Encounter and experience: personal accounts of fieldwork

Collected together in Encounter and Experience are some personal accounts of fieldwork. The authors attempt to show how insights into the nature of social relationships and the cultural meanings they embody are often the outcome of having to cope with unforeseen problems in one's fieldwork. Nine essays, by Indian and foreign describe fieldwork situations in India; two more deal with fieldwork by Indians abroad-among Indian workers on a Malaysian rubber plantation in one case and among the Zuni Indians of North America in the other.

Notwithstanding the fact that the essays are rooted in personal experience, the volume will be welcome to fieldworkers everywhere because of their general interest. For Indianists it is not only an invitation to fieldwork but also an introduction to Indian society in its different aspects.
The contributors to the volume are distinguished social anthropologists and sociologists from India, Japan, the UK, and the USA. Their earlier publications. are already known to a wide international readership.