Developing Skills for Pragmatic Fieldwork

Each of the eight practices draws on our personalities and histories. Some people may even be naturally inclined to a few more than others. However, there are skills associated with each, and those skills can be improved. As Bourdieu (1977) articulates, our habitus, our ongoing, embodied actions, systematically shape the way we see. I believe the pragmatic fieldworker meaningfully pursues social justice by intentionally developing these eight habitus. This enables the fieldworker to see the life and structure of human interaction and reconstitute communities through symbols and bodies.

Skill Development for Serve

Serving can be improved by fostering hospitality, cultivating compassion, nurturing an attitude of otherness, acquiring strategies for communicating immediacy, and honing resilience techniques.

Skill Development for Reflect

Reflecting can be improved by journaling, meditating, identifying and resisting the urge to satisfice, reading critical scholarship, developing logical reasoning (deduction, induction, abduction), and learning techniques for reflexive consideration, close reading, and coding techniques.

Skill Development for Gather

Fieldworkers can gather better by developing techniques for recruitment and facilitation and improving skills in grant writing and fundraising.

Skill Development for Present

Presenting can be improved by studying presentational structure, practicing writing, speaking, and performing for a variety of audiences, and developing new styles of presentation.

Skill Development for Observe

Observation can be improved by practicing fieldnote techniques, reading detective stories (Goodall, 1994), learning how to separate description and evaluation, and being in one’s senses.

Skill Development for Labor

Capacity for laboring can be improved by acquiring techniques for staff coordinating, facility maintenance, etc. and staying in active physical and mental shape.

Skill Development for Envision

Envisioning can be improved by acquiring heuristic devices, imagining often and vividly, drawing ideas on paper, and learning planning/problem solving models.

Skill Development for Ask

Asking can be improved by developing empathy, learning interviewing techniques, fostering respect for alternate representations of the world, practicing active listening, and learning how to probe.