The Dictionary of Human Geography

rather than more dynamic, relational and con-
tested forms of evidence, many fieldwork prac-
titioners developed a more critical stance to
their work. Feminist geographers (seefemi-
nist geographies) were key in this interven-
tion, examining the politics ofrepresentation
that percolate through fieldwork, scrutinizing
the uneven power relations that propel it and
calling its epistemological claims into question
(Rose, 1993; Professional Geographer, 1994;
Sundberg, 2003).
Engaging in fieldwork of this kind raises the
question of what constitutes the field. The
field, as Felix Driver (2000, p. 267) reminds
us, ‘is not just ‘‘there’’; it is produced and re-
produced through both physical movement
across a landscape and other sorts of cultural
work in a variety of sites’. It is also the effect of
discursive and spatial practices that mark it as
a site of enquiry ‘that is necessarily artificial
in its separations from geographicalspaceand
the flow oftime’ (Katz, 1994, p. 67). These
distinctions and the sorts of knowledge
derived from them are constituted through
embodied practices such as travel, residence,
visiting, conversation, observing, eating,
smelling, listening and various (re)presenta-
tions of self. The field and the fieldworker
are co-constructions, and the knowledge pro-
duced between them reflects the materiality
and mutability of this relationship. Scholars
have addressed the various and multiple con-
notations of movement among fields – the
constitution of a field site, the way in which
the site and the sorts of knowledge produced
there are constructed in one’s disciplinary
field, and the uneven valences ofpowerthat
energize and can confound the multiple trans-
lations – spatial, linguistic, and practical – of
fieldwork (e.g.Professional Geographer, 1994;
Pluciennik and Drew, 2000; Saunders, 2001).
Questions of power affect such things as nego-
tiating access, whether and how to conduct
research in areas ofconflictandviolence,
determining what kinds of knowledge can be
shared and with whom, figuring out what can-
not be said and making sense of the silences,
and representing oneself in ‘the field’ and the
field to one’s audience.
The methodology of fieldwork is cap-
acious and eclectic, encompassing quantitative
and qualitative strategies of data collection.
While fieldwork is commonly associated with
case studymethodologies andethnographic
research, it also includes survey research,
broad observational studies, mapping and
measurement techniques. Among the research
methods associated with fieldwork in human

geography are all manner of field observation,

including participant observation, land-

scape assessment and site observation; oral

techniques such as casual conversation,

unstructured and structured interviews,focus

group interviews, oral histories and environ-

mental autobiographies; survey and census

techniques (see survey analysis); digging

through, collecting, sorting, classifying and

interpreting records, whether in the ground,

in place or in archives; measurement and map-

ping activities; and documenting what is

observed and experienced in a variety of ways,

including written, photographic, cartographic,

aural and artistic means. Recent investigations

of fieldwork have addressed issues such as the

embodiment of the fieldworker (seebody),

bringing companions to the field, sexual rela-

tions in the field, and theethicsand implica-

tions of dishonesty and misrepresentation in

fieldwork. As these concerns suggest, field-

work produces knowledge that is avowedly

situated, and its validity resides both in that

recognition and in the disciplinedreflexivity

that enables researchers to expose their prac-

tices and question their findings. ck

Suggested reading

Geographical Review (2001); The Professional

Geographer(1994);Singapore Journal of Tropical

Geography(2003); Wolf (1995).

film An inherently spatial technology

through which fragments of images and

sounds from different times and spaces are

reassembled, and then transported to audi-

ences in many different locations. It can be

studied as a mobile culturalrepresentation,

a public gathering (at the cinema or movie

theatre), a political opportunity, a mode of

governanceand an economic activity. The

boundaries of film now blur into television,

video,musicand amusement park culture.

Much film analysis focuses on the film

itself – for example, the narrative structure,

the sets, camera shots and editing – and it

can be a means of studying how dominant

social and geopolitical understandings and

anxieties are expressed, produced, transmitted

and resisted. US noir films of the 1940s and

1950s, for instance, have been interpreted as

expressions of geopolitical and social anxieties:

about nuclearwar, themigrationof southern

African-Americans to northern cities, and

relations between women and men. The geog-

raphies scripted into noir films (e.g. the dark

and foreboding city) express and fuel these

anxieties (Farish, 2005). Alternatively, as a

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FILM