The Shadow Side of Fieldwork Exploring the Blurred Borders between Ethnography and Life

The Shadow Side of Fieldwork draws attention to typically hidden or unacknowledged aspects of ethnographic research that nevertheless shape knowledge, texts, and methodologies. These are the invisible, unspoken, elusive, and mysterious areas where life and research overlap, private experiences and formal ethnography blur, and research boundaries seem to dissolve.Containing essays by such varied luminaries as Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Vincent Crapanzano, this book penetrates the many shadows in ethnographic field encounters. The authors recount personal and professional challenges that lead them to confront the complex sources or paradoxical nature of their insights. By turning attention to the shadow sides of fieldwork and thoroughly exploring what they find there, the writers, as responsible researchers, hope to deepen confidence in ethnographic knowledge. The Shadow Side of Fieldwork helps students and scholars to understand the submerged influences inherent in their research, and is essential reading for anyone involved in ethnographic fieldwork.

Athena McLean is Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, Central Michigan University. Dr. McLean’s research has focused on processes of knowledge production and contestation in the areas of aging and psychiatry. She has particular interests in dementia care and advocacy movements in mental health and aging. Her writings include 'Contradictions in the Social Production of Clinical Knowledge: The Case of Schizophrenia', in Social Science and Medicine (1990), and The Person in Dementia: A Study of Nursing Home Care in the U.S. (2007).

Annette Leibing is an anthropologist with research interests in psychiatry, aging (especially Alzheimer), medications, and new medical technologies (such as stem cells). She has taught anthropology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and been a visiting professor in Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University (2002–05). She is Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Montreal. Her latest book, co-edited with Lawrence Cohen, is Thinking about Dementia: Culture, Loss, and the Anthropology of Senility (2006).