Fieldwork consists of observing and documenting people where they are and doing what they do. it is one of the three major modes of acquiring primary information in the social sciences. (The other two-"statistical surveys and decontextualized interviews 'or performertrees-ware rarely used in primary folklore studies.) Fieldwork infonnation is gathered with various media: notehooks, film and video came “as, and audio recorders. Fieldworkers may seek items in active tradition (things people do now) or things in passive tradition (things they know and recogniz~ and may even have an aesthetic for but wouldn‘t, unless solicited, perform or utter). Fieldworkers may join in the events going on (participant observation), or they may pretend to he totally outside those events (except in large community events, such as festivals and parades, it is difficult for a fieldworker to he totally invisihle). They may he active in their pursuit of information (interviewing, asking for items, asking for explanations), or they may he passive (waiting, observing, recording).