Under the Shadow of Guns: Negotiating the Flaming Fields of Caste/Class War in Bihar, India
Author(s)
Kunnath, George
Abstract
This paper emerges out of the author’s year long (August 2002 to September 2003) fieldwork among the Dalits in Jehanabad district of Bihar, India, where caste and class violence has claimed hundreds of lives since the 1970s. The Marxist rebels, the private armies of the upper caste landlords and the police have turned this region into what is known as the ‘killing fields of Bihar’. Conducting fieldwork in a context of an ongoing caste and class war has thrown up a number of questions that challenge the conventional fieldwork practices in anthropology and opens new avenues for exploration. This paper, after laying out the context of the research, examines and discusses the issues of the researcher’s identity, anthropological objectivity, ethics, fieldwork methods and personal commitment in the ‘fields under fire’.
IssueNo
2
Pages
1-12
Article
Article Not Available
Source
Anthropology Matters
VolumeNo
6
PubDate
2004
ISBN_ISSN
Browse Path(s)
Anthropology —-Methods and Approaches ——–Ethnological Approaches and Participant Observation
