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For more than twenty years, John Van Maanen’s Tales of the Field has been a definitive reference and guide for students, scholars, and practitioners of ethnography and beyond. Originally published in 1988, it was the one of the first works to detail and critically analyze the various styles and narrative conventions associated with written representations of culture. This is a book about the deskwork of fieldwork and the various ways culture is put forth in print. The core of the work is an extended discussion and illustration of three forms or genres of cultural representation—realist tales, confessional tales, and impressionist tales. The novel issues raised in Tales concern authorial voice, style, truth, objectivity, and point-of-view. Over the years, the work has both reflected and shaped changes in the field of ethnography.

In this second edition, Van Maanen’s substantial new Epilogue charts and illuminates changes in the field since the book’s first publication. Refreshingly humorous and accessible, Tales of the Field remains an invaluable introduction to novices learning the trade of fieldwork and a cornerstone of reference for veteran ethnographers.  

For more than twenty years, John Van Maanen’s Tales of the Field has been a definitive reference and guide for students, scholars, and practitioners of ethnography and beyond. Originally published in 1988, it was the one of the first works to detail and critically analyze the various styles and narrative conventions associated with written representations of culture. This is a book about the deskwork of fieldwork and the various ways culture is put forth in print. The core of the work is an extended discussion and illustration of three forms or genres of cultural representation—realist tales, confessional tales, and impressionist tales. The novel issues raised in Tales concern authorial voice, style, truth, objectivity, and point-of-view. Over the years, the work has both reflected and shaped changes in the field of ethnography.

In this second edition, Van Maanen’s substantial new Epilogue charts and illuminates changes in the field since the book’s first publication. Refreshingly humorous and accessible, Tales of the Field remains an invaluable introduction to novices learning the trade of fieldwork and a cornerstone of reference for veteran ethnographers.  

Perhaps the best way to sharpen one's power's of observation is to be a stranger in a strange land. Julia Meyerson was one such stranger during a year in the village of 'Tambo, Peru, where her husband was conducting anthropological fieldwork. Though sometimes overwhelmed by the differences between Quechua and North American culture, she still sought eagerly to understand the lifeways of 'Tambo and to find her place in the village. Her vivid observations, recorded in this field journal, admirably follow Henry James's advice: "Try to be one of the people upon whom nothing is lost."

With an artist's eye, Meyerson records the daily life of 'Tambo—the cycles of planting and harvest, the round of religious and cultural festivals, her tentative beginnings of friendship and understanding with the Tambinos. The journal charts her progress from tolerated outsider to accepted friend as she and her husband learn and earn, the roles of daughter and son in their adopted family.

With its wealth of ethnographic detail, especially concerning the lives of Andean women, 'Tambo will have great value for students of Latin American anthropology. In addition, scholars preparing to do fieldwork anywhere will find it a realistic account of both the hardships and the rewards of such study.

In the 1980s, conflicts between the Miskito people of Nicaragua's eastern coast and the Sandinistas drew international attention. Indeed, the Miskitos' struggle to defend their cultural autonomy and land rights points out a curious historical anomaly. This native group has long had closer ties to British and American culture than to Hispanic Nicaraguan culture. C. Napier Bell, son of a British trader, grew up on the Miskito Coast in the nineteenth century and spoke the Miskito language fluently.

Tangweera, first published in 1899, is Bell's autobiographical account of his boyhood experiences. Rich in ethnographic detail, the book records an idyllic life of hunting, fishing, and trading. Bell describes the social customs and beliefs of the various Indian peoples he knew, as well as the relations among the coastal Miskito, the black creole population, and the tribes of the interior—the latter a subject of continuing importance. Although Bell shared common nineteenth-century ideas about the inferiority of “savage” races, his affection for the Miskito people and his love of their land fill Tangweera. Anthropologists, historians, naturalists, and travelers in the region will find this fascinating reading.

The introduction by Philip A. Dennis, Professor of Anthropology at Texas Tech University, provides a modern observer's view of Miskito culture and discusses important changes and continuities since Bell's time.

