Death and rebirth in fieldwork: a case study.
Cultural anthropologists have spent a great deal of time and effort analyzing rites of passage among small-scale tribal peoples. They have devoted considerably less effort however to the study of their own principal rite of passage, the experience of fieldwork. In a series of earlier studies (Wengle 1983, 1984, 1986), the author has explored certain psychological changes that anthropologists experience while doing fieldwork. In this paper, I provide (1) a description of the subjective meaning of fieldwork conceived as a rite of passage and (2) an illustration of the major themes contained in this description through an analysis of a recently published personal account of fieldwork (Cesara 1982).
D000884:Anthropology, Cultural / Q000379:methods; D003643:Death; D004532:Ego; D005086:Existentialism; D005783:Gender Identity; D006803:Human Development; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D007063:Identity Crisis; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D013561:Symbolism