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Book Review
Oct. 18, 2007
Author/researchers describe their 'Fieldwork Connections'
By Nancy Wick
University Week
Bamo Ayi, center, and her sister Bamo Qubumo help UW Anthropology Professor
Stevan Harrell prepare an exhibit at the Burke Museum in 2000.
Stevan Harrell's Chinese co-authors Bamo Ayi, left,
and Ma Lunzy near Shelton, Wash. in 1995.
Suppose you went through a series of engaging events with two people from another country. Suppose further that all three of you kept diaries describing the events and the interactions with each other. Now, wouldn't it be fun to read each other's diaries?
That's in effect what Anthropology Professor Stevan Harrell and two Chinese colleagues decided to do after they did fieldwork together in China. Not only did they share their writing, but they put it together into a book, Fieldwork Connections, published by UW Press. On Oct. 25, the three will appear on the UW campus and talk about their experiences.
Fieldwork Connections is the story of work done among the Nuosu people, a minority group in southwestern China. Both of Harrell's co-authors -- anthropologists Bamo Ayi and Ma Lunzy -- are members of the group, but are otherwise radically different. Bamo's parents are affluent and influential, and her mother is not Nuosu. Ma, on the other hand, grew up in a village with Nuosu parents who were persecuted by the government, and had very few advantages.
"I don't think there's ever been a book in which anthropologists who come from a native background and anthropologists who come from an outside background tell the same story from different angles and thus reflect on the same events or how the same process of interaction looks from different perspectives," Harrell said.
The book evolved, he explained, from an earlier book he wrote about the Yi people, the larger group to which the Nuosu belong. He included in it an account of his fieldwork, but the editor felt there was too much material and it needed to be shortened. One of Harrell's graduate students who had also done fieldwork in the area said he liked the account and asked if he might write his own version, suggesting that they publish together. Harrell then asked Bamo and Ma if they would like to contribute. The student who originally suggested the idea eventually dropped out of the project, but Harrell, Bamo and Ma went forward.
Fieldwork Connections proceeds in chronological order, with chapters by each of the authors interwoven. Thus, Harrell's chapter might tell of his first meeting with Bamo, and the next chapter by Bamo tells the same story from her point of view.
In addition to telling about the work among the Nuosu, the book describes the process by which three strangers from vastly different backgrounds became professional colleagues and then friends. The process isn't always smooth. For example, Ma and Harrell met when Ma was assigned by his boss to be Harrell's "minder," and he wasn't particularly happy about it. In the book he describes how he joked behind Harrell's back to a companion, saying,
"There could be a lot of mineral resources in that high mountain; but there isn't much vegetation growing on top, and I don't know if it will be able to stand the searing sun of Yanyuan."
He was referring to the fact that Harrell is completely bald. His companion answered in the same vein: "Smart people use their brains too much and it hurts their hair?"
But in a subsequent jeep ride, Harrell earns Ma's respect when he gives the most comfortable spot to Ma's wife and child and refuses to move when Ma requests it. Ma describes his feelings as a mixture of surprise and happiness, and says he made up his mind then that he would do what he could to help Harrell with his fieldwork.
Bamo was likewise skeptical of Harrell at first. She met him when he was stuck in the city without a permit to do research anywhere, and took him to the village where her father grew up. But she worried that because he was an American, he would be soft. He wouldn't be able to hike in the mountains; he wouldn't be able to stand the food or the liquor the villagers always provided to guests; he would bump his head on the low doorways. Only over time did she see that her stereotypes about Americans were just that -- stereotypes.
"It was fun to read what they wrote," Harrell said. "It was fun to see the situation through their eyes."
He said the work with Bamo and Ma represented a return to the field for him after a fairly long hiatus, and in his own field notes he expresses a fair amount of self doubt. But his friendship with his Chinese colleagues made a real difference. "I've learned how easy it is to be accepted, not as a member of a group but as a member of that group's world," he said. "I can never be a Nuosu person, but I can be part of their world. I think that If you just respect people and treat their opinions seriously and don't condescend and don't make demands, you will be accepted."
Harrell hopes that readers of the book will enjoy the stories and identify with the three writers as they move from distance to friendship. "I'd like them to also consider expanding their ideas of what anthropology is," he said. "Is it outsiders looking at a culture and analyzing it? Or is it really the interaction, the dialogue between insiders and outsiders?"
Harrell, Ma and Bamo will appear at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 25, in 202 Communications. They will explain a bit about how they put the book together, then each will read from his or her part (Harrell will interpret Ma's reading, since Ma does not know English). There will be time for questions after the presentation. The talk is sponsored by the Simpson Center for the Humanities. Admission is free.
http://uwnews.org/uweek/uweekarticle.asp?articleID=37380
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