Published by the Newark Museum. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

“After twenty-eight years of desire and determination, I have visited Africa, the land of my forefathers.” So wrote Lida Clanton Broner (1895–1982), an African American housekeeper and hairstylist from Newark, New Jersey, upon her return from an extraordinary nine-month journey to South Africa in 1938. This epic trip was motivated not only by Broner’s sense of ancestral heritage, but also a grassroots resolve to connect the socio-political concerns of African Americans with those of black South Africans under the segregationist policies of the time. During her travels, this woman of modest means circulated among South Africa’s Black intellectual elite, including many leaders of South Africa’s freedom struggle. Her lectures at Black schools on “race consciousness and race pride” had a decidedly political bent, even as she was presented as an “American beauty specialist.” 

How did Broner—a working class mother—come to be a globally connected activist? What were her experiences as an African American woman in segregated South Africa and how did she further her work after her return? Broner’s remarkable story is the subject of this book, which draws upon a deep visual and documentary record now held in the collection of the Newark Museum of Art. This extraordinary archive includes more than one hundred and fifty objects, ranging from beadwork and pottery to mission school crafts, acquired by Broner in South Africa, along with her diary, correspondence, scrapbooks, and hundreds of photographs with handwritten notations.
 

Meth cooks practice late industrial alchemy—transforming base materials, like lithium batteries and camping fuel, into gold

Meth alchemists all over the United States tap the occulted potencies of industrial chemical and big pharma products to try to cure the ills of precarious living: underemployment, insecurity, and the feeling of idleness. Meth fires up your attention and makes repetitive tasks pleasurable, whether it’s factory work or tinkering at home. Users are awake for days and feel exuberant and invincible. In one person’s words, they “get more life.” 

The Alchemy of Meth is a nonfiction storybook about St. Jude County, Missouri, a place in decomposition, where the toxic inheritance of deindustrialization meets the violent hope of this drug-making cottage industry. Jason Pine bases the book on fieldwork among meth cooks, recovery professionals, pastors, public defenders, narcotics agents, and pharmaceutical executives. Here, St. Jude is not reduced to its meth problem but Pine looks at meth through materials, landscapes, and institutions: the sprawling context that makes methlabs possible. The Alchemy of Meth  connects DIY methlabs to big pharma’s superlabs, illicit speed to the legalized speed sold as ADHD medication, uniquely implicating the author’s own story in the narrative. 

By the end of the book, the backdrop of St. Jude becomes the foreground. It could be a story about life and work anywhere in the United States, where it seems no one is truly clean and all are complicit in the exploitation of their precious resources in exchange for a livable present—or even the hope of a future.

Several states already boast volumes showcasing their archeological history, but not New Hampshire—until now. David R. Starbuck's volume fills that void. Going beyond standard state guides that focus primarily on prehistoric sites, Starbuck also devotes equal time to historic, industrial, and nautical sites. This approach reflects the thinking of most contemporary archeologists who conduct research at a diverse range of sites.

A veteran of thirty years of field research throughout the Granite State, Starbuck revisits some of his own sites, including excavations at the New England Glassworks in Temple, two prehistoric sites on the Merrimack River, the Joseph Hazeltine pottery workshop outside Concord, the Governor Wentworth Estate in Wolfeboro, and his own long-term survey and excavation project at Canterbury Shaker Village. At the same time, though, Starbuck includes the work of other contemporary New Hampshire archeologists, representative sites of “old-timers” whose digs preceded his arrival, and the investigations of avocational diggers. 

Starbuck's introduction offers an anecdotal history of archeological research in New Hampshire through the people who shaped it. Part I discusses discoveries that predate white settlement: the Paleo-Indian Period; the Archaic Period; and the Woodland Period. Part II moves from the seventeenth century to the present. Chapters include historical archeology (forts, farms, potters, Shakers); industrial archeology (mills, factories, railroads, dams, and bridges); and nautical archeology (discoveries in the state's lakes and on the seacoast). 

In addition to summarizing some of the more interesting finds, Starbuck includes stories about archeologists and the techniques they have used to glean information from the past. Overall, he provides a lively account of what it is like to practice archeology in a small but dynamic New England state.