Introduction

We believe that a fair proportion of such missteps and obstacles are due not to poor formal training, but to a lack of field-tested advice on practical matters. Anyone who has set out to collect data in “the field” knows the gnawing feeling that previous methodological study is of limited value in the successful conduct of field research. When such research is in a foreign culture, the doubts and worries inevitably multiply. What a researcher often yearns for is something between a technical manual on data collection and a chatty travel guide. This book aims to begin to fill that void.