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Based on several long-term fieldwork projects in Israel and the Unted States, this book brings together a repertoire of subjective and professional experiences of an anthropologist who attended various theoretical and methodological tutoring settings. That varied panorama of research milieus, ethnographic field sites, and diverse personal engagements, has offered a wide perspective on the complex craft of anthropology. Moreover, it sometimes placed the author in unexpected situations that challenged some habitually accepted modes of personal conduct as well as ethnographic research norms and paradigms, expanding the arena and terms of the anthropological assignments and the record of ethnographic works.
“Shokeid writes in detail about his efforts to maintain a neutral presence as a researcher while known publicly as a heterosexual, secular Jewish male from Israel and the challenges that arise when working with such diverse populations as members of a gay synagogue in New York City and Jewish immigrants in Israel. Throughout, the author thoughtfully guides readers through his takes on the theoretical, methodological, and ethical complexities of ethnographic research…Recommended.” • Choice
“It is a work of excellence … a bold, honest, frank, personal account of an anthropologist doing ethnography in a multitude of settings and circumstances. Shokeid confronts the many complexities of fieldwork and qualitative social science research. It is an important work in the tradition of critical and public anthropology that should find a place in the curricula of every social science graduate program.” • Jeffrey David Ehrenreich, University of New Orleans
Moshe Shokeid is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His major publications include A Gay Synagogue in New York (Columbia University Press, 1995; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) and Can Academics Change the World? (Berghahn, 2020).
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: A Personal Overview
Chapter 1. Exceptional Experiences in Everyday Life
Chapter 2. On Academics Engagement in National Political Conflicts
Chapter 3. Revisiting Old Fieldnotes: What Have We Left Out?
Chapter 4. The Book Cover and the Ethnographic Text
Chapter 5. Listening to Jewish Missionaries’ Messages
Chapter 6. The Lifespan of Ethnographic Reports
Chapter 7. Exceptional Experiences in Academic Life
Chapter 8. The Destiny of Urban Peripheries
Chapter 9. An Anthropologist’s Engagement as Insider and Outsider
Chapter 10. Remembering the Dead: Writing, the Vehicle of Spectral Survival
Afterword
Index