Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork

By Clare L. Stacey and John Fenn

A comprehensive review of the ethnographic process for developing a project, implementing the plan, and completing and preserving the data collected.

In Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork, readers will find a detailed methodology for conducting different types of fieldwork such as digital ethnography or episodic research, tips and tricks for key elements like budgeting and funding, and practical advice and examples gleaned from the authors own fieldwork experiences. This handbook also helps fieldworkers fully grasp and understand the ways in which power, gender, ethnicity, and other identity categories are ever present in fieldwork, and guides students to think through these dynamics at each stage of research. Written accessibly for lay researchers working in different mediums and on projects of varying size, this step-by-step manual will prepare the reader for the excitement, challenges, and rewards of ethnographic research.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9780253040282

Clare L. Stacey

Lisa Gilman is a folklorist who studies gender, performance, heritage, and politics in Malawi and Zambia. She teaches at George Mason University. She is the author (with John Fenn) of Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork; My Music, My War: The Listening Habits of U.S. Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; and The Dance of Politics: Performance, Gender, and Democratization in Malawi.

Book preview

Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork

HANDBOOK FOR FOLKLORE AND ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FIELDWORK

LISA GILMAN AND JOHN FENN

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

© 2019 by Lisa Gilman and John Fenn

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-253-04025-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-253-04026-8 (ebook)

12345242322212019

To Anika and Nora

For bringing us joy by joining in our adventures and

helping us lug our gear!

CONTENTS

Accessing Supplemental Materials

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I | Preparing for the Field

1 | Defining Fieldwork

2 | Developing a Project

3 | Creating a Research Plan

4 | Organizing and Logistics

5 | Documenting and Technology

6 | Funding and Resources

Part II | In the Field

7 | Research Settings and Observation

8 | Participant Observation

9 | Interviewing

10 | Documentation

11 | Issues in the Field

Part III | After the Field

12 | Managing Data

13 | Coding, Analysis, and Representation

14 | Ethics and Final Products

15 | Preservation and Future Use

Conclusion: Just Say Yes!

Works Cited

Index

Accessing Supplemental Materials

Supplemental course materials are available for this volume and can be viewed online at https://www.iupress.indiana.edu/books/folkethnohandbook

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, we are grateful to each person who has welcomed us into their lives, generously invited us to activities and events, and patiently listened to our not always well-articulated probing questions. Over the course of more than two decades of fieldwork we have done, it has been the participants in our projects who have been our teachers. By doing fieldwork we continue to learn how to do it. We also acknowledge all of our students over the years—teaching and guiding you through your many projects has expanded the breadth of our perspectives far beyond what any one fieldworker could experience in a lifetime.

Thank you to the anonymous reviewers whose detailed and concrete feedback has greatly strengthened the project. We appreciate Indiana University Press’s director, Gary Dunham, for recognizing the need for this handbook, and are much indebted to editor Janice Frisch for her clear and careful guidance throughout the process.

Most important, we are thankful for our patient and adventurous daughters. They have joined us on so many fieldwork excursions—sometimes coerced, sometimes enthusiastically. Having two folklorist/ethnomusicologist parents must have benefits as well as challenges. Know that you have enhanced not only our lives but also our research.

Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork

INTRODUCTION

THIS HANDBOOK PROVIDES AN OVERVIEW of fieldwork approaches relevant to folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and those in allied fields who explore artistic and communicative practices as they manifest in lived social environments. Recognizing that folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and others utilize multiple research strategies—including but not limited to archival and library research, literary analysis, and quantitative surveys—our focus is explicitly ethnographic fieldwork methods and not these other approaches. This handbook should be most useful for students and researchers whose methods involve engaging directly with the participants who produce and consume the cultural materials they are studying, and it is expected that many users will combine field methods with some of the others listed.

