ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the rather more down-to-earth question of how researchers go about selecting research topics and deciding on the methods that they will use in their investigation. While such selections do have a very practical aspect, they also entail considerations of how researchers are located, geographically, socially and theoretically, as well as broader questions about the nature of ethnographic research as characterized by selves studying others. I begin with the practicalities of selecting a research topic and deciding on methods, looking at some of the sources for topics and the ways in which researchers’ personal histories, as well as the intellectual climate within their discipline and more broadly, are implicated in their choices. These considerations lead to a discussion of the necessity to resituate anthropological research, geographically and intellectually, to take account of contemporary realities associated with globalization. In particular, I advocate abandoning the idea of a self-contained field site and placing more emphasis on anthropology at home and on nontraditional topics. Finally, I consider the ways in which methodologies may affect choice of topic and methods and how they relate to the research process generally by drawing on two examples: feminist methodologies, and a comparison between symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology.
