fieldwork to Public Writing.
Comment
Aspect of chapters 6-8 discusses what it means to be an outsider and an insider considering the use of language and body movement when doing research. I am still pondering on the advise that Suntein and Chiseri-Strate give to researchers or fieldworkers. It states thus: “fieldworker is to act as a cultural translator, recording and questioning the meanings of the key words, phrases, and ideas that might serve as clues to step into your informants culture" (311). This is confusing in a way especially where they said a fieldworker should be a “cultural translator”. How can that be possible especially in a situation where the culture is foreign to him? Are there saying the fieldworker can hire a translator? As far as I am concerned, there is no way a fieldworker could that if he is working with an unfamiliar culture on his own.
It is up to the fieldworker to make sense of the space he is studying, even if that space is, at first, unfamiliar and, perhaps even more importantly, even if that space is, at first, far too familiar to him. The fieldworker must make the unfamiliar familiar and the familiar unfamiliar enough to analyze. That's the important role of the "cultural translator."
ReplyDeleteThat was what I thougt too. Thanks.
ReplyDelete