Working the Field: Accounts from French Louisiana records reflections on the fieldwork conducted in French Louisiana by a group of anthropologists and folklorists from Louisiana, the United States, Canada, and France between the 1970s and 2000.

Contributors cast a critical look at the core anthropological concepts of field informants, and knowledge. Reassessing, they propose that the field, identities, and knowledge acquired are not set entities but rather are a matter of construction. Personal profiles of the researchers (native or outsider, activist or academic, man or...

In this book Sara Le Menestrel explores the role of music in constructing, asserting, erasing, and negotiating differences based on the notions of race, ethnicity, class, and region. She discusses established notions and brings to light social stereotypes and hierarchies at work in the evolving French Louisiana music field. She also draws attention to the interactions between oppositions such as black and white, urban and rural, differentiation and creolization, and local and global.

Le Menestrel emphasizes the importance of desegregating the understanding of French Louisiana music and...