From Ethnography to Webnography: Changing Contours of Field Research in India1An earlier version of the paper was presented in the M. N. Srinivas Centenary Conference, organised by the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru on 29–30 August 2017. Several of the issues raised in this paper are to be traced to the very insightful discussions with the doctoral students at ISEC in the classrooms or outside it. In particular, I should like to make a mention of V. Gayathri, Sathyapriya Raut, Sudha Seetharaman and R. Santhosh. Thanks are due also to the past directors of ISEC—G. K. Kadekodi, N. Jayaram, R. S. Deshpande and many friends working and discussions with who gave rich ideas in writing this paper: S. R. Charsley, Jim Manor, Ruedi Baumgartner, Ruedi Hogger, Christine Lutringer, Sobin George and V. Ramaswamy. The usual disclaimers apply.

Abstract

Contributions of M. N. Srinivas to the understanding of changing nature of caste, village and politics have been well documented and continue to be under focus several decades after his scholarly formulations on them. This article is an attempt to focus on the nature of changes that are occurring in the realm of his contributions to the field of social science research methods—especially to the tradition of intensive field research whether in rural or urban locales. Not only have the field sites’ amenability to research has undergone a major change, the institutional context in which social research is practised have radically transformed. This article is an attempt to track some such changes in both the contexts and to reflect upon the emerging challenges to social science research in general and the idea of ‘field’ research in particular. One of the questions it raises and attempts to answer is: Is sociology and social anthropology becoming more dependent on secondary data, and the source becoming a web than the field?