In as much as they are distinct, folklore and ethnomusicology share a great deal in their foci, theoretical frameworks, and methodological strategies. The authors consider themselves to be at the intersection of the two overlapping fields, and we have targeted this handbook accordingly. Folklorists and ethnomusicologists often study some type of creative culture as it occurs in contemporary life, attending to the processes and contexts of artistic engagement in interaction with the creators and their products. While there are many valuable textbooks about ethnographic methods produced by cultural anthropologists and those working in other disciplines, this volume adds to these resources with its explicit emphasis on how to do fieldwork about the arts and other forms of creative activity with attention to the contexts for and processes of their production, reception, distribution, and preservation.

Our objective is to provide guidance about methodological strategies and skills, which are important in the planning and execution of research projects, and in working with field data afterward. We also address theoretical and methodological issues integral to the ethnographic enterprise, such as positionality, ethics, representation, intellectual property, and reciprocity. Additionally, we provide guidance on preparing materials for archiving and preservation—steps that start during the planning and continue through the postfieldwork phase of research.

Our scope includes what typically has been the topic of folklore and ethnomusicology research methods guides—face-to-face research with individuals and communities who are involved in expressive culture. In as much as we value these methods as described in existing texts, most of which were published in the last decades of the twentieth century, we also recognize the need for a new text that addresses fieldwork in face-to-face as well as technologically mediated settings. Given the rapidity with which technology changes, any handbook about using technology in research will most likely be outdated by the time of publication. We therefore attempt to provide guidelines and ways of thinking that will be useful for the technologies current at the time of writing and applicable to new ones that emerge in the future.

Most existing guides on folklore and ethnomusicology fieldwork are intended to train future academics and provide research models based primarily on academic objectives and schedules. These generally assume that a researcher will spend extended amounts of time with a community in the field, often over multiple years, to gain deep intensive and extensive knowledge about the people and the cultural practices under study. These guides often also assume that the end products will be written descriptions and interpretations. Many professional folklorists and ethnomusicologists, however, do not work in academic settings. Rather, they work in the public sector or nonprofit environments where timelines tend to be shorter and research objectives more restricted and directed, thus necessitating a different approach to fieldwork. This handbook provides information valuable to those in academic and nonacademic settings and is adaptable to those doing research across professional and personal contexts and with diverse objectives.

This volume is relevant to those doing fieldwork in their home countries or in foreign countries, and in communities of which they are a part and those of which they are not. We provide information about research tools useful in different contexts and address some strategies and challenges of doing research in a variety of situations. We discuss how different types of relationships between researchers and the people that are the focus of a project can result in different types of research outcomes. Throughout, we have attempted to use gender neutral pronouns to the greatest extent possible.

The three parts represent three phases of fieldwork typical for many projects: Preparing for the Field, In the Field, and After the Field. In part I, Preparing for the Field, we cover the process of identifying a topic; creating a fieldwork plan; developing the intellectual, linguistic, cultural, and technological foundation necessary for successfully carrying out a project; potential ethical concerns; the practical details of preparing for research; and some of the bureaucratic details that often need attention prior to beginning field research.

Part II, In the Field, outlines strategies and issues associated with entering the field for the first time, making contact, establishing relationships with people, and developing research questions. It then introduces different methods available to fieldworkers, including collection, observation, participant observation, and interviewing. It also provides approaches for using a variety of documentation strategies, with an emphasis on the importance of gathering appropriate information in anticipation of depositing materials into archives after the conclusion of a project. Throughout is a discussion of ethical and other difficult issues that can arise during fieldwork.

Part III, After the Field, addresses what happens after one has completed the bulk of the fieldwork and is ready to work with research material to produce any number of research products. Some possibilities include an archival collection, class paper, thesis or dissertation, documentary, exhibit, podcast, radio program, or interactive website. We begin by exploring how to review and manage data, identify themes and code, and develop the process of analysis. We also address some of the ethical and legal issues that can arise in relationship to intellectual property, who gains from the research endeavor, and the politics of representation. We end by detailing ways to consider preservation of the data for long-term benefits, discussing practical steps involved as well as some of the social dimensions of where, how, and to whom to make materials accessible.

