https://doi.org/10.23858/JUE19.2021.015
The main purpose of this article is to show the specifics of field research in India in the early 1990s. The presented reflections are based on previously unpublished notes written in March and April 1992. The article shows how ethnographic field activities understood as an “art of leaving out” were carried out in research on the same group, but differently in two neighbouring countries, India and Pakistan. By the term “art of leaving out” I mean the elements of ethnographic fieldwork visible in the notes, which, however, are either omitted in the process of creating anthropology or not used in publications. These notes reflect the aims, vision and evolution of that time, techniques and transformation of research implementation in the villages on the outskirts of Bhuj, the capital of Kutch District (now its suburbs). A return to old notes gives an opportunity to look at the classic meanings of ethnographic field from a contemporary perspective. Then, it was assumed that field experience was about being with the “Other”. Encountering the interlocutors gave them their own voice instead of objectifying them. The article sheds light on the two kinds of interlocutors in India: professional guides providing knowledge about the studied group on the one hand, and on the other, members of the group itself, where knowledge was acquired through being with them. The article compares two ways of doing fieldwork on a group sharing common origins in Pakistan and India.
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