Anthropological field research is a means toward an end: ethnographic
knowledge. Being a practice in the service of a discipline, it must rely
on tried and tested habits, techniques, and strategies. It must serve
a scientific, hence public, purpose rather than the needs and desires
of a person; it must pursue theory rather than a private quest. This
has been the conventional and reasonable view of the matter. But it is
hardly a secret anymore—at a time when ethnography has become a
matter of concern and a subject of debate among philosophers, stu-
dents of culture (if that is an appropriate label for those engaged in
“cultural studies”), other social scientists, including historians, and
even among artists—that our conventional certainties are no longer
what they used to be.
This is not the place to tell the story of our certainties getting shat-
tered; it is too long and complicated. Instead, it occurred to me that
it may be of interest to recall just one intriguing episode. When I re-
ceived my training at the University of Chicago, in a department that
was hardly a marginal contributor to establishing anthropology as a
modern, empirical, and scientific endeavor, separate courses on field
methods were not part of the curriculum. Why? Other things were
more important. Our critical energies were channeled toward dis-
cussion of theory. Debating theory rather than worrying about prac-
tice was a luxury we enjoyed, but not for long. Momentous changes
brought about in our “fields” by incipient de-colonization abroad and
social upheavals at home forced us to rethink the premises of our proj-
ects and to say what had gone without saying for a long time. Critical
Preface
johannes fabian