Oral Presentation Session - Invited Status Awarded

Invited by: Association of Senior Anthropologists

Of interest to: Practicing and Applied Anthropologists, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students, Those Involved in Mentoring Activities

Primary Theme: Inclusivity

Secondary Theme: Identity and Equity

(3-0075) Elders in the Field

This session explores the experiences of senior anthropologists who have continued to visit the same research field sites for many years, including after retirement from the academy or anthropological employment. “Change in the Anthropological Imagination” underlies much of the discussion, as shifting research agendas, spanning many decades, are set against changing circumstances in the host communities themselves. Participants consider what motivates them, as senior anthropologists, to continue to travel great distances, to incur personal expense and inconvenience, in order to visit their ethnographic site; and wonder how freedom from pressures of formal employment has affected their research program. Equally importantly, changes in the attitudes of people in the host community are considered as they, along with the researcher, grow older, moving through the roles of Mother/Father, Auntie/Uncle, and finally Grandparent, to Elder – or even Ancestor. Contributions draw on long-term studies from Japan, Papua New Guinea, India, Kenya and Peru, in a session which directly addresses the themes of this year’s meetings.

Organizer(s)

• Susan Kenyon

  Professor Emerita
  Butler University

Chair(s)

• Susan Kenyon

  Professor Emerita
  Butler University

Presenter(s)

• David Plath

  Professor Emeritus, Anthropology and Asian Studies
  Illinois-Urbana

• Keith Brown

  Professor Emeritus
  University of Pittsburgh

• Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi

  Retired
  Truman State University

• Dorothy Billings

  Wichita State University

• Maria Cattell

  Research Associate
  The Field Museum of Natural History

• Susan Seymour

  Pitzer College

• Paul Doughty

  Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus
  University of Florida

Presentations:

• 8:00 AM - 8:15 AM

  After 57 Years You Haven't Gone Native Yet? Documenting Keith Brown's Long-term Fieldwork in Mizusawa, Japan.
  David W. Plath – Illinois-Urbana
• 8:15 AM - 8:30 AM

  Mizusawa and the Anthropologist for Fifty Years
  Keith Brown – University of Pittsburgh
• 8:30 AM - 8:45 AM

  The Joys and Perils of Becoming a Gende Tumbuna
  Laura J. Zimmer-Tamakoshi – Truman State University
• 8:45 AM - 9:00 AM

  Forty Years in the Field
  Dorothy Kay Billings – Wichita State University
• 9:00 AM - 9:15 AM

  Time and Time Again: The Value of Longterm Research in Western Kenya
  Maria G. Cattell – The Field Museum of Natural History
• 9:15 AM - 9:30 AM

  Fifty Years of Fieldwork in Bhubaneswar, India
  Susan C. Seymour – Pitzer College
• 9:30 AM - 9:45 AM

  "Que Paso? Returning to the Research Homeland"
  Paul L. Doughty – University of Florida