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The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
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Observations and Reflections of a Perpetual Fieldworker

Renée C. Fox

Center for Bioethics, Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania

This article is based on the author’s five decades of experience as a "perpetual fieldworker, engaged ethnographer," and teacher of field methods of social research. After dealing with what she perceives as a false dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative methods of research, she considers some of the cognitive characteristics of ethnographic research and distinctive properties of field data. She pays special attention to the complex role of participant observer within which an ethnographer conducts field research, focusing on the delicate balance between involvement and detachment that it entails and between listening and questioning. The article ends with an acknowledgement of the pivotal part that informants play in this kind of inquiry and with a tribute to the enduring meaning of a researcher’s relationship to these "companions in the field" and her indebtedness to them.

Key Words: fieldwork/fieldworkers • informants • listening • participant observation • qualitative research • questioning

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 595, No. 1, 309-326 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0002716204266635
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