Trainer: Markus Rudolfi
Language: English
Participants: max. 12 persons
Credit Points: acknowledged with 0,25 CP for the research-related training of RUB-RS Certificate
Imagine you find yourself in a big city in a foreign country, or in a small village in the mountains. Your research is all planned and set from home. But now, the bus doesn’t go, the people don’t speak the official language, and the appointments you made from home, do not seem to materialize. For such cases, no handbook will serve you as a good companion that shows you the tricks for dealing with such unpredictable situations. However, by being aware of the possibilities that such disconcerting moments may be faced whenever you conduct fieldwork, it is possible to learn to manage such situations well. What at first seems to be only failures can through careful consideration turn out to tell you a lot about your research object and the conditions in which it exists.
This course introduces its participants to the theoretical and practical challenges of fieldwork. Across disciplines, researchers encounter similar struggles of how to navigate unknown social, discursive and material contexts. Drawing on the experiences of several generations of fieldwork, the course will provide practical advice through exemplary case studies that efficiently prepare for the challenges of potential events and crises before, during and after the field visit.
The aim is to make students ready for a field visit and train their sensitivity for conducting and managing fieldwork. This happens collaboratively, through discussions about possible techniques for getting access to respective field sites, for controlling one’s own way of interacting with people in the field, for becoming aware of the complex situations in which note taking is important, for framing the contexts in which data is being gathered, or for how to process and check the quality of your data once you “got” it. The course requires methodical knowledge in the respective field as the discussions will be rather about method and methodology and provides a way of thinking beyond methodical standards.
Recommended literature:
Okely, J. (2007). Fieldwork Embodied. The Sociological Review, 55(1_suppl), 65–79. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2007.00693.x
Pollard, A. (2009): Field of screams: difficulty and ethnographic fieldwork. Anthropology Matters, 11 (2), oct. 2009, 1-24. https://www.anthropologymatters.com/index.php/anth_matters/article/view/10
Trainer:
Markus Rudolfi holds a BA in sociology (major) and psychology and an MA in sociology. He is researcher at the chair Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main at the Institute for Sociology.
