Striking out on Field Research – What’s in your bag?

The last couple of months for me have been dedicated to finishing Ph.D. qualifying exams, advancing to candidacy, moving out of my apartment, and most importantly, preparing for ethnomusicological fieldwork in Ecuador! It’s an exciting time in any graduate student’s career, albeit exhausting and nerve-wrecking. I left California on Thursday afternoon and three flights, two long layovers, and 26 hours later, landed in Quito. If you ever fly to Quito, I recommend arriving during daylight hours, because the view overlooking the city and Pichincha (the volcano) was fantastic!

As I stood in Ecuadorian customs last night, a surreal feeling washed over me. I was no longer the young girl who dreamed of getting into college and traveling for my studies, or the graduate student trying to narrow down her interests and decide what direction to take or what to study and where. The research was no longer something that only existed on paper in grant applications and study proposals, and the sounds and smells of Ecuador were no longer figments of my imagination, but now familiar and comforting after two previous trips to Ecuador. I finally reached this moment in my life when all sorts of dreaming, hoping, planning, and contemplating materialized right before me.

For my first full day back to Ecuador, I’m hanging out in Quito before traveling to Otavalo tomorrow morning. My original plan was to spend some of the afternoon walking around the Historical Center of Quito, but some storms moved in (as they often do). Instead, I’ll be hanging out indoors, listening to the rains and thunder, which I’ve been deprived of since moving to southern California 3.5 years ago, and starting up my fieldwork blog.

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(two pictures from my last stay in Quito in August 2011)

For starters, I figured I’d start with the basics: Preparing for fieldwork and assembling the field kit.

When I began brainstorming how I would like to update my field kit, I came across this anthropology blog:

What’s in your bag? http://savageminds.org/2007/08/13/whats-in-your-fieldwork-bag/

I couldn’t find a similar blogpost by an ethnomusicologist or someone more focused on documenting sound when I googled some keywords, but I felt like this was still helpful, as were the notes taken in my field methods lab seminar and my discussions with other friends and professors in the field. Still, once I went out seriously looking to purchase equipment, the price tags, reviews, sizes, accessories, etc. became another project of sorting through information. Below I have outlined some decisions I had to make, along with a list of what I have packed and dragged with me. See my comment on this post for an extended discussion about these items.

A Modest Budget:
In general, I decided that sticking to a modest budget was necessary for the type of work I will be doing. I saved a decent amount of money by living frugally during graduate school, but while I was preparing my field kit, I had not yet heard back from the main grant I applied to for support next year. Therefore, I had to anticipate having to self-fund the bulk of my dissertation field research just in case other sources of funding did not come through for me (thankfully I was notified last week I will be receiving the grant I was hoping for!).

Based on the end goals of my research and the projected venues for presenting my  materials and documentation, I knew I needed to find equipment that was affordable, easy to use, and would still give decent results. Another important point to take into consideration was that while conducting research in (mostly rural but sometimes urban) Latin America, I knew that large, flashy, high-end and expensive equipment would draw more unwanted attention to myself than in some other parts of the world. Getting mugged for a fancy device or being obtrusive or intimidating while documenting in the field are two things I definitely want to avoid while I’m here. Therefore, I’ve stuck with reliable and well-reviewed items that are not top of the line or the most recent models.

The Luggage
• Samsonite Suitcase
• Victorinox backpack with laptop sleeve (slightly larger than a normal Jansport backpack)

The Kit and Materials
• My violin and a flute
• MacBook laptop + charger
• Kingston 4GB DataTraveler USB thumb drive
• WD 320GB and 500GB Passport External USB Hard Drives
• Dropbox, Google Docs and Google Sites
• Canon Vixia HFR200 with charger, two 16GB SD cards and extra battery
• Nikon D-90 DSLR + charger
• Black Diamond Cosmo headlamp + AAA batteries
• Olympus FE-100
• Zoom H2 + included accessories
• iPhone + charger
• Vivitar tripod
• AA Rechargeable batteries and charger for Olympus and Zoom.
• Travel Office Supplies Kit
• Notebooks
• Agenda/Calendar for making appointments
• IRB Paperwork and Publication Permissions
• ATT GoPhone
• Ecuadorian phone
• Google Voice and Skype
• Copy of passport, visa application, visa
• Copy of Yellow Fever and other vaccinations I’ve received
• Medicine
• Gifts
• A couple pictures of friends, family, and loved ones.
• Clothes
• Earplugs
• Toilet paper and napkins.

That about covers my fieldwork preparations. Feel free to comment with some of the things you’ve taken with your or used during fieldwork, especially if you are conducting ethnographic field research, are an ethnomusicologist, or you’re someone working with sound as a primary source to document. I’d be interested to know what people working on a tighter budget have used, as well as those working to create professional level materials, such as documentaries in HD.

I’ll post again later this week once I am settled in Otavalo! Ashta kashkaman! (“Until next time” in Kichwa)