Fieldwork is Wasteful...

I am sometimes afraid that my fieldnotes are not adding to anything significant. I feel this way probably because it’s been only two weeks since I entered the field. If I have a lot more pages of fieldnotes in the next several months, I’m sure I will find patterns of practices and discourses that are revealing about Japanese youth’s cognitions of national groups. The bottom line is that fieldwork is not a very efficient way to collect data. It produces a lot of details that will be “wasted” when it comes to a time to write up final reports; however, it is an excellent supplement to quantitative data and an effective antidote to self-indulgence in high-flying theorization that has no social significance.