Description: For centuries the practice of undertaking fieldwork and expeditions has been adopted as an essential part of research by scientists and scholars from diverse disciplines. As a method of collecting on-site data through observation, the practice is shared by disciplines ranging from biology and botany, through geology, geography, and archaeology to anthropology, linguistics, and folklore studies. Presenting 17 essays by 17 scholars from almost as many disciplines of knowledge, this volume contains a rich tapestry of stories from - and about - 'the field', from early modern times until the present day. Taking us around the globe, from Europe to Asia, from the Arctic to Africa and America, this book investigates the entanglement of scientific, political, social, cultural, and personal interests and agendas that have shaped, and still shape, our effort to explore, explain, and exploit the world.
Review Quotes: "As a kind of scholarly expedition through time and space, [this volume] encourages movement through multiple perspectives on, and approaches to, the history of the practices of science in the field. And the reader, helped by these diverse cartographies of discrete scholarly territories, gets a better sense of the size and qualities of the very big object that fieldwork is." -- Jean-Baptiste Gouyon, The British Journal for the History of Science