Fieldwork Connections

Fieldwork Connections tells the story of the intertwined research histories of three anthropologists working in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China in the late twentieth century. Chapters are written alternately by a male American anthropologist, a male researcher raised in a village in Liangshan, and a highly educated woman from an elite Nuosu/Chinese family. As decades of mutual ethnographic research unfold, the authors enter one another's narratives and challenge the reader to ponder the nature of ethnographic ?truth.?The book begins with short accounts of the process by which each of the authors became involved in anthropological field research. It then proceeds to describe the research itself, and the stories begin to connect as they become active collaborators. The scene shifts in the course of the narrative from China to America, and the relationship between the authors shifts from distant, wary, and somewhat hierarchical to close, egalitarian, and reciprocal.The authors share their histories through personal stories, not technical analyses; their aim is to entertain while addressing the process of ethnography and the dynamics of international and intercultural communication.

Preface to the English EditionAcknowledgmentsPart One: Origins1. Growing up Half Yi / Bamo Ayi2. In the Shadow of the Han / Ma Lunzy3. A White Guy Discovers Anthropology / Stevan HarrellPart Two: China4. Yinchang: My First Fieldwork, 1987-88 / Bamo Ayi5. Getting Started in Southwest China, 1987-88 / Stevan Harrell6. Chasing after Bimo, 1992-93 / Bamo Ayi7. Getting Started Again, 1991 / Stevan Harrell8. First Contact, 1991 / Ma Lunzy9. Almost Real Fieldwork, 1993 / Stevan Harrell10. In the Month of the Snake , 1993 / Ma Lunzy11. Fieldwork with Muga, 1994 / Bamo Ayi12. Getting Further Implicated, 1994 / Stevan Harrell13. The Last Time I Led the Horse, 1994 / Ma Lunzy14. The Bimo in the Modern World, 1994-95 / Bamo AyiPart Three: America15. The First International Yi Conference, 1995 / Ma Lunzy16. Seattle First Free Methodist Church, 1996-97 / Bamo Ayi17. Collecting Mountain Patterns, 1999 / Ma Lunzy18. Conceptualizing Mountain Patterns, 2000 / Bamo Qubumo19. Celebrating Mountain Patterns, 2000 / Stevan HarrellEpilogue: Fieldwork Connections and the Process of Ethnography / Stevan HarrellCast of CharactersChinese and Nuosu GlossaryBibliographyIndex