Baptized by Fire

I want to start this discussion of fieldwork experience and sociological analysis with the kind of fieldwork tale that is fairly typical nowadays because of its confessional nature. This does not mean, however, that I intend to indulge in endless self-conscious reflections that typify what John Van Maanen has referred to as ‘vanity ethnography’. There are enough examples of those in print already. ¹ Rattier, my aim is to explain why I was studying what I was studying, how I got into ‘the field’, how I then participated in some of the activities of those I was studying as a means of collecting research data, the kind of relationship I began to have with my ‘informants’ and how they responded to my presence. ² This will enable me at the end of the chapter to come up with an interpretation of the events that occurred and to provide an analytical tool for the understanding of other fieldwork ‘happenings’ encountered further along in this book.