There is a general consensus amongst anthropologists today that fieldwork came to be considered part of the practice of social anthropology with the work of one of the founding fathers of British anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski.

How did the idea of fieldwork develop?

Fieldwork developed from those who wished to learn more and who were willing to fully take on the lives of the people they studied in order to get those answers.

What is the fieldwork method?

Field Research is a method of collecting qualitative data with the aim to understand, observe, and interact with people in their natural setting. ... The goal is to understand how a subject behaves in a specific setting to identify how different variables in this setting may be interacting with the subject.