The many faces of fieldwork

The research I am proposing would both reflect and complicate the notion of fieldwork as it is understood by Jenna Hartel (2010). What I am proposing is a comparative study that looks at two widely variant time periods and geographical areas to try to determine the extent that graffiti is used as a communicative tool and outlet by marginalized groups. The sense is that if groups in these completely different situations use graffiti in similar ways, this will begin to create an explanation of how graffiti is used to deliver ideas and create a heightened sense of temporality, that is valid beyond any single place or time.

One of these time periods is modern day North America, and so it would be possible to sample a city (or two) and examine their graffiti and how the people who interact with it feel about it. This could be considered as getting into the "natural environ" of the subject as describe by Hartel (2010, p. 852), and so reflects this notion of fieldwork. However, when it comes to the second time period, Early Modern France, it shouldn't have to be pointed out that 'going into the field' would be next to impossible. In this case, 'the field' I would be inhabiting would be more akin to the fields explored by historians than the ones trekked through by modern communication scholars.

This portion of the research will have to rely on contrasting the surviving pieces, sketches and descriptions of graffiti at the time, with the journals, letters and other writings of contemporary people who mention these same. For historians, fieldwork, in a broad sense, has been taken to mean the study of any physical, non-written evidence (Dawson & de Pennington, 2000, p.166-177), and so this work does fit into a definition of fieldwork; however, it is not the same one as provided by Hartel.

I think that the take away here is that fieldwork is not a stable concept that is applicable across all, or even most, areas of study. In fact, the definition itself can be applied in more than one way within a single research study.


Sources:

Dawson, I. and J. de Pennington. (2000). Fieldwork in history teaching and learning. In A. Booth & P. Hyland (Eds.), The Practice of University History Teaching (166-177). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Hartel, J. (2010). Managing documents at home for serious leisure: A case study of the hobby of gourmet cooking. Journal of Documentation, 66(6), 847-874.