Fieldwork necessarily causes some degree of psychological stress for an ethnographer, although the nature and consequences of such stress vary individually. Rather than lament or conceal that fact, I suggest that an ethnographer’s idiosyncratic responses can provide particular insights. To illustrate the point, I consider what might have induced me, and perhaps others, to take on the necessarily disorienting role of an ethnographer. I then contrast my experience (as a middle-aged Western anthropologist) of a meditation retreat in Burma with my experience (as a recently divorced bisexual man) of a naked men’s yoga retreat in Texas. These brief vignettes are intended to suggest that my specific personal conflicts alert me to matters of more general anthropological interest.
目次
Abstract 80 Keywords 80 Language Study as Fieldwork Mock-Up 82 Fieldwork’s Trials, and My Own 83 A Viscous Self 84 Ethnographic Encounters 86 A Buddhist Meditation Retreat 86 A Men’s Naked Yoga Retreat 90 Autonomy, Attachment, and Sex 93 Autoethnography and Me 94 Conclusion: The Psyche as Baggage or Tool 95 Acknowledgments 97 Notes 98 References 100
