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Elliott, Denielle, and Matthew Wolf-Meyer, eds. 2024, Naked Fieldnotes: A Rough Guide to 
Ethnographic Writing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 320 pp., ISBN 978-1-5179-
16145 
 

In Naked Fieldnotes: A Rough Guide to Ethnographic Writing, editors Denielle Elliott and 
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer seek to fill a gap in ethnographic instruction and literature on how to 
record and capture fieldnotes divorced from rigid pedagogy and how-to guides that provide little 
insights into the actual mechanisms and techniques.  Elliott, a sociocultural anthropology 
professor at York University, and Wolf-Meyer, a professor of anthropology and historical 
science and medicine at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, pull together 38 accounts and examples 
of writing ethnographic fieldnotes across the world to provide novice researchers with intimate 
insights into an opaque process.   
 
In the preface of the seminal Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology, Robert Sanjek (1990) 
describes how his edited volume emanated from a dinner conversation among colleagues 
attending the American Ethnological Society in 1984. According to Sanjek, James Clifford 
remarked that “no one had addressed what anthropologists write before they write 
ethnographies—fieldnotes” (xi).  While Sanjek’s volume approached topics such as relationships 
between ethnographers and fieldnotes, the types of fieldnotes, uses of fieldnotes, and other 
related matters, it provides relatively few examples for new researchers. Similarly, Naked 
Fieldnotes originated from conversations between the editors about their experiences taking 
fieldnotes. Elliott and Wolf-Meyer describe how fieldnotes are “charismatic” (ix, xi), part of an 
intimate and dynamic process to memorialize observations captured as data in the field.  Such an 
intimate process is typically private to the ethnographer, who may discuss their process, 
reflections, and findings over a convivial meal with colleagues. Thus, Elliott and Wolf-Meyer 
have tried to replicate that dinner table, in a sense, in this edited volume (xxiv).   
 
Elliott and Wolf-Meyer intended for Naked Fieldnotes to elucidate the process of learning how 
to take fieldnotes by “demystifying” a practice that is often private and intimate (xxiii).  They 
found that the way scholars teach or write about this process is typically more sterile and guarded 
than the experiences shared over dinner with colleagues. Thus, they wanted to invite the reader 
to this metaphorical dinner table and conversation (xxiv). The “Fieldnote Confessions” section 
addresses the impetus for the book, which was both editors wishing for a more public way to 
teach writing fieldnotes (pp. xxv, xxvi). The title of the book derives from a remark given by a 
contributor, who teaches fieldnote methods by allowing his students to see his raw fieldnotes, 
which leaves him feeling “naked from the waist down” (xii).   
 



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To review the book, I followed two of the editor’s suggested reading strategies, first starting with 
a methodological approach using sense modalities including visual methods, sounds and hearing, 
multimodal approaches, events, interviews, and interpersonal interactions. Next, I moved on to 
topics covered by the volume, which included land and landscapes; access and infrastructure; 
healthcare; technoscience; more-than-human interactions; tradition; kinship; institutions and 
organizations; material culture; documents and bureaucracy; and colonialism and racism. I 
avoided approaching the book by continent or geographic location; while convenient to present 
those chapters to the reader who might be searching for a particular locale, I felt that fieldwork 
experiences based on geography would be too diverse and broad to be helpful.  Finally, the 
chapters that fell under the category of experience were covered elsewhere during my reading.   
 
The title of each chapter consistently and succinctly presents the location, topic, theme or 
discipline, and date. The chapter then provides the research context and examples of the so-
called “naked” fieldnotes. The opening of the chapter, which typically describes what is being 
studied and the reason, the field and conditions, how the fieldnotes were collected, and 
reflections on fieldnotes, is approached differently depending on the contributor. Some of the 
chapters open laconically while others read more like a narrative or story; some are pithy and 
direct while others are more reflective and introspective. As for the sample fieldnotes, they are 
transcribed into text, formatted accordingly for publication, and often they are accompanied by 
photos and illustrations that include images from the field, notebooks, sketchbooks, and 
screenshots.   
 
