Entanglements of fieldwork

Besides a generation of scholars who have theorized on the dynamics of war and peace and understandings of violence as well as detailed analysis of specific conflicts or aspects thereof, some researchers have already engaged with the methodological and ethical issues of doing research on violence and conflict. Doing fieldwork remains the defining requirement for becoming an anthropologist in the twenty-first century. Fieldwork remains a mandatory rite of passage and as such, to quote Rabinow, is seldom the subject of public scrutiny. Ethnography is commonly understood as a “means for producing knowledge from an intense, intersubjective engagement”. Grassiani did fieldwork among Israeli military personnel, whose political position she despised, and argues that she needed a certain form of distance. In particular, she did not want to share her own political position, which was opposite to that of her interlocutors. Within the discipline, work on conflict, violence and war tends to be privileged over other forms of suffering.