Leon is a tour guide at the lodge where I camp in between village visits, and where I have stayed for the last two or three weeks (I shudder to think of the bill coming my way). When I am there, Leon comes to visit in the morning.
Read MoreFirst Impressions of the Horrors I Did Expect
I just started fieldwork with the San (sometimes referred to as "Bushmen", known through the film “The Gods must be crazy”,countless other documentaries and my recent post) in Tsumkwe, Namibia. During Apartheid the area used to be the designated “Bushmanland”.
Read MoreWINNER of the Edinburgh Fieldwork Prize: Ginger, Viscera Suckers, and the Anthropological Self
In my red backpack, you’ll find a small plastic bag with two fingers of ginger. I’ve been carrying this bag with me everywhere I go for two weeks now: to the field, to the malls and the grocery shop, even to the local Starbucks. It’s a must-bring whenever I know I’ll be getting home late. At night, before I go to bed, I make sure it’s beside me.
Read MoreEdinburgh Fieldwork Prize Runner Up: Abortion in Translation
For my dissertation research I spent a month in Nepal, a country with breathtaking scenery and an entrancing and diverse cultural landscape. Nepal is the land of Mount Everest and the Himalayas, it is also a country affected by widespread poverty and social issues, including gender inequality
Read MoreEdinburgh Fieldwork Prize Runner Up: Becoming a Development Insider
As a conscientious 1st year PhD student preparing for fieldwork, I diligently reviewed the relevant literature. Since I had chosen to effectively intern with two British NGOs while undertaking ‘participant observation’ of their work, the writings of David Mosse seemed particularly useful.
Read MoreContemporary Namibians reading Stone Age Tracks: Advances in- and the flipside of - applications of indigenous knowledge
In 2011, two German pre-historians started a project called “Tracking in Caves” [i]. The premise of their idea was simple: Pastoors and Lenssen-Erz invited three San hunter-gatherers from the Kalahari in Namibia to help them interpret some human footprints they had found in a cave in the Pyrenees.
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