Book contents
- Curious About Nature
- Ecology, Biodiversity and Conservation
- Curious About Nature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Foreword
- Part I Getting Curious About Nature
- Part II Essays: Inspiring Fieldwork
- 6 Understanding the Decline of Hen Harriers on Orkney
- 7 Rocky Shores Are Not Just for the Able-Bodied
- 8 Life, Love and Longing to Survive
- 9 Bringing Palaeoecology Alive
- 10 Expedition Botany/Hobby Botany
- 11 The Illisarvik Drained-Lake Field Experiment: a Legacy of J. Ross Mackay
- 12 In Praise of Meteorology Field Courses
- 13 Time, Place and Circumstance
- 14 Sampling Fish Diversity along a Submarine Mountain Chain
- 15 Place and Placefulness
- 16 Ripples across the Pond
- 17 Fieldwork, Field-Friends and the Paradox of Absence
- 18 Ornithological Fieldwork: Essential and Enjoyable
- 19 Exploration Science on the Shore of the Arctic Ocean: a Personal Experience
- 20 Only Connect – and Make Records
- 21 Studying Patterned Bogs
- 22 Mapping the Rise of the Animals: Cambrian Bodies in the Sirius Pass, North Greenland
- 23 Evolution in the Cellar: Live-Trapping Wild House Mice in the Italian Alps
- 24 Reflections on ‘Babooning’
- 25 Bogs, Birds and Bones: Interdisciplinary Fieldwork on the Isle of Rum National Nature Reserve
- 26 Exploring World(s) Down Under
- 27 Experiments by Nature: Strength in Realism
- 28 Big Problems – Small Animals
- 29 Soil Survey: a Field-Based Science
- 30 A Travelling Ethnography of Urban Technologies
- 31 My Date with the Devil
- 32 Peregrinations through the Heathlands and Moorlands of Britain: an Applied Plant Ecologist’s Tale
- 33 The Maimai Catchment New Zealand
- 34 ‘Writing in the Field’: the Importance of a Local Patch
- 35 Looking but Not Seeing: How Sketching in the Field Improves Observational Skills in Science
- 36 From Rum to Recording Forest Soils via the Soil Survey of Scotland: a Life of Fieldwork
- 37 In Praise of Bat Detectors
- 38 In Search of Tawny Frogmouths
- 39 Don’t Just Sit There Reading …
- 40 Fieldwork in the Australian Bush: If It Doesn’t Kill You, It’ll Convert You
- 41 Field Studies of Behaviour and Life-Changing Events
- 42 Sediment, Wind Turbines and Rhinos: Ah, the Life of a Geographer!
- 43 Conservation Science: the Need for a New Paradigm Founded on Robust Field Evidence
- 44 The Worst Journey in the World
- 45 Field-less Fieldwork in Archaeology’s Digital Age
- 46 Reflections on a Career with the Field Studies Council
- 47 My Love Affair with Rocks That Fizz
- 48 In the Footsteps of John Wesley Powell: Restoring the Sand Bars in the Grand Canyon
- 49 Connecting the Next Generation to Their World
- 50 Beyond the Curriculum: Wider Conceptions of Learning in the Field
- Part III Reflections and Where Next for Field Studies
- Contributing Author Biographies
- Index
- References
17 - Fieldwork, Field-Friends and the Paradox of Absence
from Part II - Essays: Inspiring Fieldwork
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2020
Book contents
- Curious About Nature
- Ecology, Biodiversity and Conservation
- Curious About Nature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Foreword
- Part I Getting Curious About Nature
- Part II Essays: Inspiring Fieldwork
- 6 Understanding the Decline of Hen Harriers on Orkney
- 7 Rocky Shores Are Not Just for the Able-Bodied
- 8 Life, Love and Longing to Survive
- 9 Bringing Palaeoecology Alive
- 10 Expedition Botany/Hobby Botany
- 11 The Illisarvik Drained-Lake Field Experiment: a Legacy of J. Ross Mackay
- 12 In Praise of Meteorology Field Courses
- 13 Time, Place and Circumstance
- 14 Sampling Fish Diversity along a Submarine Mountain Chain
- 15 Place and Placefulness
- 16 Ripples across the Pond
