Describe fieldwork in Anthropology

 The term ‘fieldwork’ is used to describe reserach in all areas of anthropology from social and cultural anthropology to medical or biological anthropology. The practice of ‘fieldwork’ can be done in a variety of different settings such as an urban or virtual environment, a small tribal community, a museum, library, cultural institution, business, or a primate conservation area.

Importance of Fieldwork 

Fieldwork is the most important method by which cultural anthropologists gather data to answer their research questions. While interacting on a daily basis with a group of people, cultural anthropologists document their observations and perceptions and adjust the focus of their research as needed. They typically spend a few months to a few years living among the people they are studying. 

The “field” can be anywhere the people are—a village in highland Papua New Guinea or a supermarket in downtown Minneapolis. Just as marine biologists spend time in the ocean to learn about the behaviour of marine animals and geologists travel to a mountain range to observe rock formations, anthropologists go to places where people are.

Fieldwork is among the most distinctive practices anthropologists bring to the study of human life in society. Through fieldwork, the social anthropologist seeks a detailed and intimate understanding of the context of social action and relations. Fieldwork in a previously unfamiliar setting has among its aims a deep understanding that encompasses as much as possible of an ‘insider’s’ perspective. Conducted in a more familiar setting, it can lead the anthropologist – and those for whom he or she writes – to look at everyday reality in new and unexpected ways.

Where fieldwork is conducted within museums, archives, or cultural institutions, the process can be similar in that the social anthropologist seeks to understand the underlying symbolic and cultural meanings of a text, or a collection of objects. Equally, biological anthropologists frequently base research projects on human remains or artefacts held in museum collections.

Field research has a long history. Cultural anthropologists have long used field research to study other cultures. Although the cultures do not have to be different, this has often been the case in the past with the study of so-called primitive cultures, and even in sociology the cultural differences have been ones of class. The work is done in "'Fields' that is, circumscribed areas of study which have been the subject of social research". Fields could be education, industrial settings, or Amazonian rain forests. Field research may be conducted by zoologists such as Jane Goodall. Radcliff-Brown [1910] and Malinowski [1922] were early cultural anthropologists who set the models for future work.

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