Athena McLean & Annette Leibing 
The Shadow Side of Fieldwork 
Exploring the Blurred Borders between Ethnography and Life

The Shadow Side of Fieldwork draws attention to the
typically hidden or unacknowledged aspects of ethnographic
fieldwork encounters that nevertheless shape the resulting
knowledge and texts. Addressing these invisible, elusive, unspoken
or mysterious elements introduces a distinctive rigor and
responsibility to ethnographic research.

* * Luminaries in anthropology dare to explore the ‘unspeakable’
and ‘invisible’ in the ethnographic encounter

* Considers personal and professional challenges (ethical,
epistemological, and political) faced by researchers who examine
the subjectivities inherent in their ethnographic insights

* Explores the value, and limitations, of addressing the personal
in ethnographic research

* Includes a critical discussion of the anthropologist’s
self in the field

* Introduces imaginative rigor to ethnographic research to
heighten confidence in anthropological knowledge

Table of Content

Dedication.

Acknowledgements.

Contributors.

Foreword: In the Shadows: Anthropological Encounters with
Modernity: Gillian Goslinga (University of California, Santa Cruz)
and Gelya Frank (University of Southern California).

Introduction: ‘Learn to Value your Shadow!’: An Introduction to
the Margins of Fieldwork: Annette Leibing (University of Montreal)
and Athena Mc Lean (Central Michigan University).

Part I: Secrecy and Silence in the Ethnographic
Encounter:.

1. Out of the Shadows of History and Memory: Personal Family
Narratives as Intimate Ethnography: Alisse Waterston (John Jay
College of Criminal Justice) and Barbara Rylko-Bauer (Michigan
State University).

2. When Things Get Personal: Secrecy and the Production of
Experience in Fieldwork: Anne M. Lovell (National Institute for
Research on Health and Medicine, Marseille).

Part II: Transmutations of Experience: Approaching the
Reality of Shadows:.

3. The Scene: Shadowing the Real: Vincent Crapanzano (CUNY
Graduate Center).

4. Transmutation of Sensibilities: Empathy, Intuition,
Revelation: Thomas Csordas (University of California, San
Diego).

Part III: Epistemic Shadows:.

5. Shining a Light into the Shadow of Death: Terminal Care
Discourse and Practice in the Late Twentieth Century: Jason Szabo
(Harvard University).

6. The Hidden Side of the Moon or, ‘Lifting Out’ in Ethnography:
Annette Leibing (University of Montreal).

Part IV: The Politics of Ethnographic Encounter: Negotiating
Power in the Shadow:.

7. The Gray Zone: Nancy Scheper-Hughes (University of
California, Berkeley).

8. Others within Us: Collective Identity, Positioning and
Displacement: Meira Weiss (Hebrew University of Jerusalem).

9. Falling into Fieldwork: Lessons from a Desperate Search for
Survival: Rose-Marie Chierici (SUNY Geneseo).

Part V: Blurred Borders in the Ethnographic Encounter of Self
and Other:.

10. Field Research on the Run: One More (from) for the Road:
Dimitris Papageorgiou (University of the Aegean).

11. Intimate Travels through Otherness: Ellen Corin (Mc Gill
University).

12. When the Border of Research and Personal Life become
Blurred: Thorny Issues in Conducting Dementia Research: Athena
Mc Lean (Central Michigan University).

Index

About the author

Athena Mc Lean is Professor of Anthropology at the Department
of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, Central Michigan
University. Dr. Mc Lean’s research has focused on
processes of knowledge production and contestation in the areas of
aging and psychiatry. She has particular interests in dementia care
and advocacy movements in mental health and aging. Her writings
include ‘Contradictions in the Social Production of Clinical
Knowledge: The Case of Schizophrenia’, in Social Science and
Medicine (1990), and The Person in Dementia: A Study of
Nursing Home Care in the U.S. (2007).

Annette Leibing is an anthropologist with research
interests in psychiatry, aging (especially Alzheimer), medications,
and new medical technologies (such as stem cells). She has taught
anthropology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Federal University of
Rio de Janeiro, and been a visiting professor in Social Studies of
Medicine, Mc Gill University (2002-05). She is Associate
Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Montreal.
Her latest book, co-edited with Lawrence Cohen, is Thinking
about Dementia: Culture, Loss, and the Anthropology of Senility
(2006).