Of the book’s many strengths are that it indeed provides an inside look into the reflections, 
notebooks, sketches, and photos ethnographers incorporate as part of their fieldnotes.  Some of 
the approaches, while unique to the study, described a relatively universal process, tailored by 
the researcher.  Other approaches were uncommon, creative, and inventive.  For instance, in 
Stacy Leigh Pigg’s and Shyam Kunwar’s account of taking fieldnotes in Nepal (“30: Nepal, 
Roads, Mobility, Graphic Ethnography, 2018”), the researchers intended to write a graphic novel 
about road politics and infrastructure sociality (231).  Their fieldnotes consisted of a blend of 
photographs, video, handwritten jottings, record keeping, and resting the pen tip on the notebook 
page as a means of recording the car ride.  While the example note itself looks like an 
indecipherable scribble, it memorializes a rugged journey and the moment when Pigg found she 
could no longer write legible impressions (235).  The note, as it were, visually depicts this 
movement the ethnographer felt during the ride, and thus, could be used to inform the final 
research product.  John Dale’s chapter, “10: Myanmar, Pro-Democracy Movement, Collective 
Violence, 1998,” starts plainly enough with a cold opening on how he took his fieldnotes in an 
All-Weather Shirt Pocket Spiral Memo notebook (71), but it is not until the reader is presented 
with a photograph of the notebook and a caption (73) where we learn that Dale prefers this 
spiral-bound, small pad because, in the increasing local violence, the pages could be deftly 
removed and swallowed to destroy evidence of the notes.  Dale also wrote coded fieldnotes to 
protect the identity of his subjects as political discussions were prohibited by law 
(74). Additionally, Dale encrypts the notes in the form of cooking recipes; he shares how this 
looks in typed notes (74-77) and how to decode it in a coding schema sent to a dissertation 
advisor (74, 77-84) 
 



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Naked Fieldnotes, however, does not supplant other authoritative texts on taking fieldnotes—it 
was never intended to do so.  Rather, it supplements pivotal texts such as Writing Ethnographic 
Fieldnotes by Robert Emerson, Rachel Fretz, and Linda Shaw (1995, 2011) and Fieldnotes: The 
Makings of Anthropology by Roger Sanjek (1990). While Naked Fieldnotes seeks to fill a gap 
that exists with these works, it does not provide an instructive framework for novice 
ethnographers.  Furthermore, Naked Fieldnotes does not provide much breadth or depth into 
taking fieldnotes on any particular topic, using any particular mode, or in any particular 
location.  At the same time, there is something useful for every reader within the volume. 
 
I eagerly awaited the publication of Naked Fieldnotes.  Fieldnotes transcend anthropology and 
ethnography; there are many other disciplines that rely on researchers taking fieldnotes. These 
researchers may have received rigorous methodological training and yet received little 
instruction or guidance on how to take fieldnotes.  For instance, a book like Naked Fieldnotes 
would have been a perfect resource to consult while I was on the ground conducting my 
fieldwork in Japan as it is cleanly organized, compendiously described, and inspirationally 
illustrative.  Another feature I appreciated was how the contributors described the “tools of 
trade,” including types of notebooks, writing utensils, cameras, recorders, and other 
equipment. These details were particularly personal, drawing the reader closer to the respective 
author.  Some of these details were rather standard, simply preferred notebooks or pens, while 
others were more comprehensive, such as Patricia Alvarez Astacio’s chapter (“2:  Peru, Textile 
Practices, Multimedia, 2011”), which describes multiple tools (video, markers, audio recorders, 
hard drives) for multiple recording modes: “visual, audio, written” (7).  All in all, I believe 
Naked Fieldnotes is a vital, pleasurable read for budding ethnographers and a fabulous addition 
to academic libraries.   
 
Works Cited 

Elliott, Denielle, and Matthew Wolf-Meyer, eds. 2024. Naked Fieldnotes: A Rough Guide 
to Ethnographic Writing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 
 
Emerson, Robert, Rachel Fretz, and Linda Shaw. 1995. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. 
2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
 
Sanjek, Robert, ed. 1990. Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology. Ithaca: Cornell 
University Press. 

 
 

© 2024 Kristen Luck 

 


