The document discusses key concepts in qualitative field research including what constitutes a field, fieldwork as a method of data collection, field relations, field experience, field notes, and ethics. It describes the two components of a field as the physical setting and the researcher's mindset. It emphasizes the importance of entering the field having researched it beforehand and allowing the field to guide research questions and methods. Field relations, gatekeepers, key informants, dress, body language, gender, and other social aspects are critical. Bourdieu's concept of field as a setting defined by the positions and relations of agents is summarized, including how habitus, capital, and fields interact hierarchically. Qualitative fieldwork involves pilot studies

1. Field
In qualitative research

2. • What constitute the field?
• Is fieldwork a method of collecting data or is
it more than mere collection of information?
• Field relations
• Field experience
• Field note
• Ethics

3. Field research
• Primary data collection involves at least some
fieldwork
• Encounters between researchers and subjects in
uncontrolled natural environment (qualitative)
• Two components- a geographical
component(Physical setting) and a mental
component (the mind of the researcher which
defines the field)

4. Entering the field
• visits the field having read up on the works of
other researchers or newspaper articles or
information from any other source so that the
researcher has an idea of what is going on in the
field.
• When developing the objectives of the research,
the research questions and the proposed methods
and methodology for the study the field should
guide the researcher.

5. Field relations
• Definitive characteristic of social science field
research is the encounter between
researcher(s) and researched
• Needs careful and reflexive action
• Two types of participants- gate keepers and
key informants

6. • Gate keepers facilitates initial access to the field
and information, situation or individuals
• e.g..,politicians, activists, community leaders
• Key informants- major source providing
information
• Both are very significant if the fieldworker lacks
working fluency in local language

7. Field relationship
•Dressing and body language
•Pay close attention to the body language and facial
expressions of the respondents as this could also
give the researcher hints as to whether the
respondent is comfortable about speaking on that
issue, if not, then it is important to understand what
is making them uncomfortable
•Critical importance of gender and other social
aspects!!!

8. Pierre Felix Bourdieu
•French sociologist,
anthropologist and
philosopher (1930-2002)
•Concerned with power
dynamics in society;
•Major works- theory of
class distinction, theory
of power and practice,
theory about media and
cultural production,
habitus and field

9. Bourdieu’s Field in Social
Science Research
• Anthropological background- analysing subcultures of
Algeria and France
• Epistemology underlying Bourdieu’s Field- very relevant in
qualitative research- especially in ethnography- Both for
theory and practical activity-reflexive sociology
• His method primarily concerned with the rethinking of the
research object in terms of his analytic concept of habitus
and field

10. • Field theory- dynamics between people and between groups
of people
• Reality is a social concept- “to exist is to exist socially in
relation to others”
• What is real is relational and everyone defines himself and
the world around him by marking the differences between
observed phenomena
• Modern social world- increased differentiation-
specialization- social position-Field
• He calls this sphere action as field- power relations between
and within these fields structure human behaviour

11. • The social positions that the agents occupy in the field are
determined by a number of things
• Firstly “Habitus” or “structuring structure” which organizes
practices and the perception of practices for all agents.
• Every individual’s personal history preferences and
dispositions placed in the context of the surrounding social
reality form a structure -predetermine that individual’s
potential courses of action
• social class education upbringings as well as an individual’s
past choices (capital) all form part of this structure and
determining part the behaviour of an agent in the field

12. A field is a setting in which agents and their social
positions are located. The position of each particular agent
in the field is a result of interaction between the specific
rules of the field, agent's habitus and agent's capital
(social, economic and cultural). Fields interact with each
other, and are hierarchical: Most are subordinate to the
larger field of power and class relations
In a nutshell

13. • His whole approach grounded on the fact that knowledge,
whether of the researcher or researched, is always relational-
basic idea behind habitus and field
• firstly, the relation of knowledge depends on the relation of
conditioning that precedes it and fashions the structures of
habitus;
• secondly, social science is necessarily a 'knowledge of
knowledge' and must make room for a sociologically grounded
phenomenology of the primary experience of the field; the
invariants and variations of the relation between different types of
fields and different types of habitus.

14. Field work
• Pilot study
• Ethnographic field work
• Survey and field
• Participant and field
• Time and money required
• Rapport
• Importance of fieldwork in empirical study