Playing the Field: Questions of Fieldwork in Geography

Many questions-practical, strategic, political, ethical, personal-are raised by conducting field research. Some of these seem, or are constituted as, separate from the “research itself,” yet are integral to it. In this paper I attempt to cut through the breach that divides the doing of fieldwork and the fieldwork itself by addressing what constitutes the “field,” what constitutes a field researcher, and what constitutes data under contemporary conditions of globalization. Drawing on my work in New York City and Sudan, I argue that by interrogating the multiple positionings of intellectuals and the means by which knowledge is produced and exchanged, field researchers and those with whom they work can find common ground to construct a politics of engagement that does not compartmentalize social actors along solitary axes.