Definition of "fieldwork" []

• A temporary military fortification erected in the field. (noun)
• Work done or firsthand observations made in the field as opposed to that done or observed in a controlled environment. (noun)
• The collecting of sociological or anthropological data in the field. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I can now say without a doubt that fieldwork is absolutely, 100%, unquestionably necessary in my subfield."
• "There are five major subfields in my discipline, and doing fieldwork is not required for any of them but is highly recommended for one, the one in which I do most of my work."
• "In The Mind Possessed (OUP, 2007), Cohen develops a radical new approach to explaining the transmission of spirit possession ideas and practices, based on recent discoveries in the cognitive sciences and on long-term fieldwork with a group of Afro-Brazilian spirit mediums in Brazil."