The arrangement of topics is not necessarily linear since much of what we describe occurs simultaneously or can take place in a variety of sequences during fieldwork. The book could be used as it is from beginning to end. Some readers will choose to read only select bits, and others may want to structure the chapters into a sequence that works for their needs. We have organized information into relatively short focused chapters to enable readers to easily access information about specific topics and to reorder as desired. Some readers will find this volume useful in and of itself. Others, especially those teaching courses, leading workshops, or running training sessions, could combine this handbook with other texts that provide more in-depth information about different phases of the research process, elaborate on the theoretical foundation of much of what we discuss, or address disciplinary-specific strategies or issues.

Throughout we include suggested exercises. They are framed for classroom use and assume that an instructor and students will be the participants. The exercises are equally useful for workshops, training sessions, or other nonclassroom settings. They can be adapted or used as inspiration for other types of skill-building opportunities. For those reading the book individually, we recommend reflecting on the exercises privately and doing some of the activities with friends or family members.

Fieldwork is based in social interaction, and fieldwork experiences are often as varied, unpredictable, and messy as life itself. Neither of the authors have ever been involved in what we felt was perfect fieldwork. We have enjoyed our successes while also appreciating the process of continuing to develop research skills—always learning from moments of discomfort or times when we wished we had done things differently. We intend this handbook to be a guide useful for planning, structuring, and reflecting on the research process. Ultimately, it is the people involved in all capacities that shape the research experience and determine its outcomes. The authors have each had the opportunity to conduct different types of projects (academic and applied) in many types of communities (in the United States and abroad, and face-to-face and mediated). We have taught courses in face-to-face and digital fieldwork methods and have mentored students doing a wide range of different types of projects. We will share examples and reflections from our experiences, as relevant, and look forward to continuing to learn and expand our skills in the process of writing this book and receiving feedback after.

Bruce Jackson cogently writes in the introduction to Fieldwork:

Learning to do fieldwork is like learning to drive a car: you can be taught the techniques, but each utilization of the technique is a new creative moment, one absolutely specific to itself. You may know how to work the levers, buttons, and pedals of your car perfectly, but to get somewhere you must have your own plan of action and you must do the driving and deal with whatever impediments the world puts in your way as you go. You must bring to the task sensitivity and sensibility, factors very much beyond technique and technology. The same is true for fieldwork. (1987, 6)

This handbook provides plenty of detailed information about how to plan for and conduct ethnographic fieldwork, what to do with the materials amassed after, and how to think about and address a range of ethical and methodological issues. In the end, each fieldwork experience is unique, and we hope that this guide will be helpful as you create your plan of action and deal with whatever impediments the world puts in your way.

PART I

PREPARING FOR THE FIELD

ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK IS AN EXTENSION of what each of us does in our day-to-day lives as we learn how to be social and creative people through observations and interactions within the worlds we occupy. Most of what one does in fieldwork resonates with what we already know how to do: learn about something by spending time with people, observe what is going on around us, and ask questions while listening carefully to responses. Yet, adapting everyday life activities into research methods requires developing a level of awareness and set of skills that enables one to systematically gather, document, interpret, and present information.

Part I begins with an overview of folklore and ethnomusicology fieldwork and then addresses many details associated with preparing to do fieldwork. Chapter 1 presents some terms and concepts that are important to fieldwork processes and outcomes. Chapter 2 discusses how to identify potential fieldwork topics and the importance of developing the necessary knowledge base prior to entering the field. Chapter 3 emphasizes the importance of creating a proposal that clearly outlines the objectives and plan for the project. Fieldworkers may be required to submit such proposals to instructors, funders, employers, or research compliance officers. And most significantly, proposals serve as important guides and tracking devices during the fieldwork process.

In the final three chapters of part I, we shift our focus to the logistical details that are often necessary prior to beginning fieldwork. Chapter 4 addresses some institutional requirements that are typical for fieldwork projects, such as a university’s policies for conducting research with human subjects and some governments’ requirement that foreigners obtain clearance prior to conducting research in a country. We then discuss some practical issues around doing research in domestic versus international settings and between face-to-face versus digital realms.

