Leaving the field: Methodological insights from ethnographic exits
Leaving the field: Methodological insights from ethnographic exits
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Abstract
This book is concerned with a central, yet overlooked, aspect of ethnographic fieldwork: leaving the field. Despite some useful treatments being available, this collection provides a current and critical sustained engagement with the practices, problems and possibilities of leaving the field. The collection generates methodological insights through the examination of a range of exits from a variety of contexts. The tales from leaving the field cover planned ‘good’ exits; abrupt and unwelcome exits where the researcher is forced to leave the field or, indeed, the field leaves them; ‘bad’ exits with a lingering legacy; partial exits and returns; and cases where the research, the researcher and the field are entangled to the extent where leaving becomes impossible. The chapters – written by an international and interdisciplinary group of fieldworkers, at different stages of their careers – are not intended to reduce leaving the field to a series of recommendations or programmatic steps but, instead, report from ethnographic exits in order to critically investigate, trouble and even subvert established notions of field relations, exit strategies and even ‘the field’ itself.
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Front Matter
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Leaving the field: an editors’ introduction
Sara Delamont andRobin James Smith
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Part I Entanglements and im/perfect exits
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1
Finishing fieldwork in less than perfect circumstances: lessons learned in ‘labyrinth’ exiting
Alexandra Allan andSarah Cole
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2
Exeunt omnes!! The case for bad exits in ethnography
Sally Campbell Galman
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3
Reflections on care and attachment in the ‘departure lounge’ of ethnography
Alex McInch andHarry C.R. Bowles
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4
Unfinished business: a reflection on leaving the field
Gareth M. Thomas
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5
Materia erotica: making-love among glassblowers
Erin O’Connor
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1
Finishing fieldwork in less than perfect circumstances: lessons learned in ‘labyrinth’ exiting
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Part II Troubling the field
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6
Those who never leave us
Jessica Nina Lester andAllison Daniel Anders
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7
Déjà vu et jamais vu: what happens when the field expands in ways that mean there is no exit?
Dawn Mannay
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8
Student voices ‘echo’ from the ethnographic field
Janean Robinson and others
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9
Public space and visible poverty: research fields without exit
Andrew P. Carlin
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10
‘The martial will never leave your bones’: embodying the field of the Kung Fu family
George Jennings
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6
Those who never leave us
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Part III Intermissions and returns
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11
Between open and closed: recursive exits and returns to the fuzzy field of a community library across a decade of austerity
Alice Corble
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12
On the importance of intermissions in ethnographic fieldwork: lessons from leaving New York
Joe Williams
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13
Can you remember? Leaving and returning to the field in longitudinal research with people living with dementia
Andrew Clark andSarah Campbell
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14
A constant apprenticeship in martial arts: the messy longitudinal dynamics of never leaving the field
David Calvey
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11
Between open and closed: recursive exits and returns to the fuzzy field of a community library across a decade of austerity
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Part IV Returns, responsibilities and representations after ‘leaving’
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15
A cautionary tale about ‘respondent validation’: the dissonant meeting of ‘field self’ and ‘author self’
Daniel Burrows
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16
Commenting on legal practice: research relationships and the impact of criticism
Daniel Newman
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17
Emotional honesty and reflections on problematic positionalities when conducting research in another country
Ashley Rogers
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15
A cautionary tale about ‘respondent validation’: the dissonant meeting of ‘field self’ and ‘author self’
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End Matter
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