- 17 Fieldwork, Field-Friends and the Paradox of Absence
- 18 Ornithological Fieldwork: Essential and Enjoyable
- 19 Exploration Science on the Shore of the Arctic Ocean: a Personal Experience
- 20 Only Connect – and Make Records
- 21 Studying Patterned Bogs
- 22 Mapping the Rise of the Animals: Cambrian Bodies in the Sirius Pass, North Greenland
- 23 Evolution in the Cellar: Live-Trapping Wild House Mice in the Italian Alps
- 24 Reflections on ‘Babooning’
- 25 Bogs, Birds and Bones: Interdisciplinary Fieldwork on the Isle of Rum National Nature Reserve
- 26 Exploring World(s) Down Under
- 27 Experiments by Nature: Strength in Realism
- 28 Big Problems – Small Animals
- 29 Soil Survey: a Field-Based Science
- 30 A Travelling Ethnography of Urban Technologies
- 31 My Date with the Devil
- 32 Peregrinations through the Heathlands and Moorlands of Britain: an Applied Plant Ecologist’s Tale
- 33 The Maimai Catchment New Zealand
- 34 ‘Writing in the Field’: the Importance of a Local Patch
- 35 Looking but Not Seeing: How Sketching in the Field Improves Observational Skills in Science
- 36 From Rum to Recording Forest Soils via the Soil Survey of Scotland: a Life of Fieldwork
- 37 In Praise of Bat Detectors
- 38 In Search of Tawny Frogmouths
- 39 Don’t Just Sit There Reading …
- 40 Fieldwork in the Australian Bush: If It Doesn’t Kill You, It’ll Convert You
- 41 Field Studies of Behaviour and Life-Changing Events
- 42 Sediment, Wind Turbines and Rhinos: Ah, the Life of a Geographer!
- 43 Conservation Science: the Need for a New Paradigm Founded on Robust Field Evidence
- 44 The Worst Journey in the World
- 45 Field-less Fieldwork in Archaeology’s Digital Age
- 46 Reflections on a Career with the Field Studies Council
- 47 My Love Affair with Rocks That Fizz
- 48 In the Footsteps of John Wesley Powell: Restoring the Sand Bars in the Grand Canyon
- 49 Connecting the Next Generation to Their World
- 50 Beyond the Curriculum: Wider Conceptions of Learning in the Field
- Part III Reflections and Where Next for Field Studies
- Contributing Author Biographies
- Index
- References
Summary
Though I have worked on death rites, Sikhs, emotions and the Church of England, it is to my Mormon research, which began in 1969, that I focus this essay on fieldwork (Douglas, 2010, 2015, 2017, 2018). Through participative and archival research in the UK and the USA, through conferences, the supervision and examination of doctoral work and the ensuing friendships, I have found myself networked with scholars and church members in ways hardly imagined by my first-year postgraduate self. This Mormon chapter of my life has been interspersed with, and much influenced by, the other topics just mentioned, each posing intriguing questions of ‘fieldwork’ and of experience in one ‘field’ leaking or flowing into, or even occasionally flooding, the others.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Curious about NatureA Passion for Fieldwork, pp. 185 - 189Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
References
Davies, D. J. (2010). Joseph Smith, Jesus, and Satanic Opposition: Atonement, Evil and the Mormon Vision. Ashgate, Farnham.Google Scholar
Davies, D. J. (2015). Mors Britannica: Lifestyle and Death-Style in Britain Today. Oxford University Press, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, D. J. (2017). Death Ritual and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funerary Rites. Third, expanded edition. Bloomsbury, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, D. J. (2018). Anthropology and theology: fugues of thought and action. In Theologically Engaged Anthropology, ed Lemons, J. D.. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 194–210.Google Scholar