Young Huli girls of Papua New Guinea dressed for traditional dance

Imagine you wanted to understand how tourism had affected gender relations in Huli culture.

1. What would you do to prepare yourself for the fieldwork?

2. What would you do when you got there?

3. How would you structure your research and what would you do when you got back?

FIELDWORK

“Imagine yourself suddenly set down surrounded by all your gear on a tropical beach close to a native village while the launch or dinghy which has brought you sails away out of sight….Imagine yourself then, making your first entry into the village….Some natives flock around you, especially if they smell tobacco” (Malinowski 1922)

kitchen in a local house

special dinner for a visitor

“I looked up and gasped when I saw a dozen burley, naked, sweaty, hideous men staring at us down the shafts of their drawn arrows! I am not ashamed to admit that had there been a diplomatic way out, I would have ended my fieldwork then and there….I wondered why I ever decided to switch from physics and engineering in the first place. “Chagnon 1983

Mt Hagen

Local street

General store

The market

BEFORE YOU GO1. Funding

2. Health Precautions

3. Language

4. Personal Affairs

5. Authorization/Permission

6. Research – Group and Topic

CONDUCTING FIELDWORK

1. Establish Rapport

2. Find an “Informant”

3. Learn Language

4. Take notes, photograph, conduct census, interview, analyze documents, case histories

5. Participate and Observe

“to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world”. Malinowski 1922

What is the goal of Fieldwork?

Stages of Field Research1. Selecting a Research Problem

2. Formulating a Research Design

3. Collecting the Data

4. Analyzing the Data

5. Interpreting the Data

6. Present the Results