The Public I/Eye.

This essay examines the meaning and practice of fieldwork in a situation in which the primary goal is not to create an ethnographic understanding of the ‘Other’ hut to gather information in order to he an informed citizen capable of acting in a morally conscientious manner toward a particular category of persons with whom the participant observer shares the identity ‘fellow citizen.’ It asks how citizens gather information on the spot to make decisions as to which actions, among a range of possible and culturally feasible ones, are morally accceptable given their understanding of the ideological precepts they deem relevant to constructions of self and others and the interactions in which they are involved that require an immediate decision and action. It calls this information gathering and the decision points that motivate it doing one's homework—trying to understand what must he done, why it must he done, and what the consequences are of doing it one way and not another. It contrasts the implications of fieldwork for ethnographic representation with those of fieldwork as an aspect of homework, arguing that the latter is a self-consciously moral and political act and cannot he presumed consistent with shared identity based on locality, race, gender, or other categoric distinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]