Cerwonka, Allaine, and Liisa H. Malkki. 2008. Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork. University of Chicago Press.
Cerwonka and Malkki’s Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork provides a look behind the curtain of ethnographic fieldwork. Rather than present itself as a manual or textbook of ethnographic practice, it embraces uncertainty and confusion to share possible ideas for making full use of ethnographic fieldwork in a research project. The book openly and transparently allows the reader to recognize that life bleeds into work and vice-versa. Cerwonka and Malkki do not shy away from sharing the mundane and the uncomfortable or painful moments that are part and parcel of ethnographic fieldwork.
This book does not focus on the content of Cerwonka’s research, her findings, or her final argument. Neither is it a book about choosing a research question or writing a dissertation. It is a book best suited to reading before embarking on fieldwork, or rather most appropriate for understanding the middle stage of research between initial brainstorming and writing. For this reason, students interested in ethnographic methods, regardless of discipline, at the undergraduate level and beyond will find this helpful.
The book consists of word-by-word transcripts of email correspondence between Allaine Cerwonka, a Political Science PhD student, and her mentor, Liisa H. Malkki; reflections and comments or “afterthoughts” about the fieldwork process; a Fullbright proposal; and discussions about widespread assumptions that people tend to have about ethnographic methods. Through these segments, the reader can get a behind-the-scenes look at the anthropological research process at a PhD level and the relationship between a mentor and mentee. At a personal level, students can use this book to remind themselves that ethnographic fieldwork is improvisational and that veering off path or plan is not only part of the process but is also expected at all levels of research.
Chapter 1, “Nervous Conditions: The Stakes in Interdisciplinary Research,” explores the academic climate surrounding interdisciplinary research and the qualities or approaches that such research demands. While academic bodies may not see interdisciplinary research as legitimate, the chapter proposes that research should be a process of answering a question rather than fitting content into previously defined disciplinary boundaries. If the research question necessitates interdisciplinarity, then theory and method can be mixed and matched. In that sense, ethnographic fieldwork is not presented as a method exclusive to anthropology. The authors describe improvisation and flexibility as the pillars of ethnographic fieldwork. They also shine a light on some ethnographic misconceptions and urge us to see that fieldwork is a bricoleur and a work in progress; emotional involvement with your participants is natural and expected in field research; and contrary to popular belief, ethnographic fieldwork is not always about immersion, there are periods of inactivity and loneliness.
Chapter 2, “The Fulbright Proposal,” features a successful Fullbright proposal essay. This is useful for students to see what structure and content are expected in grant applications. It also provides a good template for students to use when coming up with a research proposal for a class or a project, as the proposal follows a logical order, starting with background information and ending with the broader purpose of the research. However, it is worth keeping in mind that Cerwonka’s proposal was accepted and funded by Fullbright in the 1990s. There is a possibility that application criteria and expectations have changed.
Chapter 3, “Fieldwork Correspondence,” shows the realities of being in a different country from your mentor and doing unfamiliar fieldwork. Through chronological email correspondence, the reader can see how fieldwork takes time to develop. This chapter introduces fieldwork's small and big hurdles, like social anxiety, finding a place to live, finding informants, and ethical dilemmas. Reading the emails can sometimes feel invasive as you learn personal details about Cerwonka and Malkki’s lives, such as childbirth. Cerwonka also includes some of her field notes from 1995 to candidly share how it is instinctual to make character judgments about your participants.
Similar to Chapter 2, in Chapter 3, it is important to keep the email dates in context. The emails are comprehensive, extensive, and often quite eloquent linguistically and structurally. Some readers today may not be able to relate to this email writing style. Email etiquette is constantly changing, and the ways mentors and mentees communicate have changed since Cerwonka’s PhD fieldwork in the 1990s. Other communication methods, such as Zoom, might be the common practice today between PhD students and their mentors.
Chapter 4, “Tradition and Improvisation in Ethnographic Field Research,” expands on Chapter 1. It reflects on how being in academia is also about building your brand as a scholar. Interdisciplinary approaches can be misrecognized, and ethnography can be misunderstood outside cultural anthropology. For the authors, ethnography can be empirical, like other disciplinary methods. However, ethnographic fieldwork also builds on empiricism by requiring imagination, something that is not teachable. I suppose this chapter, and book as a whole, tries to teach the unteachable. Fieldwork is a temporal process, and innovation and improvisation are the final lessons to learn while in the field.
Overall, this book is an honest and possibly critical engagement with the reality of fieldwork, where life bleeds into research and research bleeds into life. As stated by the authors, the book's purpose is to share the process of dealing with “epistemological and methodological roadblocks” in interdisciplinary research (13). In terms of reader experience, the book is dually unsettling and comforting: It forces the reader to ask themselves, “What do we really know for certain about the field?” while also comforting them with the reality that no scholar has it all figured out or understood. For this reason, the book is helpful for any student, regardless of disciplinary background, to understand the complicated and dynamic world of ethnographic fieldwork.