The Anthropologist’s Son (or,Living and Learning the Field)

Abstract

Behar asserts that any story worth telling calls on us to explore and expose our own cultural biography. Reflecting on my relationship with my father, an anthropologist, and my experiences in Mexico, I draw on my own cultural biography to argue for the continuing importance of “the field.” Throughout my life, my father’s approach to ethnography has generated important ethnographic lessons while also conflicting with much of the current discourse around the production and politics of ethnography. While in Mexico this past spring, I wrote to wrestle through the tensions and disjunctures of my experiences with him, with ethnography, with theory and practice. The context of Mexico for this self-archeology was much more than a simple backdrop for experience as it forced me to work through these contradictions. What I present here exposes that process, foregrounding how the embodied experience of fieldwork remains essential to the contribution and relevance of ethnographic knowledge.