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Paper Short Abstract:

The paper considers the ethics and challenges of communication in fieldwork conducted in a site that is both ‘home’ and ‘not home’, where, as participant and observer, I am both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider.’ I reflect on the requirements of scholarly research set against the obligations of community and intersubjective relations as these shape fieldwork.

Paper Abstract:

As a British person of Italian heritage, fieldwork in the place of my mother’s family presents particular personal, ethical, and professional challenges. While I have never before lived in the place I now work in, I have always known it and am known there through maternal kin connections. This both facilitates access to and places limits on my interactions with interlocutors as much is already preset with extended kin histories widely shared in the town. Here, I explore my negotiations for permission to study and observe the quinquennial scampanata festival, traditionally the preserve of men. My knowledge of local dialect and even the festival itself, one that is not open to outsiders, already positions me as a kind of insider, but one who is also potentially recording, translating, and interpreting events in ways that may not accord with the perspectives of local historians or festival participants. Writing primarily in English for an academic readership are additional factors which distance my work from local people, from those who write on the scampanata in Italian and Anghiarese for a local readership with local identities invested in particular versions of the festival. Using approaches from performance theory, folklore, and anthropology for academic audiences mark me as an outsider, while my home and family in the town, connections that will last long after fieldwork ends, require considered communication strategies and sensitive translation of professional obligations to manage ethical data collection and resulting publications without unsettling existing and future local friendships and relations.