Friends in the Field: Hall of Fame Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

Dear Ethnographers, Cultural Producers, and Artifact Collectors,

I've been meaning to finish and share this post for a while, but life has been enormously all-consuming this year. One way that I work through difficult times is reminding myself to be grateful for what I have instead of dwelling on what I lack. So I thought the beginning of the fall semester would be an auspicious time to formally introduce AnthroBone's "Friends in the Field Hall of Fame" in celebration of some of the awesome resources I have access to that support me and my work.

For anthropologists, the "field" is more than just a place or a "site" where one conducts research and likely resides for a period of time. We also participate in and influence "fields of cultural production" through knowledge production and power relations with other people as well as with material objects (Bourdieu 1983). My dissertation research focuses on young people in Central Appalachia and how they use media to envision futures for themselves and the region, so I spend a lot of time thinking about fields of cultural production.

I also think a lot about fieldwork and its own processes of cultural production and the role and importance of material artifacts in the work that we do, both in terms of the productions and content we document and analyze as well as the artifacts that we employ to conduct this work. The physical objects we choose to use and carry along on our journeys are culturally significant artifacts that have their own "social life" and agency alongside and beyond their commercial value and utilitarian purposes (Appadurai 1996). I am also fascinated by the range of cultural productions that anthropologists generate in the field, such as field notes, drawings, photographs, soundscapes, and video vignettes, and the way they creatively express something profound about both the topic of exploration and the researcher.

I am consciously anthropomorphizing these various "friends in the field" because they are more than just physical objects. I have real relationships these material artifacts, which also have important relationships with one another spatially, methodologically, and conceptually. So after far too much time, I formally acknowledge these Friends in the Field by cutting the virtual ribbon for the grand opening of their very own Hall of Fame.

I plan to post profiles of individual Friends in the Field in the future, but for now, here's a sneak peek of what is to come. Anthropologists and other ethnographers will recognize some of these friends among theirs as well and have their own stories to tell.

Artist renderings by AnthroBone (aka Tambone aka Tammy Clemons)

In gratitude to Friends in the Field for sharing the load of my trials, tribulations, and triangulations while conducting fieldwork, this Hall of Fame is dedicated to the many valuable material artifacts that make my work possible, usually productive, and most often pleasurable. 

Be Kind, Be Kin,
*AnthroBone

Source: https://web.archive.org/
web/20050628083205/
http://www.theory.org.uk:80/

p.s. I would be remiss if I cited Bourdieu and Appadurai without acknowledging that material artifacts are not innocent bystanders but active witnesses of the political economies, production processes, and social relations that create them. Likewise, I am accountable as a consumer in these processes even though the majority of my material possessions are hand-me-downs from family, friends, flea markets, and thrift stores. Everything comes from somewhere, and the true cost of stuff, no matter how useful, often goes unaccounted with no acknowledgement of the where, who, and how of its existence. 

Therefore, this inauguration of the Friends in the Field Hall of Fame features the original Story of Stuff production as a reminder of how the many local worlds we live in are also constructed by complex global processes.

 

References
Appadurai, Arjun

1986 Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. A. Appadurai, ed. Pp. 3-. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre

1983 The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed. Poetics 12(4-5):285-487.

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UPDATE 03.30.18:

I finally posted the inaugural Hall of Fame inductee, Friend in the Field #1: Backpack! More to come...