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FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research, 2nd ed. by Bonnie Stone Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin's, 2002. 528 pp.
In a recent newspaper story, Gabrielle H. Lyon, one of the cofounders of Project Exploration-a nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate children about science-wrote about the project's 2003 dinosaur expedition to Niger. She ends a description of the months of preparation by writing, "As the team maps out the logistics of the fieldwork late into the night, it's hard to realize all that has had to take place to get us this far . . . and we're not even out in the field yet" ("Return to the Sahara," Chicago Tribune 31 Oct. 2003: 1 +). Lyon's words invoke the process of completing a major research project for our students, and in their book, FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research,Bonnie Stone Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater emphasize the importance of being in the field: "The field is the site for doing research, and fieldworking is the process of doing it" (1).
In Chapter 1, "Stepping In and Stepping Out: Understanding Cultures," the authors supply readings with titles as appealing as the essays; these readings illustrate the engagement of fieldworking, and the chapter as a whole provides the foundation for the concept of flcldwork. One interesting reading,"Friday Night at Iowa 80:TheTruck Stop as Community and Culture," by Rick Zollo, will appeal to students of all ages who have taken long trips that inevitably include a truck-stop visit. Zollo writes that at the truck stop he "senses a community that felt both proud and put upon, holding to perceived freedoms yet reined in by new regulations and restrictions" (40). Statements like this one can serve as a springboard for a class discussion about...