Jumping Into the Field at the Deep End
By
Peter Monaghan
The Chronicle
December 16, 2012
As four recent books reveal, befuddling and even dangerous ethnographic research can be an engrossing read.
Dashes to safety over the Siberian steppes, fearful run-ins with colonial occupiers in West Papua, brushes with the shadowy camorra of Naples. Graduate students in mathematics, nuclear physics, or divinity don’t have to contend with the likes of those.