Documentation is an integral part of the fieldwork process often requiring a certain degree of skill and careful consideration about equipment and accessory needs, and this is the topic of chapter 5. The final chapter in part I is chapter 6, a detailed discussion about resource considerations that covers some sources for funding and the types of expenses that fieldworkers should expect.

1

DEFINING FIELDWORK

THIS CHAPTER INTRODUCES SOME BASIC terms and concepts for the beginning fieldworker. It begins by explaining what ethnographic fieldwork involves by describing what is meant by the field, followed by a discussion of what kinds of people and cultural forms tend to be the focus of fieldwork projects. We consider the work by outlining the activities that are typical to this type of research. Folklorists and ethnomusicologists do fieldwork in a variety of settings and with varying relationships to organizations, establishments, and community groups. We present different types of institutional contexts for fieldwork and discuss the differences between individual and collaborative approaches. Human relationships are at the center of fieldwork, so we also consider various types of relationships between fieldworkers and the people they study.

What Is Ethnographic Fieldwork?

The method of fieldwork has been defined multiple ways by different scholars. For example, in Folklife and Fieldwork: An Introduction to Cultural Documentation, Stephen Winick and Peter Bartis explain that fieldwork is the difficult but rewarding work of recording firsthand observations and interviews with community experts (2016, 4). Similarly, in Casting Shadows in the Field: An Introduction, Timothy J. Cooley writes that fieldwork is the observational and experiential portion of the ethnographic process during which the ethnomusicologist engages living individuals in order to learn about music-culture (1997, 4). And Bruce Jackson explains in Fieldwork that he likes Everett C. Hughes’s 1960 definition: "Field work refers . . . to observation of people in situ; finding them where they are, staying with them in some role which, while acceptable to them, will allow both intimate observation of certain parts of their behavior, and reporting it in ways useful to social science but not harmful to those observed (1987, 7). Echoing these scholars, we conceive of ethnographic fieldwork as encompassing those research strategies based on direct involvement with the individuals and communities studied. The goal of fieldwork is to try to understand how people experience the world from their perspective—doing and experiencing similar activities in similar spaces with them will enable a fieldworker to develop a deep perspective on the lives and cultural practices of the people they study. Fieldwork takes many different shapes depending on the topic and objectives of the researcher and community members involved. Though the term community is a complex and contested term, we use it throughout this text for lack of a better term to refer generally to the networks of people involved in a specific folklore or musical form that is being studied. The ethnographic approach to fieldwork, often referred to as participant observation," is founded on the idea that a great deal can be learned about a community’s creative expressions by immersing oneself within the contexts in which the cultural practice being studied occurs. This usually involves developing relationships and spending significant time with the communities involved, while participating in and observing people’s engagement with the cultural form in its so-called natural context.

At the core of ethnographic research is the idea of cultural relativism: an understanding of cultural practices from the perspectives of the practitioners rather than through the interpretive lens of the fieldworker. In addition to participating in and observing a community or the cultural forms in action, more targeted information-gathering strategies are often used that vary depending on the research topic and objectives. Some common strategies include attending occasions where the cultural practice takes place, such as social gatherings, concerts, festivals, practice or instructional sessions, craft markets, or participating on social media sites; pursuing interviews with individuals or groups of participants and community members; conducting surveys; and documenting using textual, audio, and visual media. Library, internet, and archival research often complement fieldwork, and engagement with digital communities can constitute all or part of one’s fieldwork approach.

People do fieldwork with a number of objectives in mind, and they use the knowledge and materials they gather in a variety of ways. Some fieldwork is individually driven; the fieldworkers have the option of choosing a topic and can shape the project around their own interests and goals. Other fieldwork is done at the behest of an organization, company, instructor, or community, in which case the topic and objectives may be already determined. Some people enter the field with clearly delineated expectations about what they should learn and gather for a specific goal. Other projects are more open-ended. Depending on the goal, fieldwork can contribute to knowledge building, as in when someone does fieldwork because they are interested in learning about a community or cultural practice. Often, fieldwork supports some type of product: class assignment, documentation for an archive, master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation, museum exhibit, documentary video, podcast, multimedia online exhibit, school curriculum, festival, or radio show. In addition to or alternately, the goal might be advocacy or to produce some type of social change through action research. The desired outcome will necessarily influence how fieldworkers approach the project, what questions they seek to answer, how and what they document, and what they will do with the information after.

