In reading this book, it becomes clear that this is no simple text on fieldwork methods. It is an extended defence, explication and celebration of anthropology and of ethnography. In that sense, it is a response to an initial concern with the constraints imposed by hypotheses, grant applications, ethical approval and all the other paraphernalia of accountability, particularly ex ante accountability. She argues for anthropology as exploration, open to serendipity and to change. Constraining research to questions conceived in the academic library is to miss the point of anthropology. The understandings and categories gleaned from theory or from surveys may bear little relationship to the communities we encounter in the field. Academic concerns may be alien to those of our research subjects. Instead, being open to chance, to opportunity and to all the aspects of the worlds we encounter is an essential element of the anthropology that Okely celebrates.
In an apparently straightforward manner, Judith Okely has authored a work that plays with ideas on a number of levels. At face value, it is a work about method. What does it mean to conduct fieldwork? Where can we turn for advice and guidance, for words of wisdom from those who have been there before? But, at another level, it is a trenchant defence of a particular view of anthropology. The opening chapter (“Theoretical and historical overview”) raises some concerns about increasing demands for prescriptive research specification, identifying hypotheses or presenting ethnographic work in quantitative form. These are concerns with which we are all familiar, confronted as we often are by application forms that ask us to identify our informants or specify/quantify the data we will collect. Surprisingly, Okely is less concerned with the problems posed by ethical review boards and the like, but we have little doubt that she would share some of the concerns commonly expressed by organizational ethnographers. And as formal “research training” becomes a requirement of doctoral research grants, she is also concerned to note the limited resources available to the anthropologist. While we might identify texts that address aspects of ethnographic method or works that refer to the practice of fieldwork in individual instances, often in appendices, she suggests there is a lack of resources that discusses the actual practices of anthropologists as they approach and enter the field. And this is the key purpose of this text.
At the heart of the book lie interviews with more than 20 anthropologists. In each interview, they recount their experiences of fieldwork, specifically addressing a series of questions. These questions are revealing (they are listed in appendix, p. 155). Each was asked about their initial ideas, the role of serendipity, mistakes, participant observation, recording of notes etc. From these structured interviews, Okely draws out a detailed discussion of the practices of anthropology. In the second chapter (“Choice or change of topic”), she presents numerous stories from her interviewees. Each underlines a simple adage: research plans rarely survive first contact with the field. Subsequent chapters turn to the theme of participant observation and to a defence of the practice against critiques and alternatives. In particular, Okely argues that the separation of body and mind is unhelpful in thinking about research. As scientists recognise more and more, the researcher is not simply detached or objective. Surveys and interviews have their place, but they have significant drawbacks. Learning through participation, bodily developing an understanding of the craft in an activity or practice open up perspectives not available using other instruments. The anthropologist's research instruments are her body and her senses. Readers of this journal will be comfortable with these ideas and will readily connect Okely's arguments with those found elsewhere. But we are then treated to a succession of chapters (“Participant observation examples”, “Fieldwork embodied” and “Specificities and reciprocity”) that draw again on the interviews to unravel the dilemmas and delights of bodily engaging in fieldwork. Much like the example I refer to above, these offer the prospect of detailed discussion and reflection. Indeed, much as good fieldwork and ethnographies should, they amuse and revolt, puzzle and inspire.
Much of the book consists of quotations from these interviews. At times, these are lengthy and, while they reinforce each other, there are times when we need to stand back a little from the stories they tell. That having been said, interviews offer valuable insight and advice. I can envisage drawing on the stories as the foundation for extended discussion in a seminar setting. By way of example, there is much to be taken from one simple story from Helena Wulff about work among teenagers in south London (p. 94). Mucking about in a closed public swimming pool, they were interrupted by the police. Helena runs with the boys, recalling that she would have one phone call if arrested. But there was also the concern that her visa did not specify this as the purpose of her stay. This opens up questions about being and staying in the field. Responding by running with the boys proved she had “guts”. But running avoided difficult questions from the police at the same time. The story is apparently simple. Yet it prompts reflection on a number of issues. I too find myself often in similar situations that might require me to react/respond in a way that could open up or close down my access to the field. I too ask myself how would I respond or if I have I thought through the implications of my choices.
This is not, then, a textbook for training in the manner that is familiar in other fields. Rather, it seeks to encourage what Willis (2000) might call the “ethnographic imagination”. And it complements van Maanen's (2011) Tales of the Field, a work that explores the forms of writing that emerge from the fieldwork so well explored by Okely and her respondents.
However, there is one aspect of the book that will irk some readers. In places, the two elements of this book do not fit well together. We have a rich exploration of the practices of anthropologists that is interspersed with an on-going debate about its value as opposed to a more positivist version of sociology. But this positivist sociology is, in places, set up as a straw man to knock down. For example, “Unlike the sociologist, the anthropologist could not take much as given” (p. 17). And later, “Extended participant observation has been misleadingly constructed by some sociologists as a commitment to a stigmatized naturalism […]” (p. 81). And “Just as participant observation has been caricatured incorrectly as naive naturalism, so its emergent material risks being denigrated as producing the “merely anecdotal” (p. 82). It would be desirable to have a little more precision, not least about the sociologists she refers to, if nothing else for fear of offending those sociologists who might want to understand better the practice of anthropology Okely advocates. While the work is intended to help think about the practice of fieldwork and is, to a degree, aimed at those already embarked on this path, it might also usefully address a wider audience less familiar with or convinced by anthropology. To do so, a more deliberate and considered engagement with the sociologists with whom she so clearly disagrees would perhaps help extend the reach of this work, for it is one that deserves a readership beyond the narrow world of those for whom the ideas immediately resonate.
