Letters and Postcards

The critical role of correspondence and letters in ethnographic research is often underappreciated. Letter writing by anthropologists provides insights into the micropowers of fieldwork and offers closer examinations of methods and research processes. The open and fragmented state of letters…

Letters written from the field that reveal the author’s internal dialogue provide clarity over the impressions, doubts, and discomforts that inevitably accompany fieldwork. In doing so they expose more of the process and struggle of interpretation and writing. Letters also…

Beyond close methodological examination, letter-writing can be valuable as a pedagogical tool: an exercise in composition and creative writing, and active responsive reading. As Suzanne Scheld (2009) points out, by lending a proximity to the field, an informal and open-ended…

Letters generally open with a declaration of place and time to situate the author. This act initiates a self-conscious examination, which, as Margaret Mead affirms, inevitably prompts reflection on the feeling of being ‘observed back’ (1977).  While Mead was referring…