. So my field has become the university itself, not simply a place some distance away.

01/1/20

A Fathers’ Day Reading List for the New Year

When my own sons were young my partner gave me a copy of Patrimony by Philip Roth for father’s day. A little while later I came across an unexpected book by ecological anthropologist Ben Orlove, In my Father’s Study. These are books that have stayed with me.

The first is a tale of a son’s journey with a father at the end of his life.

The second is a story of a son coming to learn about his father, to come to an adult appreciation of him, after the father’s death.  It’s a touching memoire.  I’ve used it a few times in my teaching but my 20/30-something students respond to it rather differently than I. For them it is simply one more book on a reading list while for me it led me to think about my life as a father and as a son.

I’ve spent a great many hours with my own father. As a child following him around as he worked on his fishing boat. As a young adult working with him on the same boat. And later in life visiting with him, keeping each other company sometimes talking about the past, often about his health, and occasionally about my own work. Coming across Orlove’s book, almost by accident, has led me to gather over the decades an eclectic little library of books reflecting upon fathers and sons. Here, in sense of order, is a selection of my favourites.

  • In My Father’s Study. Ben Orlove. U.Iowa Press. 1995
  • A Life in the Bush: lessons from my father. Roy MacGregor. Viking, 1999. A loving tale of a northern Ontario father by one of Canada’s favourite journalists.
  • Waterline: of fathers, sons, and boats. Joe Soucheray. David R.  Godin, Publisher. 1996(1989). A memoire about restoring a boat, but its far more than that.
  • For Joshua. Richard Wagamese. Anchor Canada. 2003(2002).
  • To See Every Bird on Earth: a father, a son, a lifelong obsession. Dan Koeppel. Plume. 2006.
  • Lost in America. Sherwin Nuland. Vintage. 2004.
  • Patrimony. Phillip Roth. Touchstone. 2001.
  • My Father’s Wars. Alisse Waterston. 2013.
  • Fatherless. Keith Maillard. 2019.

There are more – but this is more than enough for a start.

 

03/5/18

Friends, Research, and Misunderstandings

One of the things about being a public anthropologist, a professional actively engaged in public issues, is that people will at times misunderstand what I have said (usually by mistake, but occasionally deliberately). Normally that is okay. But some things are potentially damaging and hurtful.

Many years ago I was at a research workshop on fisheries and the organizers had representatives to speak from all sectors but First Nations. That’s a long story in and of itself, suffice to say I was annoyed. I wrote a position paper on the spot and latter revised it to a full length paper.

In that paper I mentioned the fact that anthropological fieldwork is based upon friend-like relations. I went on to comment that many anthropologists go on to form life long friendships with the people we have lived with and written about. But that wasn’t the focus of the paper and I went on to pick up the main themes leaving behind my reflections on friendship. But it is this thread that has been misunderstood and misrepresented.  

I have continued to tell students in my teaching that anthropology is based on friend-like relations. AND because of this one needs to be especially careful about ethical considerations. When anthropologists (students or professionals) come from privileged wealthy backgrounds and have been accustomed to getting their own way they may well misunderstand and take advantage of how people they have come to visit might respond to them. The student, especially, arrives into a situation that is temporary and ephemeral. They are in part more cultural tourist than ally (though most take on the role of ally).

I also talk about the importance of performatively marking out when one is being a researcher. I suspect this is a complicated idea. I mean, how can I mark off that moment when I am Charles the researcher from Charlie the cousin and friend? Ultimately they are the same person. My point is that given the friend-like relationship upon which anthropology is based one must be very clear about when one is actively collecting information – one needs to mark off these boundaries clearly and obviously. There are many areas wherein one can slip up. My good friend and colleague Caroline Butler and I have recently written a paper about this very issue using our personal research histories and our personal identities to understand and explain it.

I often caution students that they should not take advantage of their privilege and the friend-like relationships that lie at the base of anthropological research. In places where I am a member, like my home nation of Gitxaala, I am especially concerned about students who may prey upon the good nature of others. So much so that I no longer organize so-called field schools, but instead arrange research internships that are directly under Gitxaala’s control. This setup leaves no ambiguity in anyone’s mind as to who is in control (Gitxaala Nation), who owns the data (Gitxaala Nation) and who decides what can be published and when (Gitxaala Nation).

Despite one’s good intentions one can not control how others hear oneself. It saddens the heart to learn that someone may have misunderstood the idea of friend-like relations so grievously incorrectly as to think they were being told they couldn’t make friends. I feel even worse to think that someone may have understood that the idea of friend-like relations was being advocated to trick others into revealing deep rooted secrets in order to build a professional career. Such characterizations are misunderstandings of an analogy used to explain something.  “Friend-like relationships” are none of those things.

Anthropological research is built upon friend-like relationships. This is our strength and our weakness. We make friends because we care about the people we get to know over the years, if not decades of close association. When we are also insider researchers, like I am, it is even more the case since we are writing not only about our friends, but also about our families. This is a special responsibility that as an insider anthropologist we take on. We care about family, friends, and home in a way that no outsider, however well intentioned can do.

I grew up on the north coast of BC and have been privileged to continue to work along the coast in my home, with friends and families. It is a pleasure to write about my experiences and to reflect upon what I have learned through nearly six decades of life. Any sadness that accumulates along the way is cleansed in the certainty that I have a place to call home and that I know who my grandfathers are. It roots me to a deep history and a powerful future.