The most popular post on my blog describes the fieldnote template<\/a> I developed during the early stages of my PhD research with community-based NGOs running educational and economic development initiatives in Kolkata (India) and Lae (Papua New Guinea). This fieldnote template has made its way into other blog posts about ethnographic research<\/a>, textbooks<\/a> and articles<\/a>, course outlines, and academic commons<\/a>. Last year my colleague Grant Jun Otsuki<\/a> assigned it as a reading for his first year Cultural Anthropology class at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington as a way of helping students prepare for an assignment that involved doing fieldwork, writing fieldnotes, and turning those fieldnotes into a piece of anthropological writing. Grant invited me to come and speak to the class, and that experience has prompted me to write some further reflections on writing ethnographic fieldnotes as a disabled, neurodivergent anthropologist.<\/p>\n In my guest lecture I spoke about why anthropologists keep fieldnotes, what my fieldnotes consist of (handwritten notebooks, photographs, maps, drawings, emails, ticket stubs and other ephemera, voice recordings, notes jotted in an app on my phone, a personal diary, and of course the hundreds of electronic documents generated with my fieldnote template), and my relationship with my fieldnotes, including how I draw on fieldnotes alongside headnotes (Ottenberg, 1990) when I write. I also discussed how ethnographic fieldwork is an all-encompassing activity that involves your body, mind, senses, and memories, and how my fieldnote template offers me a way to document my experiences and begin identifying what and how I \u201cknow\u201d about my topic. As part of that, I described some of the strategies I use to manage my energy levels and wellbeing during fieldwork. In India and Papua New Guinea this included ensuring I had access to my medication at all times, packing my own food, wearing headphones, trying to avoid situations that would trigger migraines, and scheduling rest days in between fieldwork days so I could process sights, sounds, smells, and social interactions.<\/p>\n What I didn\u2019t say during my guest lecture was how I have largely developed these strategies on my own. When I began my first major research project in the early 2000s, there were no guides on how to do ethnographic fieldwork as a disabled neurodivergent anthropologist. Neurodiversity, disability, and chronic illness were subjects<\/em> of anthropological studies that I read as a student, but I don\u2019t recall reading anything written by openly neurodivergent, disabled, or chronically ill anthropologists. We also did not use the terms \u201cneurodivergent\u201d or \u201cdisabled\u201d in New Zealand in the early 2000s to describe people like me, who have been diagnosed with various mental health disorders (not all of which I am comfortable disclosing) and medical conditions like chronic migraine and endometriosis (which I am comfortable to share publicly). And I did not write this part of myself into my academic work. Indeed, in one instance I was actively discouraged from writing about how depression and anxiety affected my fieldwork by a well-meaning colleague who worried about how such a disclosure would negatively affect (a) how the quality of my work would be perceived, and (b) my chances of future employment in academia. \u201cYou can do that once you\u2019ve finished your PhD and got a permanent job,\u201d was the advice. Now, 13 years on from finishing the PhD and 9 years after securing a permanent job, I am still ambivalent about bringing my neurodivergence into my writing, research, and teaching. All anthropology is filtered, as Amelia Frank-Vitale (2022) points out, but I think there is still considerable stigma against neurodivergent filters. However, as Cinzia Greco (2022) asks,<\/p>\n \u2026 if ethnography and participant observation represent core anthropological methods, through which reality is filtered and turned into knowledge, what does it mean to observe, analyze, and conduct fieldwork as a neurodivergent subject? How can variation in how we see, hear, and perceive the world influence ethnographic practice?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n These are important questions and I am heartened to see growing conversations about neurodivergence, abelism, and anthropology in academic circles (including, but by no means limited to, Durban 2022; Friedner with Kasnitz and Wool 2018; Gibson 2018; Kinsell 2022; Kasnitz 2020; Morgendorff 2023; Radher 2018; Starn 2022). If you have reading or researcher recommendations, please feel free to comment below or get in touch.<\/p>\n Durban, Erin L. 2022. \u201cAnthropology and Ableism.\u201d American Anthropologist<\/em> 124 (1): 8\u201320.<\/p>\n Greco, Cinzia. 2022. \u201cDivergent Ethnography: Conducting Fieldwork as an Autistic Anthropologist.\u201d Member Voices,\u00a0Fieldsights<\/em>, May 26. https:\/\/culanth.org\/fieldsights\/divergent-ethnography-conducting-fieldwork-as-an-autistic-anthropologist<\/a> <\/p>\n Frank-Vitale, Amelia. 2022. \u201cWriter\u2019s Block.\u201d In \u201cTaking Note: Complexities and Ambiguities in Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes,\u201d edited by Magdalena Zegarra Chiappori and Ver\u00f3nica Sousa,\u00a0American Ethnologist<\/em>, 26 August. https:\/\/americanethnologist.org\/features\/collections\/taking-note-complexities-and-ambiguities-in-writing-ethnographic-fieldnotes\/writers-block<\/a><\/p>\n Friedner, Michele, with Devva Kasnitz and Zo\u00eb Wool. 2018. \u2018What I Wish I Knew about Anthropology and Disability: Notes toward a more enabling anthropology\u2019,\u00a0Anthrodendum<\/em>, 10 January.\u00a0https:\/\/anthrodendum.org\/2018\/01\/10\/what-i-wish-i-knew-about-anthropology-and-disability-notes-toward-a-more-enabling-anthropology\/<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Gibson, Hannah. 2018. \u201cAccess denied: the dark side of prestige.\u201d Chronically Academic<\/em> https:\/\/chronicallyacademic.blogspot.com\/2018\/01\/access-denied-dark-side-of-prestige.html<\/a><\/p>\n Kasnitz, Devva. 2020. \u201cThe Politics of Disability Performativity.\u201d Current Anthropology<\/em> 61 (S21): S16\u201325.<\/p>\n Kinsell, Hannah. 2022. \u201cAm I an Anthropologist if\u2026 I am (dis)abled?\u201d Anthways <\/em>https:\/\/sites.gold.ac.uk\/anthways\/am-i-an-anthropologist-if-2022\/am-i-an-anthropologist-if-i-am-disabled\/<\/a> <\/p>\n Mogendorff, Karen. 2023. \u201cCountering Ableism in Knowledge Production. Empowerment of Subaltern People and Reproduction of Epistemic Hierarchies.\u201d Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology<\/em> 28, 41\u201360. <\/p>\n Ottenberg, Simon. 1990. \u201cThirty Years of Fieldnotes: Changing Relationships to the Text.\u201d In Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology<\/em>, edited by Roger Sanjek, 139\u201360. New York: Cornell University Press.<\/p>\n Radher, Micha. 2018. \u201cEthnographic Ableism: Structural Silencing of Physical Disability in Anthropological Research.\u201d The New Ethnographer, <\/em>20 August. https:\/\/thenewethnographer.com\/the-new-ethnographer\/2018\/08\/20\/ethnographic-ableism-structural-silencing-of-physical-disability-in-anthropological-research<\/a><\/p>\n Starn, Orin. 2022. \u201cAnthropology and the Misery of Writing.\u201d American Anthropologist<\/em> 124 (1): 187\u201397.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n\n
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