Field studies on the people of India : methods and perspectives
Material type:
- 307.07 Fie
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A close examination of the field methods anthropologists working in India indicates that the quality of research is adversely affected by exploitative nature of relationship between the anthropologists and their subjects of enquiry. The necessity for evolving a more comprehensive Participation of the subjects of enquiry at various phases of anthropological field research has been highlighted.
It is indeed an honour to be invited to inaugurate this seminar organized in memory of the late Professor Tarak Chandra Das, a distin guished teacher and dedicated field-worker whose perceptive study of the Purum has attracted international attention. A self-effacing scholar of great humility, Professor Das never sought publicity for himself; nor did he go out of his way to court personal popularity. The best conceivable homage to him is to emulate the example of his single-minded devotion. The organisers of this seminar are to be commended for honouring the late Professor Das in an idiom that he would have appreciated, i.e., by holding a workmanlike seminar on a theme of abiding interest to him.
The tradition of field-work has strongly influenced the content and course of social anthropology. In a way, field-work and social anthropo logy are inseparable. This is perhaps the invisible link that joins contem porary anthropology with what the discipline was in its infancy. Social anthropology is a dynamic discipline, and its practitioners are not ancestor worshippers. Naturally, it has extended its frontiers, and has witnessed several significant shifts in the focii of its interests. But it remains a holistic discipline and continues to seek its raw materials in field-work.
For us in the profession today, field-work does not represent the two magic words that open up the doors for comprehending complex structures and for understanding widely ramifying processes. The days of such simplistic belief are over, but we need not mourn the passing of a phase in which field-work carried an aura of romance and high adventure. The problems before us are infinitely more complex, but their very complexity poses exciting intellectual challenges.
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