December has been a long month. Long in an enjoyable sense. After Sinterklaas at the beginning of the month, and a few meetings with other academics, most of my December 2009 was given over to holiday-related activities, namely, eating, drinking and being merry. It was loads of fun, and kind of nice to have a bit of a vacation, visiting friends (and their family) in a couple different places around the Netherlands. But, even a long December can't last forever... and January 2010 is now here, begging, chiding, and encouraging me to eat more vegetables (and fewer sweets) and do my research!
While I am excited at the prospect of talking to new and interesting people about what they think it means to belong here - and all the related issues to pour out of such a question - I still find it a bit intimidating to take the initial steps of introducing myself. It's one of those endlessly useful practical things you don't learn in a methods class: how to simply go about the doing of the research. Now that I have an idea of who I want to talk to and why, and even have a sense of where specifically I can start to find them, how do I go about actually getting them to talk to me? Is it really as simple as sending an email/ calling them up/ walking into the office and saying something like, "Hi, I'm an anthropological researcher from Canada and I would like to talk to you about what it means to be Dutch?" I feel like I am missing vital information about how to go about making the link between research plans and actually researching. How do I introduce myself and my project to the the people I want to study? Literally, what is it I am supposed to say?
1e keucheniusstraat 13h, 1051 HN
2 years ago
2 comments:
This is the truly awkward part of anthropology, isn't it? You can do it!
hoi biertje? That might work
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