Fieldwork on the American Campus
Duchan examines the process of doing fieldwork “at home,” so to speak, by exploring the musical life on American college campuses--where ethnographers often live but seldom reflect upon. In recent years, the field of ethnographic analysis has expanded from a traditional non-Western geographic locus and cultural concept to include urban and suburban Western sites and the internet. Duchan addresses two pertinent questions: What are the distinctive challenges (social, cultural, bureaucratic, and so on) the ethnographer faces in such domestic ethnography? And how might a researcher’s data be affected by historically established social structures, such as those of academic class and rank, traditional campus mores, or the politics of representation and reciprocity that play out in this setting?