I start with this quotation from Beatrice Webb (1926):
Beneath the surface of our daily life, in the personal history of many of us, there runs a continuous controversy between an Ego that affirms and an Ego that denies…
Now, it so happens that the internal controversy which has been perpetually recurring in my own consciousness, from girlhood to old age, led me in early life to choose a particular vocation…
This citation summarizes the lives of many of us. What applies to me especially is that something in my consciousness going back to my childhood, "led me in early life to choose a particular vocation." Since my preteens I grew up with one question. What in the name of heaven did adults do to make us, their children, grow up in rubble, camps, and generally a chaotic social environment? When I was a student at university, I initially thought that this question could be answered only by going to live and do research in a society that was whole. I wanted to start with a stark contrast to what I already knew. So I chose anthropology ...
In this book I want to go back from the classroom
to my very first fieldwork in Africa.