What Is the Field? What Is the Work?

Fieldwork is a compound word, suggesting that some kind of work is being done in a field. Multiple academic and professional fields employ the term, but in the context of folklore and ethnomusicology, field refers to the sites where cultural expression occurs or where people involved live and do a variety of activities. The work refers to the researcher going into that field to learn something about the people and cultural practices, as well as everything a researcher does before and after related to the project.

What is considered the field can vary greatly and is dependent on the type of project. Ethnomusicologists Marcia Herndon and Norma McLeod explain that a field may be a geographic area; a linguistic area; a particular village, town, city, suburb, or rural area (1983, 3). The field can refer to spaces, such as a geographic location, a digital platform, an institution, or according to some, a state of mind (see Kisliuk 1997). It can refer to events, such as concerts, festivals, family gatherings, or art markets. And, it can entail a community of people who are participants in any number of capacities, which could comprise anything from a family, set of friends, ethnic group, musical ensemble, artist collective, social media network, political association, occupational group, digital community, the population of a town or country, or an international network.

If one is doing research about a family’s holiday traditions, the field could involve spending time with individuals in a variety of activities in different locales relevant to the holiday as well as potentially interviewing participants in spaces unrelated to the practice. In this case, the field could include the home where a holiday is celebrated, the grocery store where special foods are purchased, the coffee shop where a family member is interviewed, the website where cooks find recipes, and the social media site where members share images of their holidays to a disparate audience. Some projects have a single focused field site, while others have multiple ones. Those doing research on a musical tradition might choose to focus their project on a single practitioner or physical site, whereas someone else might select to research in several communities where the music is practiced. Such choices emerge from, and produce, different perspectives.

Figure 1.1. Gilman’s students from Mzuzu University posing during a field trip during which they learned fieldwork methods. Malawi, 2013. Photo by Lisa Gilman.

Fieldworkers’ relationship to the field varies. The field can be in their own backyard if they do research within a community of which they are already a part or that is nearby. It can be in other locations either within the region and country in which the fieldworker lives or a foreign one. Where the field is will necessarily shape the kind of preparation required and methods used, as will be elaborated on in chapters 4 to 6.

The work refers to what one does in the field, the methods used to research or gather information. It also extends beyond the field with regard to assessing materials gathered and preparing them for preservation or future use. The work can include spending time with people engaged in a practice or a location where it’s happening, engaging in the practice, having informal conversations about a topic, conducting more formal directed interviews, attending events, and reading news or social media coverage of them. One of the most valuable components of the work or methods in folklore and ethnomusicology is the documentation of folklore and music practice that is part of the information gathering process. Folklorists and ethnomusicologists record multiple aspects of social life, often using combinations of textual, audio, and visual media. We will elaborate on cultural documentation in chapters 5 and 10.

The People

Fieldwork is ultimately research with people and can include those involved in folklore or ethnomusicological practice in a myriad of capacities. In her 1993 article, Power and the Ritual Genres: American Rodeo, folklorist Beverly Stoeltje suggests that when doing fieldwork on rituals, folklorists should attend to (1) form, (2) production, the organization of forces, energies, and materials that constitute the actual production, and (3) the discourse that surrounds them (1993, 141). Though each person will plan fieldwork based on what is most productive and appropriate for their topic of study, Stoeltje’s framework is useful for thinking about whom might be worth spending time with when doing research. Below are some of the types of participants that may be useful to consider:

•The practitioners—for example the musicians, artists, joke tellers, or cooks

•Consumers or audience members

•The people involved in instruction or learning

•Those involved in or invested in organizing opportunities for the practice to occur

•Those knowledgeable about the history of the practice

•The people buying or selling or otherwise making money from the practice

•Individuals who have strong opinions about the practice: its legitimacy, value, and whether or how it should be practiced or continued

•Those producing the discourse about the practice, which could include those involved in informal conversations, journalists, bloggers, or scholars

Exercise

Can be done individually, in small groups of two to three, or with a single large group.

