Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Portrayal of the Pedagogy and Practice of Field Schools in American Anthropology as Anthropological Laboratories

博士论文研究：美国人类学田野学校作为人类学实验室的教学法和实践的描述

• 批准号: 1655605
• 负责人: Harriet Ritvo
• 金额: $ 1.54万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-03-01 至 2018-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1655605&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Portrayal; Pedagogy

General Audience Summary This award is a doctoral dissertation improvement grant. It supports historical research of six field schools in anthropology that have trained generations of anthropologists in multiple geographical locations including Mexico, Peru, and the US. The investigator will study how anthropologists carry out fieldwork by analyzing field notes, informal newsletters, pedagogical materials, lesson plans, correspondence, diaries, and reports from six thoroughly documented field schools. The investigator will reconstruct for each case the field relations and techniques used in course of fieldwork, along with the anthropologist's analysis of the impact of those techniques on the content of knowledge. It is likely that the results of this examination of six field schools in historical context will substantially revise the history of anthropological practice. They will be valuable to practicing anthropologists and sociologists, historians of science, and scholars of Native American studies and Latin American studies. In addition, the research will contribute to discussions of the ethics of research on vulnerable populations. Moreover, the sources used have the potential to recover contributions of indigenous North and South American informants, local assistants, and cultural brokers who were crucial to the production of anthropological knowledge; to date, their efforts have not been historically acknowledged in published accounts of fieldwork. Technical Summary This dissertation responds to prevalent generalizations in the history of anthropology and the anthropological discipline that assume the typical fieldworker ventured into the field alone because fieldwork method could not be taught but only experienced. This lone fieldworker myth has exempted anthropological pedagogy from critical STS analysis. Presenting the rich history of formal instruction in field schools and their collaborative approach to knowledge production provides material for rethinking the role of practices, places, pedagogy, and institutional cultures in the formation of expertise. The way field schools devised techniques for tempering or accommodating the influence of the fieldworker on her subject matter reveal that the "crisis of representation" that emerged from postmodern anthropology's uncertainty over whether anthropological techniques could capture social reality was not a unique historical critique, but a long-standing tension in the anthropological discipline which anthropologists dealt with by devising new tools, practices, and institutions, like the field school.

本奖项为博士学位论文改进奖。它支持对六个人类学田野学校的历史研究，这些学校在墨西哥、秘鲁和美国等多个地理位置培养了几代人类学家。研究人员将通过分析田野笔记、非正式时事通讯、教学材料、教案、函电、日记和来自六所详细记录在案的田野学校的报告，研究人类学家如何进行田野工作。调查员将为每个案例重建田野工作过程中使用的田野关系和技术，以及人类学家对这些技术对知识内容的影响的分析。在历史背景下对六个田野学派的审查结果很可能会极大地修改人类学实践史。它们将对执业的人类学家和社会学家、科学史学家以及美洲原住民研究和拉丁美洲研究的学者有价值。此外，这项研究还将有助于讨论弱势群体研究的伦理问题。此外，所使用的资料来源有可能收回北美和南美洲土著告密者、当地助理和文化经纪人的捐款，这些人对人类学知识的产生至关重要；迄今为止，他们的努力在已出版的田野调查报告中没有得到历史上的承认。技术综述本论文回应了人类学历史和人类学学科中流行的概括，即认为典型的田野工作者独自冒险进入田野，因为田野工作方法不能被教授，而只能被体验。这个孤独的田野工作者神话使人类学教育学免于进行批判性的STS分析。介绍实地学校正规教学的丰富历史及其在知识生产方面的合作方法，为重新思考实践、地点、教学方法和机构文化在形成专业知识方面的作用提供材料。田野学派设计的技术来缓和或适应田野工作者对她的主题的影响的方式表明，由于后现代人类学对人类学技术能否捕捉社会现实的不确定性而出现的“表征危机”不是一个独特的历史批评，而是人类学学科中的一个长期紧张，人类学家通过设计新的工具、实践和制度来应对，比如田野学派。