A study of how doing field research submerged in a different culture impacts one's sense of identity.

"This critical examination of both the professional and personal aspects of fieldwork contributes to a better understanding of how such complex interactions shape analysis and interpretation."

—Mid-America Folklore

"Wengle documents convincingly, and with a great deal of sensitivity to and empathy for his informants, what fieldworking ethnographers undergo while anthropologizing....  If one wants to understand what kind of data ethnographers generate, what kind of facts they notice, what kinds of events they record (rather than others that they could have generated, noticed or recorded, but did not) reading Wengle's book is indispensable. It goes a long way toward doing away with the mystique of fieldwork. Since, in addition, it discusses everything that is important in life—food, sex, death, am I forgetting anything? Ethnographers in the Field is an elegant and foretelling must for anyone seriously contemplating fieldwork."
—American Anthropologist

 

"This book is valuable because the anonymity of Wengle's informants permitted them to ad-lib very bluntly about their experiences... Thus we can learn more about the downside of ethnography—the self-doubt, depression, and private coping strategies."
—Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly