Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader (Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)

Ethnographic Fieldwork

Blackwell Anthologies in Social & Cultural Anthropology Series Editor: Parker Shipton, Boston University Drawing from some of the most significant scholarly work of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology series offers a comprehensive and unique perspective on the ever-changing field of anthropology. It represents both a collection of classic readers and an exciting challenge to the norms that have shaped this discipline over the past century. Each edited volume is devoted to a traditional subdiscipline of the field such as the anthropology of religion, linguistic anthropology, or medical anthropology; and provides a foundation in the canonical readings of the selected area. Aware that such subdisciplinary definitions are still widely recognized and useful - but increasingly problematic - these volumes are crafted to include a rare and invaluable perspective· on social and cultural anthropology at the onset of the 21st century. Each text provides a selection of classic readings together with contemporary works that underscore the artificiality of subdisciplinary definitions and point students, researchers, and general readers in the new directions in which anthropology is moving. Series Board: Fredrik Barth, University of Oslo and Boston University Stephen Gudeman, University of Minnesota Jane Guyer, Northwestern University Caroline Hwnphrey, University of Cambridge Trm Ingold, University of Aberdeen Emily Marrin, Princeton University John Middleton, Yale Emeritus SalJy Falk Moore, Harvard Emerita Marshall Sahlins, University of Chicago Emeritus Joan Vincent, Columbia University and Barnard College Emerita Published Volumes: 1.

Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader Edited by Alessandro Durami

2.

A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion Edited by Michael Lambek

3.

The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique Edited by Joan Vincent

4.

Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader Edited by Robert Parkin and Linda Stone

5.

Law and Anthropology: A Reader Edited by Sally Falk Moore

6.

The Anthropology of Development and Globalization: From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism Edited by Marc Edelman and Angelique Haugerud

7.

The An�hropology of Art: A Reader Edited by Howard Morphy and Morgan Perkins

8.

Feminist Anthropology: A Reader Edited by Ellen Lewin

9.

Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Attthropological Reader Edited by Antonius C. G. M. Robben and Jeffrey A. Sluka

Forthcoming: Ecological Anthropology Edited by Michael R. Dove and Carol Carpenter Historical Anthropology Edited by Nicholas Dirks Psychological Anthropology Edited by Robert LeVine

Ethnographic Fieldwork An Anthropological Reader

Edited by Antonius C. G. M. Robben and Jeffrey A. Sluka

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Blackwell Publishing

Editorial material and organization © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd BLACKWELL PUBUSIDNG 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Antonius C. G. M. Robben and Jeffrey A. Sluka to be identified as the Authors of the Editorial Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1

2007

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ethnographic fieldwork : an anthropological reader I edited by Antonius C.G.M. Robben and Jeffrey A. Sluka. p. em. - (Blackwell anthologies in social & cul�al anthropology; 9) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-2593-2 (printed case hardback : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4051-2593-4 (printed case hardback : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-2592-5 {pbk. : alk.paper) ISBN-10: 1-4051-2592-6 {pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Ethnology-Fieldwork.

I. Robben, Antonius C. G. M. IL Sluka, Jeffrey A.

ill. Series: Blackwell anthologies in social and cultural anthropology; 9.

GN346.E675

2007

305.80072'3 - dc22 2006006923 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in Sabon 9 on 11 pt by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd, Hong Kong Printed and bound in Singapore by C.O.S. Printers Pte Ltd The pu�lisher's policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com

Contents

About the Editors Editors' Acknowledgments Acknowledgments to Sources

1

Fieldwork in Cultural Anthropology: An Introduction jeffrey A. Sluka and Antonius C. G. M. Robben Part I

Beginnings

Introduction

.

XI

xu ..

Xlll

1

29 29

Antonius C. G. M. Robben 1

The Observation of Savage Peoples

33

joseph-Marie Degerando 2

The Methods of Ethnology

40

Franz Boas 3

Method and Scope of Anthropological Fieldwork

46

Bronislaw Malinowski Part II

Fieldwork Identity

Introduction

59 59

Antonius C. G. M. Robben 4

A Woman Going Native Hortense Powdermaker

65

5

Sex, Color, and Rites of Passage in Ethnographic Research

76

Norris Brock johnson 6

Walking the Fire Line: The Erotic Dimension of the Fieldwork Experience

Kate Altork

92

CONTENTS

VI 7

Self-Conscious Anthropology

108

Anthony P. Cohen Part ID

Fieldwork Relations and Rapport

Introduction

121 121

]effrey A. Sluka 8

Champukwi of the Village of the Tapirs

127

Charles Wagley 9

Behind Many Masks: Ethnography and Impression Management

137

Gerald D. Berreman 10

Ethnographic Seduction, Transference, and Resistance in Dialogues about Terror and Violence in Argentina

159

Antonius C. G. M. Robben

Part IV

The "Other" Talks Back

177

Introduction Jeffrey A. Sluka

177

11

Custer Died for Your Sins Vine Deloria, Jr.

183

12

Here Come the Anthros Cecil King

191

13

When They Read What the Papers Say We Wrote Ofra Greenberg

194

14

Ire in Ireland

202

Nancy Scheper-Hughes Part V

Fieldwork Conflicts, Hazards, and Dangers

217

Introduction Jeffrey A. Sluka

217

15

Ethnology in a Revolutionary Setting June Nash

223

16

Human Hazards of Fieldwork Nancy Howell

234

17

War on the Front Lines Carolyn Nordstrom

24 5

CONTENTS 18

Reflections on Managing Danger in Fieldwork: Dangerous Anthropology in Belfast ]effrey A. Sluka

Part VI

Fieldwork Ethics

Introduction

vii 259

271 271

Jeffrey A. Sluka

l

19

The Life and Death of Project Camelot Irving Louis Horowitz

20

Confronting the Ethics of Ethnography: Lessons From Fieldwork in Central America

277

28 8

Philippe Bourgois 21

Ethics versus "Realism" in Anthropology Gerald D. Berreman

29 8

22

Healing Dilemmas

316

Donald Pollock 23

Code of Ethics

325

American Anthropological Association

Part Vll

Multi-Sited Fieldwork

Introduction

331 331

Antonius C. G. M. Robben 24

Beyond "Culturen: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference

337

Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson 25

Afghanistan, Ethnography, and the New World Order

347

David B. Edwards 26

Being There ... and There ... and There! Reflections on Multi-Site Ethnography Ulf Hannerz

27

Ethnography in/of Transnational Processes: Following Gyres in the Worlds of Big Science and European Integration

359

368

Stacia E. Zabusky Part VIll

Sensorial Fieldwork

Introduction Antonius C. G. M. Robben

3 85 385

CONTENTS

viii 28

Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis

389

Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead 29

The Taste of Ethnographic Things Paul Stoller and Cheryl Olkes

404

30

Dialogic Editing: Interpreting How Kaluli Read Sound and Sentiment Steven Feld

417

31

Senses Michael Herzfeld

431

Part IX

Reflexive Ethnography

Introduction

443 443

Antonius C. G. M. Robben 32

Fieldwork and Friendship in Morocco

447

Paul Rabinow 33

Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan

455

Vincent Crapanzano 34

The Way Things Are Said

465

Jeanne Favret-Saada 35

On Ethnographic Authority

476

James Clifford

Part X

Fictive Fieldwork and Fieldwork Novels

493

Introduction ]effrey A. Sluka

493

36

Return to Laughter Elenore Smith Bowen

499

37

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge Carlos Castaneda

507

38

Shabono: A True Adventure in the Remote and Magical Heart of the South American Jungle Florinda Donner

Appendix 1: Appendix 2:

514

Key Ethnographic, Sociological, Qualitative, and Multidisciplinary Fieldwork Methods Texts

521

Experiences

523

Edited Cultural Anthropology Volumes on Fieldwork

CONTENTS

Appendix 3: Appendix 4: Appendix 5:

1 j

IX

Reflexive Accounts of Fieldwork and Ethnographies W hich Include Accounts of Fieldwork Leading Cultural Anthropology Fieldwork Methods Texts

525 527

Early and Classic Anthropological Writings on Fieldwork, including Diaries and Letters

j

.

529

Notes

530

References

549

Index

595

To our mentor and teacher Gerald D. Berreman, who taught us about ethics and "hanging out" in the field

1 j

J

�

jt

About the Editors

j

Antonius C. G. M. Robben (PhD Berkeley, 1986) is Professor of Anthropology at Utrecht University, the Netherlands and past President of the Netherlands Society of Anthropology. He is the author of Sons of the Sea Goddess: Economic Practice and Discursive Conflict in Brazil {1989) and the award-winning ethnography Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina (2005), and editor of Fieldwork under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival (with Carolyn Nordstrom, 1995), Cultures under Siege: Collective Violence and Trauma (with Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, 2000), and Death, Mourning, and Burial: A Cross­ Cultural Reader (Blackwell, 2004). Jeffrey A. Sluka (PhD Berkeley, 1986} is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Massey University, New Zealand. He is past Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa/New Zealand and is a Fellow of the American Anthropological Association. He is the author of Hearts and Minds, Water a1td Fish: Popular Support for the IRA and INLA in a Northern Irish Ghetto (1989) and editor of Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror (2000).

Editors' Acknowledgments

We want to express our gratitude to our editor Jane Huber and series editor Parker Shipton for entrusting the editorship of a reader on ethnographic fieldwork to us. No other discipline in the humanities and social sciences has reflected more deeply on its methodology than cultural anthropology. Ethnographic fieldwork touches on the very core of anthropology and continues to be a rite of passage for aspiring practitioners. Aware of our professional responsibility to compose a reader that is representative of the field, we have drawn on the expertise of more than a dozen colleagues to arrive at the present selection of articles, essays, and book excerpts. Most helpful were the ten anonymous reviews of our initial proposal, leading us to make significant changes. The refashioned proposal was further readjusted after detailed comments from Parker Shipton at Boston University, Jeff Sissons at Massey University, and Geert Mommersteeg and Jan de Wolf at Utrecht University. Parker Shipton and Geert Mommersteeg deserve a particular mention for responding quickly to additional questions and for volunteering many bibliographic sugges­ tions. Their generosity is uncommon in a time of overworked academics. The Blackwell staff in Malden, Massachusetts, have been unsurpassable. Not once did Jane Huber lose her patience and good cheer as we procrastinated over our selec­ tion of texts and asked her yet again for permission to move the deadline. Emily Martin has accompanied the production process with great professionalism and reminded us in the most gentle of ways about pending editorial queries. Finally, we want to thank our excellent copy editor Juanita Bullough and Editorial Controller Angela Cohen for their flawless work.

Acknowledgments to Sources

The editors and publishers gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book: Chapter 1: Joseph-Marie Degerando, pp. 61-70, 101-4 from The Observation of Savage Peoples, F. C. T. Moore. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969 [1800]. Copyright© F. C.

T. Moore. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK. Chapter 2: Franz Boas, "The Methods of Ethnology,, pp. 311-21 from American Anthro­ pologist 22 (4), Oct.-Dec. 1920. Chapter 3: Bronislaw Malinowski, "Subject, Method and Scope," pp. 4-25 from Arg­ onauts of the Western Pacific . Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1984 [1922]. Chapter 4: Honense Powdermaker, "A Woman Alone in the Field," "Going Native?," and "White Society," pp. 108-19, 183-7, 188-90, 196, 197-8 from Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist. London: Seeker & War burg, 1967. Copyright© 1966 by Hon­ ense Powdermaker. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Nonon & Co., Inc. Chapter 5: Norris Brock Johnson, "Sex, Color, and Rites of Passage in Ethnographic Research," pp. 108-20 from Human Organization 43(2), 1984. Copyright © 1984 by the Society for Applied Anthropology. Reprinted by permission of the Society for AppHed Anthropology. Chapter 6: Kate Altork, "Walking the Fire Line: The Erotic Dimension of the Fieldwork Experience," pp. 107-39 from Don Kulick and Margaret W illson, Taboo: Sex, Identity, and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork. London: Routledge, 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Kate Altork. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK. Chapter 7: Anthony P. Cohen, "Self-Conscious Anthropology," pp. 221-41 from Judith Okely and Helen Callaway, Anthropology and Autobiography. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1992. Copyright© 1992 by Association of Social Anthropologists. Reprinted by per­ mission of Taylor & Francis Books UK and Association of Social Anthropologists. Chapter 8: Charles Wagley, "Champukwi of the Village of the Tapirs," pp. 398-415 from Joseph B. Casagrande, In the Company of Man: Twenty Portraits of Anthropological Infor­ mants. New York: Harper & Row, 1960. Copyright© 1960 by Joseph B. Casagrande. Chapter 9: Gerald D. Berreman, "Behind Many Masks: Ethnography and Impression Man­ agement," pp. xvii-lvii plus selected bibliography from Hindus of the Himalayas: Ethnogra­ phy and Change, 2nd. ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. Copyright© 1963, 1972 by The Regents of the University of California. This material appeared originally, in a slightly different form, as Monograph Number 4 of the Society for Applied Anthropology, in 1962. Reprinted by permission of the Society for Applied Anthropology.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO SOURCES

xiv Chapter 10:

Antonius C. G. M. Robben, "Ethnographic Seduction, Transference, and

Resistance in Dialogues about Terror and Violence in Argentina," pp. 71-106 from

Ethos

24(1), 1 996. Copyright© 1996 by the American Anthropological Association. Reprinted by permission of the Copyright Clearance Center on behalf of the American Anthropological Association.

Chapter 11: Vine Deloria, Jr., "Custer Died for Your Sins," pp. 130-7 from Thomas Weaver, To See Ourselves: Anthropology and Modern Social Issues. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman & Co., 1973. Reprinted with permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from Custer Died for Your Sins by Vine Deloria, Jr. Copy­ right© 1969 by Vine Deloria, Jr.; copyright renewed© 1 997 by Vine Deloria, Jr. Chapter 12: Cecil King, "Here Come the Anthros," pp. 1 1 5-19 from Thomas Biolsi and Larry J. Zimmerman,

Anthropology.

Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria, ]r, and the Critique of

Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997. Copyright© 1977 by The Arizona

Board of Regents. Reprinted by permission of Arizona Press.

Chapter 13:

Ofra Greenberg, "When They Read What the Papers Say We Wrote," pp.

1 07-1 8 plus relevant bibliography from Caroline B. Brettell, When They Read What We Write: The Politics of Ethnography. Westport, CN: Bergin & Garvey, 1 993. Copyright © 1993, 1996 by Caroline B. Brettell. Reprinted by permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc, Westport, CT.

Chapter 14: Nancy Scheper-Hughes,

"Ire in Ireland," pp. 1 1 7-40 from

Ethnography 1 ( 1),

2000. Copyright© 2001 by The Regents of the University of California. This article is drawn from the preface and epilogue of Nancy Scheper-Hughes' 20th Anniversary updated and expanded edition of Saints,

Scholars and Schizophrenics: Menta/Illness in Rural Ireland, Uni­

versity of California Press (2001 ) . Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press .

Chapter 15: June

Nash, "Ethnology in a Revolutionary Setting," pp. 1 48-65 plus refer­

ences pp. 65-6 from Michael A. Rynkiewich and James P. Spradley,

ogy: Dilemmas in Fieldwork.

Ethics and Anthropol­

New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976. Copyright© 1 976 by

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Chapter 16: Nancy Howell, "Human Hazards of Fieldwork," pp. 89-100 from Surviving Fieldwork: Report of the Advisory Panel on Health and Safety in Fieldwork. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1 990. Copyright © 1 990 by the American Anthropological Association. Reprinted by permission of the author and the American Amer­ ican Anthropological Association. AAA Special Publication Number 26. Not for sale or further reproduction.

Chapter 17:

Carolyn Nordstrom, "War on the Front Lines/' pp. 1 29-53 from Carolyn

Nordstrom and Antonius C. G. M. Robben,

of Violence and Survival.

Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1 99 5. Copyright © 1 99 5

by The Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press. Chapter 18: Jeffrey A. Sluka, "Reflections on Managing Danger in Fieldwork: Dangerous Anthropology in Belfast," pp. 276-94 from Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Copyright© 1 995 by The Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press.

Part VI Fieldwork Ethics-Introduction:

cartoon on p. 271, DOONESBURY © 1 986 G. B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SY NDICATE. All rights reserved.

Chapter 19: Irving Louis Horowitz, "The Life and Death of Project Camelot," pp. 1 38--48 from Thomas Weaver, To See Ourselves: Anthropology and Modern Social Issues. Glencoe, IL: Scott, Foresman & Co., 1973. Copyright© 1 965 by Transaction Publishers. This mate­ rial originally appeared in Society magazine (December, 1 965) by Transaction, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Transaction Publishers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO SOURCES

XV

Chapter 20: Philippe Bourgois, "Confronting the Ethics of Ethnography: Lessons From Fieldwork in Central America," pp. 1 1 0-26 from Faye V. Harrison, Decolonizing Anthro­ pology: Moving Further Toward an Anthropology for Liberation. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1991. Copyright© 1991 by the American Anthro­ pological Association. Reprinted by permission of the author and the American Anthropo­ logical Association. Not for sale or further reproduction. Chapter 21: Gerald D. Berreman, "Ethics versus 'Realism' in Anthropology,» pp. 38-71 from Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology: Dialogue for a New Era. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1 99 1 .Copyright© 1991 by the Univer­ sity of Pennsylvania Press.Reprinted by permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press. Chapter 22: Donald Pollack, "Healing Dilemmas," pp. 149-57 from Anthropological Quarterly 69(3), 1 996. Copyright© 1996 by Anthropological Quarterly. Reprinted by per­ mission of the journal. Chapter 23: American Anthropological Association, "Code of Ethics," from Washington, DC American Anthropological Association, 1 998. Copyright © 1 998 by the American Anthropological Association. Reprinted by permission of the American Anthropological Association. Chapter 24: Akhil Gupta & James Ferguson, "Beyond 'Culture': Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference," pp. 6-20 plus relevant references 21-3 from Cultural Anthropology 7(1), 1992. Copyright© 1992 by the American Anthropological Association. Reprinted by permission of the Copyright Clearance Center on behalf of the American Anthropological Association. Chapter 25: David B. Edwards, "Afghanistan, Ethnography, and the New World Order," pp. 345-60 from Cultural Anthropology 9(3), 1 994. Copyright © 1994 by the American Anthropological Association. Reprinted by permission of the Copyright Clearance Center on behalf of the American Anthropological Association. Chapter 26: Ulf Hannerz, "Being there .. . and there ... and there! Reflections on multi­ site ethnography," pp. 201-16 from Ethnography 4(2), 2003. Copyright© 2003 by SAGE Publications (London, Thousands Oaks, CA and New Delhi).Reprinted by permission of the author and Sage Publications Ltd. Chapter 27: .Stacia E. Zabusky, "Ethnography in/of Transnational Processes: Following Gyres in the Worlds of Big Science and European Integration,'' pp. 1 13-40 plus relevant ref­ erences from pp. 395-426 from Carol J. Greenhouse, Elizabeth Mertz, and Kay B. Warren,

Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Copyright© 2002 by Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Duke University Press. Chapter 28: Gregory Bateson & Margaret Mead, pp. xi-xvi, 1 3-17, 49-5 1 , 84-8 from Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1942. Copyright© 1 942 by The New York Academy of Sciences. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The New York Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Intercultural Studies. Chapter 29: Paul Stoller and Cheryl Olkes, "The Taste of Ethnographic Things," pp. 15-34 plus relevant references from The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropol­ ogy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Copyright© 1989 by the Univer­ sity of Pennsylvania Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press. Chapter 30: Steven Feld, "Dialogic Editing: Interpreting How Kaluli Read Sound and Sen­ timent," pp. 1 90-2 1 0 from Cultural Anthropology 2(2), 1987. Copyright © 1 987 by the American Anthropological Association.Reprinted by permission of the Copyright Clearance Center on behalf of the American Anthropological Association. Chapter 31: Michael Herzfeld, "Senses," pp. 240-53 plus relevant bibliography from Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publish­ ing, 200 1 .Copyright© 2001 by UNESCO. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishing.

xvi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO SOURCES

Chapter 32: Paul Rabinow, "Friendship and Conclusion," pp. 142-62 from Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Copyright© 1997 by The Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press.

Chapter 33: Vmcent Crapanzano, pp. 133-52 plus relevant bibliography from Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Copyright© 1980 by the University of Chicago. Reprinted by permission of the author and the University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 34: Jeanne Favret-Saada, "Part I: There must be a subject," pp. 3-12, 16-24 plus relevant references from Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage, Catherine Cullen. Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980 [1977]. Les mots, Ia mort, les sorts © E ditions Gallimard, Paris, 1977. English translation © Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and Cambridge University Press, 1980. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press and Editions GaUimard. Clifford, "On Ethnographic Authority," pp. 21-35, 37-48, 53-4 plus relevant references from The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Lit­

Chapter 35: James

erature, and Art.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Copyright © 1983 by

The Regents of the University of California. This article is adapted from "On Ethnographic Vol. 1, No. 2, 1983: 118-46. Reprinted by permission of the author and the University of California Press. All rights reserved. Authority,"

Representations

Chapter 36: Elenore Smith Bowen (pseudon� for Laura Bohannan}, Chapter 2, pp. 13-28 from Return to Laughter. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1964 [1954] . Copyright © 1 954 by Laura Bohannan. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

Chapter 37: Carlos Castaneda, Introduction, pp. 13-26 from The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. New York: Washington Square Press� 1968. Copyright© 1968, 1998 by The Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of the Uni­ versity of California Press.

Chapter 38:

Florinda Donner, Chapter 6, pp. 61-73 from

Shabono.

New York:

Triad/Paladin Books , 1984. Copyright© 1982 by Florinda Donner. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

l I l 1

Fieldwork in Cultural Anthropology: An Introduction Jeffrey A. Sluka and Antonius C. G. M. Robben To understand a strange society, the anthropologist has traditionally immersed himself in it, learning, as far as possible, to think, see, feel, and sometimes act as a member of its culture and at the same time as a trained anthropologist from another culture. This is the heart of the participant observation method - involvement and detachment. Its practice is both an art and a science. Involvement is necessary to understand the psy­ chological realities of a culture, that is, its meanings for the indigenous members. Detachment is necessary to construct the abstract reality: a network of social relations, including the rules and how they function - not necessarily real to the people studied. Fieldwork is a deeply human as well as a scientific experience and a detailed knowl­ edge of both· aspects is an important source of data in itself, and necessary for any comparative study of methodology. (Powdermaker 1966:9) For young graduate students preparing for their first field trip, fieldwork represents mystery, opportunity, and excitement.Fieldwork is also a trial through battle in a war for which the novice has little preparation. The student knows that this is a challenge he will have to face, a major rite of passage that wilJ provide him with the opportu­ nity to prove his ability, courage, and temperamental suitability for the profession. He knows that, in doing fieldwork and in working with the ethnographic data he will collect, a number of transformations will occur ...Much like the rites of passage of many primitive societies, success in fieldwork is more a function of personal ability than of previous training in specific techniques. Success in fieldwork proclaims manhood and generates a major transformation: a student of culture becomes an anthropologist. (Freilich 1 970:16) Fieldwork is the central activity of anthropology. (Howell 1 990:4) One of the most enduring, perhaps the most enduring, metaphors, or "keywords" ... in modem anthropology is "fieldwork" ... "fieldwork" is- it goes without saying, and thus must be said - the sine qua non of modern anthropology, the ritual initiation expe­ rience in the discipline. (Berger 1993:1 74)

JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

2

The tradition of fieldwork, and a conceptual repertoire derived from deep immersion

in

local ways of life, has been the source of anthropology's strength. (Keesing and Strathe.m 1998:7)

These opening quotations, spanning the last half of the twentieth century, amply demonstrate the enduring central place of fieldwork in cultural anthropology. Every discipline has its own particularity in methods of gathering data. In cultural anthro­ pology it is fieldwork based on participant observation, which hinges on the dynamic and contradictory synthesis of subjective insider and objective outsider. As an insider, the fieldworker learns what behavior means to the people themselves. As an outsider, the fieldworker observes, experiences, and makes comparisons in ways that insiders can or would not. Nearly every professional anthropologist has under­ taken fieldwork, and it is still viewed as the characteristic rite of passage into professional status in the discipline. Anthropologists "pioneered" ethnographic fieldwork, and cultural or social anthropology remains the only social science that relies on fieldwork based on participant observation as its central method. One of the main developments in cultural anthropology since the 1970s has been an increas­ ing readiness of anthropologists to talk candid�y about their experiences in the field, their relationships with informants, and the contexts in which they gathered their material. While in the past some dismissed these reflections on fieldwork as self­ indulgent "navel-gazing," it is now generally accepted that they have made an important contribution to the discipline because we can better understand and eval­ uate an ethnographic text if we know something about the writer, the experiences upon which the text is based, and the circumstances of its production. Furthermore, these reflections turn anthropologists into better fieldworkers by making them aware of their ·own practices, emotions, biases, and experiences. Today, "the field" has broadened to include everywhere there are human beings, and every imaginable human group and context has become an actual or potential research site. Cultural anthropologists are conducting fieldwork in institutional and many other settings, with "little people" (dwarves}, perpetrators and survivors of violence in war zones, elderly patients in hospices, HIV patients, firefighters, drug dealers, political militants, new religious movements, motor-home nomads, Olympic athletes, poker players, and modern Japanese geishas. Reports on fieldwork are a regular feature in Anthropology News, the newsletter of the American Anthropo­ logical Association. For example, the May 2005 issue highlighted the expanding "new venues" of fieldwork. Edward Bruner (2005) reported on fieldwork traveling with tourists and visiting tourist destinations, Linda Scarangella (2005) discussed fieldwork at the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show attraction at EuroDisney, and Jonathan Marion (2005) described multi-sited fieldwork with ballroom dancers at their studios and competitions. And when we say that every imaginable human context can be a potential fieldwork site, we mean it literally, since there is already a speculative "space', or "extraterrestriaP, anthropology preparing for future field­ work on space stations, spacecraft, and proposed human settlements on the Moon, Mars, and beyond, including the possibility of fieldwork with intelligent nonhuman extraterrestrials (see Maruyama and Harkins 1975). In the first decade of the new millennium, fieldwork has become even more central to the discipline, to the extent that there are claims that it is the only common ground that holds it together. While this would seem to be an exaggeration, since

FIELDWORK IN· CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

3

fieldwork is only one of several key shared "paradigmatic" elements (described below) that have always distinguished the anthropological perspective, it again stresses the importance of fieldwork in the discipline today, and helps establish the raison d'etre for this reader. Today, there is a vast and ever-expanding literature on the practical experience of fieldwork, covering many disciplines and a wide range of field situations in most parts of the world. Learning how to conduct research based on participant obser­ vation has become a priority for scholars in an expanding number of disciplines beyond anthropology and sociology, including folklore, economics, psychology, geography, history, education, social work, nursing, and development studies, all of which have now published their own texts on fieldwork methods and edited volumes of fieldwork accounts (e.g., Jackson 1987, Delamont 2002, Scheyvens and Storey 2003, Devereux and Hoddinott 1992, Jackson and Ives 1996, Lareau and Shultz 1996). Along with dozens of books and edited volumes, there are hundreds if not thousands of articles on fieldwork in journals and other publications. Evidence of the emerging cross-disciplinary "trendiness" of fieldwork is the publication between 1999 and 2005 of five separate major multi-volume sets on ethnographic fieldwork, totaling 21 volumes (Pole 2005, Denzin and Lincoln 2001, Bryman 2001, Bryman and Burgess 1999, Schensul and LeCompte 1999). Beginning in the 1960s, a steadily increasing flow of edited volumes of fieldwork accounts began to emerge, and in the 1970s so too did book-length monographs centering on a particular anthropologist's fieldwork experiences and edited volumes on anthropological fieldwork (see Appendices 2 and 3). In cultural anthropology there are now numerous publications on nearly every imaginable aspect of field­ work, including ethics and fieldwork (e.g., Rynkiewich and Spradley 1976, Appell 1978, Fluehr-Lobban 2003, Caplan 2003), the psychology of fieldwork (e.g., Wengle 1988, Hunt 1989), field notes (Sanjek 1990, Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995), women in the field (e.g., Golde 1970, Roberts 1981, Cesara 1982, Altorki and El­ Solh 1988, Marcus 1993, Yu 1997}, feminist issues in fieldwork (e.g., Wolf 1996), sex and gender in fieldwork (e.g., Whitehead and Conaway 1986), intimacy and erotic subjectivity in fieldwork (e.g., Kulick and Willson 1995, Markowitz and Ashkenazi 1999, Wolcott 2002), gay and lesbian anthropologists in the field (e.g., Lewin and Leap 1996}, fieldwork and globalization (e.g., Robbins and Bamford 1997), occupational safety and health in fieldwork (e.g., Howell 1990), violence and fieldwork (Lee 1995, Nordstrom and Robben 1995, Greenhouse, Mertz, and Warren 2002), long-term fieldwork (e.g., Foster, Scudder, Colson, and Kemper 1979, Kemper and Royce 2002), fieldwork and friendship (e.g., Chinas 1993, Kumar 1992, Grindal and Salamone 1995, Ridler 1996, Powdermaker 1966), and emo­ tions and fieldwork (e.g., Kleinman and Copp 1993). There are humorous accounts of fieldwork (e.g., Barley 1983, 1985, 1988, Borgerhoff Mulder and Logsdon 1996), and books and volumes on fieldwork in particular countries (e.g., for Japan see Hendry 1999, Bestor, Steinhoff, and Bestor 2003) and most regions of the world (e.g., for the Pacific see DeVita 1988). In fact, so much has been written about field­ work since the 1970s that in 1988 Gravel and Ridinger published an annotated bibliography of just anthropological fieldwork that included 700 entries, and that number has probably doubled since then. Of particular value has been the publi­ cation of a large number of reflexive personal accounts of field experiences (see Appendices 2 and 3).

JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

4

The articles in this collection have been selected from among this wealth of publications because they belong to the standard knowledge of most experienced fieldworkers in the discipline, and deserve to be passed on to a new generation. This reader is intended to help facilitate this goal by providing students with an historical, methodological, ethical, reflexive, and stylistic context to fieldwork, and is ideally suited to be read in conjunction with a text on formal research methods (see Appendix 4) and an ethnography which includes a reflexive account of the field­ work on which it is based (see Appendix 3). These articles present qualitative, sub­ jective, a_nd reflexive perspectives on fieldwork, and serve to develop the reader's knowledge and appreciation of the perspectives, approaches, methods, problems, experiences, and ethics involved in anthropological fieldwork. This collection aims to provide readers with a good sense of classical and contemporary reflections on fieldwork, the tensions between self and other, the relationships between anthro­ pologists and research participants, conflicts and ethical problems, various types of ethnographic research, and different styles of writing about fieldwork. It is about fieldwork in general rather than formal "fieldwork methods," because the intention is to not only highlight the central role of fieldwork in anthropology, but also to explore its wider significance to the discipline. This introduction provides a basic introduction to fieldwork from the perspective of cultural anthropology, including how it fits in the disciplinary paradigm and has been defined. It includes, furthermore, an overview of the history of fieldwork, a review of fieldwork in the postmodern era, a discussion of culture shock and the taboo against "going native," a general literature review and many suggestions and references for further reading and exploration of this topic, and, finally, a descrip­ tion of the construction and structure of the reader itself.

Fieldwork in the Anthropological Paradigm Fieldwork represents one of the fundamental or "paradigmatic" elements of anthro­ pology as an academic discipline. Thomas Kuhn (1962) argued that a paradigm was a conceptual model of an academic discipline, the learning of which represented the socialization process through which students are prepared for membership in a sci­ entific or academic discipline. The basic paradigm of anthropology, outlined below, shows where fieldwork "fits in" or integrates with the rest of the core elements that define the discipline:

1 2

w?rk

Culture: The core concept of cultural anthropology. Fieldwork: The primary method of cultural anthropology. Long-term field­ based on participant observation. A "field" as opposed to "laboratory"

science. 3 Cross-cultural comparative perspective: A scientific approach in anthropol­ ogy, looking for regularities, patterns, generalizations, "rules," or "laws" concern­ ing human and social behavior. Macroanalysis. Generalizing. 4 Ethnography: A case-study approach. In-depth study of the culture of a people, group, or community. Microanalysis. Particularizing. 5 Holistic perspective: Looks at human beings from all perspectives, stresses the interrelationships between different aspects of life, and asserts that any culture has

FIELDWORK IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

5

to be understood not only in its local manifestation, but in relation to the wider global context in which it occurs. 6 Eclectic approach: Eclectic means "to pick and choose," in this case both topics and theories. There is a very wide variety of interests and no dominant the­ oretical model.

7

Humanistic perspective: "Humanism" focuses on people, with the applied aim of reducing suffering and improving the human condition. Referred to as "the Enlightenment vision." Includes anthropology as a form of cultural critique and advocacy. 8 Scientific approach: Empiricism and the scientific method. "Science" refers to the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of natural phenomena. Based on direct experience and observation. 9 Combined subjective/objective perspective: Equally interested in the subjec­ tive, participant's, actor's, or ''ernie" perspective and the objective, observer's, anthropologist's, or "etic" perspective. These nine elements are interrelated for example, one can see how fieldwork is affected by each of the other eight elements - and one of the central characteristics -

of the anthropological paradigm is that it sets up, and is based upon, a series of conceptual and theoretical oppositions, including:

Ethnography (microanalysis)/Cross-cultural comparison (macroanalysis) Differences (particularizing)/Similarities (generalizing) Synchronic (the ''ethnographic present")/Diachronic (long-term) Humanism/Science Participant (subjective)/Observer (objective) Since the earliest days of the discipline, it has been a fundamental theoretical tenet that the dynamic tension created by these oppositions has been the wellspring or fun­ damental source of the "anthropologica l imagination," and produces a unique per­ spective and important insights distinct from any other social science perspective.

