You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
“What, in short, does fieldwork do to the fieldworker?” (Clarke, 1975, p. 96).
This paper belongs to a series of studies (Wengle, 1983, 1984a) in which I have been attempting to develop and illustrate a theoretical model designed to elucidate certain psychological ramifications of fieldwork on anthropologists. In this paper, I will be principally concerned with the analysis of Malinowski's (1967) field experience, as reported in his diaries, in relation to my general theory.
In this section, I will briefly outline the content of the model mentioned above. It is to be understood that this is only a summary presentation; for more complete details and elaborations the original publications should be consulted.
When anthropologists have thought about fieldwork, they appear to recognize it, either implicitly or explicitly, as a rite of passage (Alland, 1975). According to Van Gennep (1960), such a rite “accompanies every change of place, state, social position and age” (p. 10) of an individual. Each rite of passage, when analyzed structurally, can be broken down into three subphases: separation, transition, and reintegration. The stage of separation is characterized by symbolic gestures, observances, et cetera that indicate to the wider society that