1.Identify a category of folklore or musical practice that would be interesting to research.

2.Brainstorm what fields could be appropriate for doing fieldwork on this topic.

3.What kinds of methods or work could be productive?

4.Which types of participants could be relevant?

Fieldwork Situations

Fieldwork can provide effective methods for people researching in a variety of contexts with a wide range of goals. Here, we discuss a variety of settings and briefly consider how these impact planning and design.

The Individual Researcher in an Academic Setting

Individuals who do research for academic goals often have a great deal of autonomy in selecting a topic and field setting. They often enjoy the flexibility of changing topics, settings, or timelines in relationship to their personal goals and to what is happening on the ground. Despite this autonomy, they usually operate within certain restrictions as dictated by their personal situations, their field or discipline of study, or institutional demands or policies. The model of the individual in the field is the one most commonly assumed in most ethnographic field methods guides.

Collaboration

All fieldwork, whether academic or applied, is inherently collaborative because it involves the participation of multiple people who together make the project possible. Even in the individual model, the success of the research is dependent on the participation and collaboration of those in the fieldwork setting. A fieldworker doing research on an Irish music scene by attending events, spending time with participants, and interviewing performers relies on access to the events and on participants welcoming the researcher and being willing to be interviewed. And, they might rely on participants collaborating by providing their own perspectives and assessment, which contribute to the researcher’s analysis.

Some contemporary fieldworkers feel that collaboration should be the basis for all fieldwork and that the topic and goals of a project should always be conceived collaboratively by a community and the fieldworkers. Rina Benmayor, for example, promotes the philosophy that investigation should be structured in ways that privilege reciprocity and mutual ‘returns’ among community members and researchers (1991, 160). Rather than an individual selecting a project on their own that they introduce to participants, the community itself should conceive of the research topic, and objectives should be developed collaboratively. And most importantly, participants should benefit from the process and outcomes of a project. This approach is common among academic and applied researchers and is often a central tenet of projects done in the public interest. The mission of many public folklore organizations, for example, is to work directly with communities in ways that support cultural sustainability. Community objectives often shape approaches to sustainability, and fieldwork can assist by providing rich documentation used to support grant applications or contribute to interpretive exhibitions.

Collaboration also can mean two or more fieldworkers working together on a project. Because social interaction and artistic practice is inherently subjective, integrating the perspectives of multiple people in the research design can produce a more nuanced outcome. As will be elaborated throughout the handbook, a fieldworker’s own identity and their relationship to the cultural community will have an impact on their access to research opportunities and their understanding of what happened. Research teams that integrate people with a variety of relationships to the group and topic—in other words, people who are insiders and outsiders and people who have a range of different identities across such factors as age, gender, knowledge of the practice, and so on—can be especially exciting and can produce deep and detailed outcomes. Collaboration is especially useful for projects drawing on a range of skills. For example, a project intending to produce an exhibit might require people with expertise in conducting participant observation fieldwork, producing high-quality recordings of performances or interview data, taking dynamic photographs, and designing the physical or virtual exhibit. A team that includes a photographer, sound recorder, and skilled interviewer would be ideal for the successful completion of the project (see Lassiter 2005).

Exercise

1.Divide into small groups of three to four people.

2.Identity a possible fieldwork topic.

3.Discuss the pros and cons of an individual versus team approach:

•What would be the benefits of pursuing this project as an individual?

•What would be the benefits of pursuing this project as a team?

•What roles could different members of the team play?

4.What types of collaboration would be valuable for the success of this project, regardless of whether it was conducted by an individual or by a team?

Working within the Parameters of an Institution

A fieldworker’s relationship to organizations (e.g., universities,