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The Lifespan of Ethnographic Reports: The Predicament of Returns to the Field
Author(s) -
Shokeid Moshe
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1111/anhu.12268
Subject(s) - ethnography , immigration , borough , judaism , sociology , perspective (graphical) , lesbian , gender studies , emigration , work (physics) , anthropology , history , archaeology , mechanical engineering , artificial intelligence , computer science , engineering
Summary Only a minority among our colleagues enjoy the opportunity to revisit their earlier fieldwork sites, reviewing their initial observations and research conclusions. This paper presents the researcher’s experience witnessing the dramatic social transformations that have taken place owing to internal and external processes, in three fieldwork sites over twenty to thirty years. The subjects of his ethnographic monographs: Moroccan Jewish immigrants in an Israeli farming community; Israeli emigrants in the Borough of Queens; the gay and lesbian synagogue in New York City. These evolutionary changes, unconceivable during the studied period but inevitable aftereffects of most ethnographic projects, present a reality that anthropologists rarely consider in their work and teaching. Expanding ethnographic perspective involves a more sensitive assessment of fieldwork records considering the mutability of ethnographic observations and conclusions.