There might be something to certain personalities fitting certain field contexts but part of that might be just a question of who’s attracted to what field and, then, how we do transform into the type of fieldworker who would more likely work in this or that context. An important point, though, it probably only affects the difficulty of fieldwork. And a difficult fieldwork experience will make for as good research as easy fieldwork.

Ok, time to go personal. In the context of this post and thread, it’s equivalent to an admission of guilt, so, no false modesty warranted… Typical social butterfly, sociable, “please be my friend,” talkative, extrovert, happy-go-lucky, easy-going, people person, human-lover here.
Many people like that at UdeM. Humanists in the strong sense, we are. Have been interested in Africa since way back when. Quite typical for a musician and Jazz fan. And always liked the attitude of many people from West Africa. Calling it “carefree” would probably be inappropriate but there’s something like that. Like Huizinga, knowing that play isn’t a lack of seriousness, it’s just seriousness that’s devoid of play.
Started working with a Senegalese griot in Montreal. Wasn’t working very well, for many reasons. Kind of conflict of personalities to a certain extent. He’s a nice guy but the research was going nowhere.
Then met Madou, a hunter musician from Mali. Instantly, it all clicked. We have similar attitudes toward life, complement each other, and research progressed extremely easily. First preliminary fieldwork trip was quite impressive for how easy it was. Went with Madou, which made everything easier. You know how people keep telling you that people in the field are suspicious of ethnographers? Not so here. These are people who have a lot to say. People really opened up. Some just for the “glory” of being known outside of Africa. But many for genuine love of knowledge exchange. Really!
Extended fieldwork trip was even easier, apart from practical details. Human contacts were unbelievable. People were ready and apparently delighted to get deep into deep conversations about everything and else. Easy to test hypotheses and frame theories with people. Was probably not perceived so positively by most people but had quite an easy time.

Thing is, Madou has had a lot to do with this. Even when he wasn’t there, being his friend was always beneficial, even with people who were more ambivalent toward him.

Now, what’s it got to do with personality? Well. With a more introvert, asociable, quiet, misanthropic person, things would probably have been slightly harder. But, the results would have been as valuable if not more. As long as we’re open-minded and respectful. This should really be the key. Anything can happen in the field but good results will come as long as stay true to ourselves and to the people with whom we work.

There’s something besides personality. Well, perhaps close to the old “national character” of those Culture and Personality scholars everyone loves to thrash. In fact, it has to do with – oh no! – yes, Culture Shock!
Even as trained as we are and as open-minded as we are, we may end up in contexts that throw us off-course. It certainly has to do with expectations coming from preparation and such but there’s also something to be said about contexts which may make us uncomfortable. And that’s ok. Discomfort may lead to great things. In fact, many of us (including yours truly) probably felt discomfort in their “own” society at one point or another (not to mention that many of us are apatrides anyway…).
Had no shock going to Mali. Felt like home. People could be rude or caring, they always seemed to react like I expected people to react. Also didn’t feel any culture shock living in Switzerland or Eastern Canada (coming from Quebec). But had a huge shock in South-central Indiana. Made for a very interesting experience. But it wasn’t easy.
And, even though it was mostly a personal issue, the difficulty probably had little to do with “personality” strictly defined. But it did have to do with culture broadly defined and some common behavioural patterns which are common in the MidWest and not in Quebec (or vice-versa).
Here’s a good example of difference. Alcohol consumption isn’t a big issue among students in Montreal. It’s a huge issue in Bloomington. Still can’t get over this, seven years after first entering the weird world of Hoosier college life.
To go back to ethnography. Doing fieldwork on university culture in Indiana would have been hard for me but I did notice a lot of things that seem just natural for most people. (Yes, I do agree with the need for «recul» in ethnography.) A lot of that comes from differences between my personal background and the way people behave in that context.
Ok, ok. Belabouring the point, there… Ah, well. That’s what you get for going to a dry campus…

Something that has more to do with personality is the perception of which type of scholar will go to which broad area. Who will likely work with First Nations? Who’s the prototypical Africanist? Which part of East Asia is this one person most connected to? Part party game, part real anchoring between person and field, IMHO.

Ok. Time to don my bogolan shirt and go meet my friends under a baobab to sip green tea while talking about belief systems.

But for something to be a transformative experience, there has to be something there to be transformed in the first place. We might not completely know what it is and it might be volatile, but it’s there and I think that it’s something one can hold onto in the initial stages of fieldwork (as in “I am what I am”) to help get through the malaise of cultural dissonance. It would, of course, be unhealthy to think that we can keep from being changed by our fieldwork experience; but again, for change to be acknowledged there has to be a recognition of what was there to be changed to start with. But now I’m waxing metaphysical . . .or something 😉

Speaking of not being adults at first fieldwork, the developmental psych course I took last year informed me that typical North Americans aren’t actually adults until about 25 or so, which is the end of “emerging adulthood”.

Also, speaking of that, another thought just came to me. In the local context in which we situate ourselves, we might not be considered adults at all if we do not meet the criteria for adulthood, no matter how adult we consider ourselves to be on our home turf. I know that a 25 year-old, unmarried and childless woman was puzzling to some Cree and my next goal is to see if they will take me more seriously when I go back with my little guy. But now I’m off on a tangent . . . I do that sometimes.

More seriously, though, while I agree people have a strong idea of who they are, I’m not sure they’d be right. Hasn’t the psychoanalytic (or even just the psychological) tradition premised on the idea that most of our psyche is not available to our consciousness? Obviously we both agree that some sort of mannered, practiced pretense is a bad idea for doing fieldwork. But what could be more ‘coeval’ (as you put it) then assuming that they could teach you something?

It seems to me that the large literature on the ‘dialogical’ nature of fieldwork from the late 80s and early 90s was all about these questions — and of course the great traditional novels about fieldwork all focus on the way in which fieldwork was a transformative experience for the person who underwent it.

I only partially agree with this. It is, of course, true that we go on changing all our lives and discovering aspects of ourselves through new situations, including fieldwork, new jobs, new loves, and so forth. However, I wouldn’t say that one goes into the field having no idea of who they are. By the time we engage in our first fieldwork experience, we have already, for the most part, had enough life experience to at least have gotten us on our way to the formation of an adult self-concept. It may not be complete and therefore still subject to change, but it’s there.

Now, what I was getting at, mostly, but didn’t explicitly say because I didn’t realise that this is what I was trying to say until now, was how we may have a tendancy to hide certain aspects of our personality in the field (as in other social situations) out of fear that they may be displeasing to our hosts. Another tendancy may be to try too hard to be “like them”. I think that being oneself, or being authentic at least, one stands a better chance of speaking eye-to-eye with others in the field and establishing the desired sense of coevalness discussed by Fabian.

a related thing is that you only get the fieldwork that you do — like, I remember an ethnobotanist coming in to the community where I worked and feeling certain that as a female fieldworker I would know *everything* about women’s health — plant medicines for cramps, childbirth, abortifacients, etc. etc. And I had to confess that, um, I hadn’t really pursued those lines of questioning and had NO plans to start pushing them, either!