Facets of Fieldwork

Essays in Honor of Jürg Wassmann. Edited by Alexis Th. von Poser and Anita von Poser. With a Foreword by Meinhard Schuster.

This Festschrift in honor of Jürg Wassmann compiles 16 essays about ethnographic fieldwork which bear witness to the diversity of experiences possible in this classic method in social and cultural anthropology. Following the academic life-course of an anthropologist, the contributions to this volume speak of personal and/or professional moments in the field. They shed light on different approaches to the field, of research over long distances or long periods of time, of research in unexpected areas or with surprising interdisciplinary agendas. It becomes clear that fieldwork is far from becoming a redundant or old-fashioned tool in the methodological canon of the discipline - through its multitude of facets it remains central and authoritative for the empiricist approach in anthropology. - Contents: Markus Schindlbeck: 'Taim Bipo'. The Quest for the Past by the Members of the Basel Sepik Expedition 1972-1974. - Patrick F. Gesch: Thinking Along the Same Lines. Varieties of Initiation and Varieties of Fieldwork in Sepik and Madang. - Gunter Senft: The Coral Gardens are Losing Their Magic. The Social and Cultural Impact of Climate Change and Overpopulation for the Trobriand Islanders. - Antje Denner: Group Dialogues, Videos and Multilocality in Researching Rituals. - Stephanie Walda-Mandel: "I didn't know that there were other worlds out there." Inside a Multi-Sited Ethnography. - Anita von Poser: "Houses Jumbled Everywhere?" Visions of a 'Village' in Papua New Guinea. - Hermann Mückler: The Chase for Archival Material and Biographical Information in the 'Field' of Archives. Remarks about a Research Project, carried out in Chile, Rapanui and Other Places. - Raymond Ammann: References to Time and Space in Melanesian Music. - Don Niles/Edward Gende: The Early Field and Commercial Recordings of Kuman Music. Research Using Repatriated Music in Papua New Guinea, and Recent Threats to Cultural Diversity. - Angella Meinerzag: Foreign Confidants. A Field Diary Narrative. - Shahnaz R. Nadjmabadi: Endangered Fields. Experiencing Anthropological Research in Iran. - Verena Keck: Exchanging Anthropological Knowledge. A University Partnership Program between Madang and Heidelberg. - Alexis Th. von Poser: The Restitution of a Carving Pattern to Kayan, Papua New Guinea. - Svenja Völker: Challenges and Profits of Interdisciplinary Fieldwork in Linguistic and Cognitive Anthropology. - Pierre R. Dasen: The Trouble of Having a Psychologist Sharing Fieldwork. - Joachim Funke: "Just Plain Folks". Anthropology Meets Psychology. - XI,299 Seiten mit 19 Abb., broschiert (Heidelberg Studies in Pacific Anthropology; Vol. 6/Universitätsverlag Winter 2017)