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42 CHAPTER 3 Connections to Place Research journal, 28 November 2000 My first day in the field. Igau! [Wait!] This calls for an aside. Look how easily a tired formula fixes itself on paper. Who do I think I’m writing for anyway? “The field,” indeed! This is the Trobriands. This is Orabesi village. This is my mother-in-law’s house. I am at home with yawagu [my mother-in-law] Sarah. Since when did the Trobs become “the field” in my sense of place and positioning? Since I became a student in the field of anthropology? I am overwhelmed by a rush of familiarity and I find myself looking for nuanced change. What I see and hear is measured by recall, by sensory memories, by relationships already established and sustained, by perceptions already elaborated in reflection and interpretation. There is one significant difference to this re-entry: of all my prior trips this is my first time to come on my own. I have arrived with notebook in hand. “Ambesa vivila latum, kasusu?” [Where is your daughter, your lastborn child?] The disappointment expressed by all who come to greet me is persistent, an incredulity that demands an explanation. Bubu Sarah went to the airstrip to welcome her eight-year-old granddaughter. I was pleasantly surprised to see her when I stepped down from the plane, not expecting her to have made the twenty-minute drive on the back of the truck to be there upon my arrival. She greeted me with affection, a soft embrace and deep inhale with her nose rubbing against my cheek. “Oh, yawagu, yawagwe, kapisi!” [Oh, my daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law (emphasis), I am sorry for you!]. But her disappointment was not concealed. Where is Veitania? How can I travel here without her, arrive home on my own? In important ways, this solitary arrival carries a clear message: I am here to do my work. Ulo paisewa ginigini [my writing work]. In a society where productive labor is given form through social relations, where people are defined by their relationships, where I have always been defined by my children and the father of my children and my in-laws, I have been given leeway to be defined by my work. This is significant and it is a privilege. My presence takes on a different meaning—a different status, perhaps—and people are making space for me. I am being accommodated in a new social space. So, this is the field, this “spatial practice of dwelling.” Connections to Place 43 Affinity in the Field: Doing Research as an In-Law My connections to the Trobriands have been woven into the lineage of place since 1978, through marriage, childbearing, and my position as vevai, or in-law. In the early years of marriage, my learning about Trobriand culture was through attentive watching and doing, not questioning. To question felt like second-guessing, an intrusive and objective interrogation of what I thought should become apparent through passive absorption and mimesis. Increasingly, I became interested in turning my embedded familiarity with the Trobriands into a relationship defined by research and to shift my position from passive participant to active observer. My sense of solitariness as I reentered the familiar field of my chosen research site functioned as a form of spatial distancing to allow my work to redefine my presence, with the objective of translating “ongoing experience and entangled relationship into something distanced and representable” (Clifford 1997:57). The conspicuous absence of my children and husband on my arrival gave heightened clarity to the reconfiguration of my relational field. Transforming my sphere of accustomed relationality into a site for focused study did not suspend or transcend established social relations. Rather, embarking on ethnographic fieldwork, and this new “spatial practice of dwelling” (Clifford 1997:57), gave fresh contours to well-defined relationships. As a transient member of a household in which I had ongoing personal and social investment, I was critically aware of the newly drawn distinctions inscribed by my role as researcher.1 Papua New Guineans commonly declare their marital status and affinal ties by referring to place rather than by naming their partner. “Mi marit long Trobs” (I am married to the Trobriands) is how I avow my status in Tok Pisin, situating myself and asserting my identity in the social landscape of belonging. The value of connections to place, and the social relations that make these connections apparent , generates credibility and legitimacy for conducting...

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