It is commonly acknowledged that anthropologists use personal experiences to inform their writing. However, it is often assumed that only fieldwork experiences are relevant and that the personal appears only in the form of self-reflexivity. This book takes a step beyond anthropology at home and auto-ethnography and shows how anthropologists can include their memories and experiences as ethnographic data in their writing. It discusses issues such as authenticity, translation and ethics in relation to the self, and offers a new perspective on doing ethnographic fieldwork.

It is commonly acknowledged that anthropologists use personal experiences to inform their writing. However, it is often assumed that only fieldwork experiences are relevant and that the personal appears only in the form of self-reflexivity. This book takes a step beyond anthropology at home and auto-ethnography and shows how anthropologists can include their memories and experiences as ethnographic data in their writing. It discusses issues such as authenticity, translation and ethics in relation to the self, and offers a new perspective on doing ethnographic fieldwork.

Prologue
Peter Collins and Anselma Gallinat

Chapter 1. The Ethnographic Self as Resource: an Introduction
Peter Collins and Anselma Gallinat

PART I: BEING SELF AND OTHER: ANTHROPOLOGISTS AT HOME

Chapter 2. Playing the Native Card: the Anthropologist as Informant in Eastern Germany
Anselma Gallinat

Chapter 3. Foregroundingthe Self in Fieldwork among Rural Women in Croatia
Lynette Sikic-Micanovic

Chapter 4. Some Reflections on the ‘Enchantments’ of Village Life, or Whose Story is This?
Anne Kathrine Larsen

Chapter 5. The Ethics of Participant Observation: Personal Reflections on Fieldwork in England
Nigel Rapport

PART II: WORKING ON/WITH/THROUGH MEMORY

Chapter 6. Ethnographers as Language Learners: From Oblivion and Towards an Echo
Alison Phipps

Chapter 7. Leading Questions and Body Memories: a Case of Phenomenology and Physical Ethnography in the Dance Interview
Jonathan Skinner

Chapter 8. Dualling Memories: Twinship and the Disembodiment of Identity
Dona Lee Davis and Dorothy I. Davis

Chapter 9. Remembering and the Ethnography of Children’s Sports
Noel Dyck

Chapter 10. Gardening in Time: Happiness and Memory in American Horticulture
Jane Nadel-Klein

PART III: ETHNOGRAPHIC SELVES THROUGH TIME

Chapter 11. The Role of Serendipity and Memory in Experiencing Fields
Tamara Kohn

Chapter 12. Serendipities, Uncertainties and Improvisations in Movement and Migration
Vered Amit

Chapter 13. On Remembering and Forgetting in Writing and Fieldwork
Simon Coleman

Chapter 14. The Ethnographic Self as Resource?
Peter Collins

Chapter 15. Epilogue: What a Story we Anthropolgists Have to Tell!
James W. Fernandez

Notes on Contributors
Index