Shifting Worlds, Shaping Fieldwork: A Memoir of Anthropology and Art

Susan Ossman's book explores fieldwork for the twenty-first century, emphasizing active attention, encounters, and experiences. It proposes a new autoethnography, partnering art and ethnography to follow three waves of research on media, globalization, and migration. The book guides readers through diverse settings, delving into the entanglements of solitary and collective action, and serves as a primer for current anthropology and an invitation to artists and scholars to work across boundaries.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 170 pages
Publication date: 20 April 2021
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Reflecting on fieldwork for the twenty-first century, anthropologist and artist Susan Ossman invites readers on a journey across North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. She reveals that fieldwork today is not only about being immersed in a place or culture; instead, it is an active way of focusing attention and engendering encounters and experiences. She conceives a new kind of autoethnography, making art and ethnography equal partners to follow three waves of her research on media, globalization, and migration.

Ossman guides the reader through diverse settings, including a colonial villa in Casablanca, a Cairo beauty salon, a California mall-turned-gallery, the Berlin Wall, and Amsterdam's Hermitage museum. She delves into the entanglements of solitary research and collective action.

This book is a primer for current anthropology and an invitation to artists and scholars to work across boundaries. It vividly shows how fieldwork can shape scenes for experiments with multiple outcomes, from conceptual advances to artworks, performances to dialogue and community making.

Weight: 366g
Dimension: 234 x 154 x 14 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350128095