His motives for preparing the archives were threefold. Firstly, the period covered was a period of dramatic change in Turkey and he had been fortunate enough to document some of this change at the level of the villages. He believed that this information was of great value for studying this change and as a basis for future research. Secondly, he wanted a complete record of his field research, including its defects, for teaching purposes as well as for research. It is rare for an anthropologist to provide a more-or-less complete record of their field research - it is unprecedented to do this for public inspection. He spent a great deal of time and effort adding comments to his fieldnotes, careful to be as brutal and honest as possible. Thirdly, he hoped this work would serve as an exemplar for how ethnographic research should be presented, to encourage transparency and depth where the usual case is to disseminate tidbits and rely on faith (and these days rather great faith). He was aware of the negative effects of conventional publishers on anthropology which effectively restricts ethnographic works to extended essays with popular appeal and little or no data. He saw the computer as a means of subverting this trend. |
Prof. Stirling passed away on June 17th of 1998, shortly before his archives were scheduled for opening in Autumn 1998. We still expect to meet this deadline after a few more issues of copyright are resolved, names of the villagers changed and photos are processed and we attend to other legal details. Last year we prepared a sample of of some of this material which will give an idea of the eventual contents. Although the technical quality of organisation and appearance are improved in the actual archives, this sample prepared in 1996 reflects the kinds of information available. See 'Background ' for further information about the full archives.
In addition to the years of hard work by Prof. Stirling, we thank the legions of MA and Research Students who have worked on this material, clerical staff who have entered the material. Support by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Leverhulme Foundation made this work possible. |
