Aah – it’s almost that time of the year again! Namely the time when many anthropologists sheds their boring ‘everyday’ selves and reconnect with the ethnographer, the fieldworker lurking within!
The joy of it all: the update of the fieldwork diary, the follow-up interview with a long lost informant, the hypothesis that feels so much more mature today than in the previous round. The satisfaction of being back where it all matters – a sensation not totally unlike that caused by the first puff of a smoke for someone breaking her cigarette strike once again (or so we imagine).
Or perhaps it’s the enthusiasm of the first-timer – the sheer excitement of being finally face to face with one’s own people, one’s chosen phenomenon, culture, field! Seeing ‘the house’ for the first time, hearing the language that one has diligently studied – discovering the ritual that one has only read of in action.
No matter what the details, we’re fascinated! Thus we invite you, once again, to share your fieldnotes with us! Is it just an AVMoFA entry that you want to send our way – a plush toy dog or perhaps a syringe with a short accompanying text, or something else relevant to your field? Perhaps you too want to share some caffeinated gossip with us, or remind us, again: what is it like to do fieldwork with children?!
Whatever it is, CONTACT US BY MAY 15!
Contact us at at things(at)allegralaboratory.net with your fieldwork diary proposals along with a short description of your project and your profile along with a sketch of what you want to send us. We are overjoyed to receive either individual fieldwork posts or series of up to 3 posts of max 2500 words each. We’ll gladly share references to fieldblogs of your own (and if you haven’t set one up yet, we strongly encourage you to do so!)
Refracted Moments by Dennis Mojado
What will we do for you in return, we hear/imagine you asking? As always, we promise to deliver an Allegra-pretty layout either with your own images or those accompanied with a creative commons –license. And since we reserve no copy-right of any sort over anything appearing on our dear website, you are free to re-post your fieldnotes wherever you wish – on another website, or even a bathroom wall, if that’s your fancy (although of course we hope that you’ll always provide the link to the original Allegra post).
And yes, as you’ve come to expect from us: we’ll spread the happy news of your fieldwork to the world via our social media, via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and what-not.
As always, it is our sincere pride and joy to be disseminating anthropological gospel to the world – and what better way to celebrate all the fantastic stuff that our beloved discipline has to offer than by sharing some glimpses of what we actually do, ‘out there’, ‘in here’, and ‘wherever’!
We’ll be waiting!
All of Allegra’s previous fieldnotes can be found here. The same link features also fieldnotes by your devoted moderators: Miia Halme-Tuomisaari’s fieldnotes on her work at the UN Human Rights Committee are here, and Julie Billaud’s fieldnotes on contemporary Islamic legal culture in the UK here.
