About the collection

Return to Anthropological Fieldwork Online

 

“I am delighted that Alexander Street is digitizing Malinowski’s field work material. As a researcher myself in political science, I know how important it is to have access in digital form to resources previously only available in often distant libraries. I am sure that scholars around the world will welcome this project.”

– Patrick Burke, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster
Grandson of Bronislaw Malinowski

 

“I am so proud of the work of my mother and father in these collections. These materials reveal the craft of ethnography in its depth, care and value, and will provide material for reflection and inquiry for scholars, students and community members for years to come.”

– Rory Turner, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Goucher College
Son of Victor and Edith Turner

 

Nature and Scope

When an anthropologist publishes an ethnography, that work represents the culmination of years of field research—thousands of pages of written notes, photographs and recordings, and countless iterations of observations into theories that articulate deeper understandings of what it means to be human. While the final published work may become codified in college curriculum, the rich record of primary source research often becomes forgotten. The original fieldwork of the world’s most important anthropologists is spread in archives around the world, preserved for the long-term but inaccessible to the scholarly dialogue of today. Anthropological Fieldwork Online brings the fieldwork underpinning the great ethnographies of the early 20th century into the digital world.

Content is focused around each scholar’s prominent field experience, with comprehensive inclusion of fieldwork, contextualizing documents from the same time period, including correspondence, and subsequent writings that led to major publications such as draft manuscripts, lectures and articles. Scholars can trace the full scholarly process in all of its stages, from qualitative data gathering to analysis through publication, while cross-searching contemporaneous research from the most important scholars in the discipline.

Archival curation is approached as comprehensively as possible, with inclusion of full boxes, full folders and full series. Content is presented in finding aid order. Rare cases of missing documents are indicated with dummy records and metadata that point to the original source. Typed materials have been rekeyed wherever possible. Handwritten materials are indexed at the item level and displayed as image only, and include keyword-rich descriptions to enable deeper findability.

Anthropological Fieldwork Online launches with the original fieldwork of Bronislaw Malinowski, Victor and Edith Turner, Max Gluckman, Raymond Firth, Ruth Benedict, Charles Seligman and Edith Durham. Content is being digitized and will be added on a regular basis. Furthermore, discussions are currently underway for the inclusion of the papers of Margaret Mead, Alfred Kroeber, Marvin Harris, Frank Hamilton Cushing, Edmund Leach, Reo Fortune, A.M. Hocart and others.

At completion, Anthropological Fieldwork Online will contain 250,000 pages of primary sources, curated in collaboration with archives and estates around the world. This previously unpublished and difficult-to-access material is essential for both teaching and research in multidisciplinary courses such as field and methods, the history of anthropology, cultural studies, social science methodology, history and colonial studies, and indigenous issues.

 

Advisory Board

Alan Howard

Alan Howard is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. His career includes decades of research in Polynesia, particularly on the island of Rotuma, and has included the incorporation of historic archival research compiled by anthropologists a century earlier.

Erik Bahre

Erik Bahre is an economic anthropologist at the University of Leiden with field experience in South Africa and a research interest in the connections between economic changes and social relationships.

Frank Salamone

Frank Salamone is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Iona College. His main fieldwork was in Northern Nigeria. With an interest in historic anthropology, he has written on the fieldwork process and historical case studies.

Jan Rensel

Jan Rensel has conducted research in Fiji and in diasporic communities around the world since 1987. Additionally, she has been the managing editor at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa Center for Pacific Islands Studies.

Mary McCutcheon

Mary McCutcheon is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University whose fieldwork focused on land and resource ownership in Micronesia. She also has experience in cataloging and processing archival content at the Smithsonian Institute.

 

Additional guidance and support provided by

Mary Catherine Bateson, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Literary Executor of the Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead Estates.

Edith Turner, Anthropology Lecturer at the University of Virginia and Literary Executor of the Victor Turner Estate.

Patrick Burke, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster and Literary Executor of the Bronislaw Malinowski Estate.

 

Sensitivity Statement and Takedown Policy

Materials contained on the Alexander Street platform include historical content that may contain offensive language, negative stereotypes or inaccurate representations. Alexander Street does not endorse the views expressed in such materials, but believes they should be made available in context to enable scholarly comparison, analysis and research.

In making material available online, Alexander Street and our content partners act in good faith. To the best of our knowledge, content contained within these collections has been cleared for publication by the appropriate rights holders and has not been placed under any restrictions for privacy, cultural or other sensitivities. If you have found material for which you believe you hold the copyright without proper attribution, which contravenes privacy laws, or which is a breach of the protocols determining accession provision for heritage materials which reflect indigenous history, culture, language or perspective, please contact us in writing at anthropology@alexanderstreet.com. Please include with your query:

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