Amazing Cross-Cultural Friendships Featured in Fieldwork Connections

Cross-cultural friendships and personal stories about doing fieldwork in anthropology form the core of a dynamic new book from the University of Washington Press to be released in October 2007:  Fieldwork Connections:  The Fabric of Ethnographic Collaboration in China and America.  Sparked by an idea from a UW graduate student 10 years ago, the book is the first account of fieldwork told from the standpoint of both native and foreign ethnographers.

Fieldwork Connections tells the story of intertwined research histories of three anthropologists working in the rural Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China.  Chapters are written alternately by a male American anthropologist (UW anthropology professor Stevan Harrell); a male researcher and historian from a village in Liangshan (Ma Lunzy); and a highly educated woman from an elite Chinese family (Bamo Ayi).  As decades of mutual ethnographic research unfold, the authors enter each other's narratives and challenge the reader to ponder the nature of ethnographic "truth."  The book showcases intercultural understanding and a unique approach to collaboration.

You can meet all three co-authors at a free UW Press "New Books in Print Series" lecture, reception and book signing on Thurs., Oct. 25, 2007 at 4:00 p.m. in the UW Simpson Center Main Conference Room in the Communications Building, Seattle Campus.  For more information about the University of Washington Press, visit http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/.