Should a questionnaire ask a rural farmer how many chickens his or her household raised each year for the past decade? That was the question I once asked myself as I read a lengthy survey form used by a large research project near where I was conducting my own fieldwork. I thought about the chickens in the village where I lived. Recently the Extension Department had exchanged an improved breed of roosters for local roosters. After the truck had driven off, leaving only the improved breed, the new roosters started to die. Finally only one was left. The villagers called him 'Bruce Lee'. I thought of the family we lived with, where the oldest son desultorily raised and sold chickens. The broods would come scratching through our compound every few months. One time he woke to find all the chicks had died. I tried to think how he would answer a question about how many chickens he had each year for the past decade. I made a mental note never to ask such a question.

Fieldwork in Developing Countries is filled with the kind of lore that ought to prevent the neophyte economist fieldworker from making mistakes like the chicken question. The text is highly recommended for economists first setting out on fieldwork, and for supplementing the dry sampling methods texts currently used in courses on data-gathering methodology. The book consists of thirteen short and readable chapters. Two introductory chapters by the editors offer recommendations for many of the logistical aspects of fieldwork. Every person has a first time experience of fieldwork, and the advice given is sound and necessary. More experienced fieldworkers, who already know how to get there and back, will want to read an excellent discussion by Ken Wilson on the ethics of fieldwork. Ten contributors then discuss their fieldwork experiences. These case studies cover issues such as sampling methodology, interviewing techniques, eliciting life histories, approaching sensitive subjects or respondents, and theorizing the fieldwork experience itself.

The novice fieldworker will find something interesting in each of the ten case studies, but the more discerning reader will discover that they vary greatly in quality. Moreover, the contributors tend to go over the same points, and arrive, not surprisingly, at the same conclusions. The reader is thus treated to eleven different ways of phrasing, "One major problem was ascertaining whether informants were lying. Developing good rapport was essential to managing this problem." In retrospect, the editors might have considered a more hands-on editing to focus each chapter on the specific and interesting problems created by the particular characteristics of the varied research projects.

The editors suggest that a secondary goal of the book is to explore the idea that fieldwork data is contextual. Yet only one contributor, Matthew Lockwood, does so in a serious manner. His chapter brings to economists' attention recent discussions in social theory; namely that the fieldworker creates or constructs data and evidence (or 'fictions') through interactions with respondents. Fieldwork methods influence these interactions, but so do the intellectual backgrounds, temperaments and goals of fieldworkers. Lockwood argues that different fieldwork methods will produce different fictions, or different truths, and he tries to show that even the straightforward data typically collected by economists is subject to this critique.

The other contributors seem less sure of this critique of the 'myth' of objectivity. Most adopt the position that better fieldwork methods would generate 'truer' data. They differ, though, on the question of what constitutes better methods. The practical implications of their differences are evident in the varying recommendations regarding learning local languages. Those who are measuring variables uniformly suggest that language learning may not be necessary; or at least that it should be subject to a cost-benefit analysis, rather than being viewed as a prerequisite. The second group of contributors, who are more interested in studying relational issues, argue that a modicum of fluency (enough to conduct interviews alone) is essential.

My own opinion is that without fluency the survey researcher is not really doing fieldwork. The survey researcher, constrained by the necessity of completing questionnaires, has little time for informal interaction with a varied and diverse population. Relying on interpreters even for that interaction leaves fieldwork, in the words of the editors, as a 'sterile exercise in data-gathering' (reminiscent of W.F. Whyte's (1984) discussion of shuffling data cards to produce new 'findings'). The researcher takes some current hypotheses, writes out a questionnaire, hires the enumerators and implements the survey. While the contribution is certainly valuable, our lexicon needs to be expanded to come up with a term to capture the survey researcher's experience, which is decidedly not fieldwork.

Ultimately the book leaves a lingering impression that the hard choices of how much time to devote to language, how much time to surveys, how much to informal interaction, are neutral, prosaic choices depending on the goals and constraints of the researcher. A more satisfying book might have asked the contributors to reflect on how those goals and constraints are 'constructed' and 'created' in the home institutions. One might, for instance, imagine that the terrifying prospects of experiencing disdain, indifference and incomprehension make many potential fieldworkers avid advocates of survey methods. Without a strong institutional culture of fieldwork, such as pervades anthropology, economists may feel that their avoidance of methods that are anxiety-provoking and time-consuming, together with their embrace of more distanced 'scientific' methods, is somehow unproblematic.