Rethinking anthropological fieldwork in historical perspective

Description

Convenors

• Paula López Caballero (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
• Jimena Lobo Guerrero Arenas (Museum of Archeology and Anthropology and Multidimensional Dialogues of the Americas, University of Cambridge)

Speakers

• Javiera Carmona Jiménez, University of Tarapacá.
• Jocelyne Duddling (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge)
• Alicia Fentiman (Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge)
• María Fernanda Domínguez-Londoño, Faculty of Modern and Medieval languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge)
• Benoît de l’Estoile (Musée du Quai Branly / CNRS)
• Sian Lazar (Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge)
• Laura Lewis (University of Southampton)

Summary

This workshop is based around the exhibition ‘A woman in the field: Susan Drucker-Brown’s photographs and anthropological fieldnotes (Mexico 1957-1958)‘ which displays photographs and ethnographic fieldnotes produced by Cambridge-based anthropologist Susan Drucker-Brown in the village of Jamiltepec (Oaxaca, Mexico) in 1957 and 1958.

Within the framework of this exhibition, this one-day event seeks to foster discussion around the three transversal lines of the exhibition: Firstly, the processes of mestizaje, indigeneity and modernisation experienced in Mexico in the mid-twentieth century at an indigenous and rural locality. Secondly, the everyday life of ethnographic research and, in particular, the role of women in fieldwork. And thirdly, the afterlives of the materials produced during fieldwork, either as collections in museums or archives, or as part of restitution processes to the villages where the anthropologists worked.

The event includes a student workshop, a round table around photographic collections, and three lectures on Susan Drucker-Brown’s work on the historisation of field interactions, on mestizaje, and on categories of identification in Mexico. It may be of interest to audiences working on race, gender, indigeneity, photography, anthropology, archaeology collections, and museums.

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If you have specific accessibility needs for this event please get in touch. We will do our best to accommodate any requests.

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Supported by the Brown family, in addition to: