Fieldwork in the Home Counties: Double vision and dismantled identity

Malinowski’s (1922) advice on fieldwork included the famous pleas to learn the indigenous language and to avoid contact with white men. Such advice would have been inappropriate for my fieldwork. Granted, Gypsies in England are respectably exotic as non-literate nomads, not found in the conventional typologies. Yet we shared the same language, apart from the occasional Romany word inserted into English sentences. Fieldwork did not require progress through grammar books, interpreters and mental translations. This apparent concordance with one’s own culture masked other differences.