Shadows in the Field New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology

by Barz, Gregory F.; Cooley, Timothy J.

• ISBN13: 9780195109108
• ISBN10: 0195109104
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-11-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

What are the new directions in ethnomusicological fieldwork? What do we see when we acknowledge the shadows we cast in the field? Will fieldwork continue as an integral part of ethnomusicological theory and method? Glancing forward and backward, the authors in this collection explore a range of issues that can help ethnomusicologists and those who study human experience and creativity to conceptualize the nature of fieldwork. This is the first book by ethnomusicologists to consider fieldwork as an issue-laden practice, rather than as a methodology requiring a prescriptive manual. The contributors challenge the very notion of fieldwork: its goals, the nature of knowledge gained, and the place of fieldwork in historical studies. Until now the focus in ethnomusicological writing and teaching centered around analyses and ethnographic representations of musical cultures. This book signals a new fieldwork, shifting the balance away from the data-collecting model toward an approach that is reflexive, humanistic, and experiential. It makes provocative reading for all fieldworkers, those in ethnomusicology as well as anthropology, sociology, folklore, area studies, linguistics, and other ethnographic disciplines.

Table of Contents

Contributors	xi
Introduction
Casting Shadows in the Field: An Introduction	3	(20)
Timothy J. Cooley
PART I: DOING AND UNDOING FIELDWORK
(Un)doing Fieldwork: Sharing Songs, Sharing Lives	23	(22)
Michelle Kisliuk
Confronting the Field(Note) In and Out of the Field: Music, Voices, Text, and Experiences in Dialogue	45	(18)
Gregory F. Barz
The Challenges of Human Relations in Ethnographic Inquiry: Examples from Arctic and Subarctic Fieldwork	63	(24)
Nicole Beaudry
PART II: KNOWING AND BEING KNOWN
Knowing Fieldwork	87	(14)
Jeff Todd Titon
Toward a Mediation of Field Methods and Field Experience in Ethnomusicology	101	(20)
Timothy Rice
What's the Difference? Reflections on Gender and Research in Village India	121	(18)
Carol M. Babiracki
PART III: THE ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Fieldwork in the Ethnomusicological Past	139	(24)
Philip V. Bohlman
Selecting Partners: Questions of Personal Choice and Problems of History in Fieldwork and Its Interpretation	163	(26)
William Noll
The Ethnomusicologist, Ethnographic Method, and the Transmission of Tradition	189	(16)
Kay Kaufman Shelemay
Chasing Shadows in the Field: An Epilogue	205	(6)
Gregory F. Barz
References	211	(18)
Index	229