Uncertainty and unlikely tasks

About fieldnotes and ethnographic experience

Authors

  • Javier Ovidio Serrano Universidad Nacional de Río Negro

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17561/rae.v20.01

Keywords:

Ethnographic experience, Fieldwork, Field notebook, Diary, Intimate style

Abstract

Anthropology is a discipline that constantly examines and questions its own bases. Since the 1980s anthropologists began to review the effects of their presence in the field, as well as the implications behind their writings. This paper reflects on ethnographic fieldwork and focuses on one of the specific ways in which ethnographers make notes during field researchs: field notebooks. In contrast to the diary and the final texts that are presented to the reader, the first notes written in notebook are manifestly precarious or rudimentary. However, we will defend that they have important methodological implications. At the same time they allow to clarify the ethnographic experience.

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Author Biography

  • Javier Ovidio Serrano, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro

    Profesor investigador asociado en la Universidad Nacional de Río Negro. Doctor en Antropología.

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Published

2020-04-12

How to Cite

Serrano, J. O. (2020). Uncertainty and unlikely tasks : About fieldnotes and ethnographic experience. Antropología Experimental, 20, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.17561/rae.v20.01