Published between 2013 and 2015, Field Notes drew inspiration from Donna Haraway’s take on cat's cradle as a “game of relaying patterns.” In each series, four scholars wrote short pieces that built on each other in turn, using the keywords of provocation, translation, deviation, and integration as structuring devices.

The Field Notes section of the SCA website is no longer active. However, the Society’s journal does publish short-form essays that are in explicit conversation with one another over a shared theme or concept in the Colloquy section.

Ethics

Ethics

During this round of Field Notes, we have invited four scholars to think through the implications of a turn toward ethics and morality in anthropology and to ex... More

Disaster

Disaster

Today marks two years since a 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Japan's Tohoku region. A string of additional catastrophes— tsunamis and nuclear explosions—closely f... More

Affect

Affect

Ruminations on affect, the passions, and emotion have intrigued students of the human experience for centuries. As early as Durkheim's descriptions of collectiv... More

Contact/Access

Contact/Access

For our first round of Field Notes, we have asked our contributors to explore how they arrived at all the "first times" that pepper the training and fieldwork o... More