First Fieldwork By Barbara Anderson Summary

First Fieldwork The book First Fieldwork: The Misadventures of an Anthropologist by Barbara Anderson, is a book about a graduate student who moves to Denmark for a year to do an ethnographic report of the people in a small Danish, island town of Taarnby. She travels with her husband, Thor, who is a licensed Anthropologist, her daughter Katie and her unborn child, Sarah. Although a fictionalized book, it clearly and accurately describes the challenges and perils of being an inexperienced Anthropologist. The book starts out with Anderson introducing her studies in school and how she was really interested in African anthropology and submitted papers to do a year of fieldwork in Africa. She later found out that she was pregnant and withdrew
This limits her experiences because Thor helps her immerse herself a lot in the book. He is also the person who communicated majority of their time in Denmark. Anderson would have learned to speak Danish more quickly if Thor wasn’t there and if she didn’t rely on him as much as she did. He also signed her up for opportunities to get to know the people in the community. She wouldn’t have taken the cooking class if it weren’t for Thor pushing her to do so. This limits her because she would have to sign herself up for classes and community activities and be more social on her
The book teaches what it is like when one first travels to a new anthropological community and specifically emphasizes culture shock.When Anderson was studying anthropology in college, she was focusing more on African culture instead of European culture, this made it harder for her to adjust to life in Taarnby because she didn’t know it was going to be so much different than American life. This book helps readers understand crucial anthropological terms because each chapter outlines a specific term. One chapter, specifically Chapter 3, was about Participant Observation. This is the chapter about her cooking class that she attended. This helps the young anthropologist understand the confusions that happen while someone is trying to immerse themselves into a culture. Chapter 3 also demonstrates the struggles of learning a new language and communicating with the people of a different culture; it also helps the aspiring anthropologist understand the line of work they are going into and can help them prepare better ways to communicate with the people of the culture they study. Although a fictionalized book, it clearly and accurately describes the challenges and perils of being an inexperienced Anthropologist in a new