Shifting Worlds, Shaping Fieldwork: A Memoir of Anthropology and Art

by Susan Ossman

Overview

Reflecting on fieldwork for the twenty-first century, anthropologist and artist Susan Ossman invites readers on a journey across North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. She reveals that fieldwork today is not only about being immersed in a place or culture; instead, it is an active way of focusing attention and engendering encounters and experiences. She conceives a new kind of autoethnography, making art and ethnography equal partners to follow three "waves" of her research on media, globalization, and migration.

Ossman guides the reader through diverse settings, including a colonial villa in Casablanca, a Cairo beauty salon, a California mall-turned-gallery, the Berlin Wall, and Amsterdam’s Hermitage museum. She delves into the entanglements of solitary research and collective action.

This book is a primer for current anthropology and an invitation to artists and scholars to work across boundaries. It vividly shows how fieldwork can shape scenes for experiments with multiple outcomes, from conceptual advances to artworks, performances to dialogue and community making.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350128095
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/20/2021
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Susan Ossman is Professor of Anthropology and Global Studies at University of California, Riverside, USA.

Table of Contents

List of figures vii

Acknowledgments x

Prologue xiv

Introduction 2

First wave 29

1 Gatherings 29

2 Spinning 44

Second wave 59

3 Call and response 61

4 Vibrant circles 83

Third wave 101

5 Moving subjects 103

6 Concept to community 120

Conclusion 140

Notes 143

Bibliography 153

Index 164