Three Ways of Being in the Field
This article analyses three ways of being in the field adopted by anthropologists according to their understanding of the discipline. This analysis thus presents a brief history of conceptions of intersubjectivity manifest in the evolution of fieldwork practices over the past sixty years. In the structuralist tradition the researcher creates for himself a scientific self that enables him to grasp what he observes in a manner which is beyond the grasp of people met in the field. In the interpretive tradition the researcher deems his fieldwork successful according to his ability to distance himself from his own « fictions » to identify and analyze those in terms of which others live. Finally, in the experiential tradition, the investigator consents to a deeper intercultural experience on which to base his ethnographic knowledge. From one historical period we demonstrate that increasing degrees of participation in the lifeworld of others lead to new kinds of ethnography.