Humanistic and Scientific Approaches: Fieldwork as Both Art and Science Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities. - Alfred L. Kroeber ( 1 876-1960; date of quotation unknown)

Traditionally, the self-image of anthropologists has been that of humanists and sci­ entists, and they did not see any necessary .contradiction between the two approaches. Eric Wolf is famous for his assertion that anthropology is a "bridging" discipline between the sciences and humanities, and his observation, after Kroeber, that anthropology has been "a bond between subject matters . . . in part history, part literature; in part natural science, part social science; it strives to study men

6

JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

from within and without . . . the most scientific of the humanities, the most human­ ist of the sciences" (1964:88). This conception of the dual nature of anthropology was described by Hortense Powdermaker in her classic fieldwork account, Stranger and Friend, in these terms: "There are some anthropologists who rather arbitrarily reserve the label 'scientific' for nonhumanistic studies. A scientific attitude ignores no level of understanding . . If the dual nature of anthropology - an art and a science, a humanistic science - is accepted, there is no reason why each cannot be expanded. The inherent ambiguities of this approach are only a reflection of those which e�st in life itself" (1966:306). .

Humanities

Sciences Continuum in Antbropoloiical Fieldwork

Humanities - Fieldwork as an Arl Form

Sciences - Fieldwork as a Scientific Method

Humanistic Qualitative Subjective Participant (ernie} Postmodernism

Scientific Quantitative Objective Observer (etic} Positivism/empiricism

This point is stressed here because, as stated above, this reader is about fieldwork in its most general sense, rather than formal "fieldwork methods," because the prac­ tice of fieldwork has proven to be as much an art as a science. If anthropologists are "scientific instruments" they are also human ones, and successful fieldwork requires both well-developed research skills and interpersonal relations skills. This has long been recognized in the discipline. For example, in the 1960s, Hortense Powdermaker observed that "In addition to a capacity for open involvements and for becoming detached from them, personal qualities such as kindness, patience, tact, endurance, and the ability to 'take' both loneliness and ambiguity are helpful. Other idiosyncratic characteristics may be useful in one field situation and not in another" (1969:420). Similarly, Charlotte Seymour-Smith (1986b:429) refers to "the imaginative leap involved in coming to terms with an alien culture or way of life." Can a formal methods approach teach or train aspiring field workers qualita­ tive cognitive and interpersonal skills - Powdermaker's "idiosyncratic characteris­ tics" - such as how to be kind, tactful, and empathetic, how to be accepted and get along with people who are different from you, or how to make the "imaginative leaps,' Seymour-Smith says are required for successful fieldwork? This is not to say that formaL methods training is not useful, but only that it is incomplete.

Fieldwork Defined A good way to introduce fieldwork is to begin by considering how it has generally

been defined in the discipline. This can be done by reviewing some of the most popular definitions as presented in (1) the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, (2) a popular introductory anthropology text, and (3) a leading anthro­ pology dictionary. These also show how the definition of fieldwork has gradually changed, with the inclusion of new concerns and ideas about ethics, politics, reflex­ ivity, collaboration, and reciprocity.

FIELDWORK IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

7

"Fieldwork," from the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1969) Hortense Powdermaker's entry provides a classic definition of fieldwork which draws upon her Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist (1966), prob­ ably the most widely read book-length study of anthropological fieldwork which discusses the mistakes, successes, and complex emotions of conducting research in Melanesia, Northern Rhodesia, and the United States:

Fieldwork is the study of people and of their culture in their natural habitat. Anthro­ pological fieldwork has been characterized by the prolonged residence of the investi­ gator, his participation in and observation of the society, and his attempt to understand the inside view of the native peoples and to achieve the holistic view of a social scien­ tist ...The publication of Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific in 1922 revealed the great potentialities of fieldwork.This study of Trobriand Islanders, among whom Malinowski had lived for almost three years, set new standards for fieldworkers which continue to operate. Fieldwork came to mean immersion in a tribal society learning, as far as possible, to speak, think, see, feel, and act as a member of its culture and, at the same time, as a trained anthropologist from a different culture. (Powder­ maker 1969:4 1 8 ) Powdermaker went on to discuss preparation for and starting fieldwork; the advantages and disadvantages of solo, family, and team research; approval and cooperation of authorities; gaining the good will and consent of research partici­ pants; the first steps of the fieldwork process; participation in the culture; objectiv­ ity; and the influence of the theoretical orientation of the fieldworker. Powdermaker concluded by identifying an emerging interest in "the fieldworker as an individual": "A quite new development, not yet strong enough to be called a trend, is the recognition that the fieldworker is himself an inherent part of the situation studied and that his personal as well as his scientific reactions are an important part of the research process" {Powdermaker 1969:422). She argued that anthropology has failed to grasp the scientific importance of the ethnographer's social role and personal characteristics, while giving short shrift to chance, mistakes, fieldwork's trial-and-error approach, and the interpersonal dynamic with the people under study. In the following decade, this "emerging interest" would evolve into the full-fledged "reflexive trend" - one of the most significant modern developments in the anthropological approach to fieldwork (see Beteille and Madan 1975, Rabinow

1977, Ruby 1982). "Fieldwork," from Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective (1998) In the third edition of their popular introductory cultural anthropology textbook, Roger Keesing and Andrew Strathern define fieldwork as follows:

For most anthropologists, the immediate problems of understanding and the sources of data come from what has come to be known as fieldwork: intimate participation in a community and observation of modes of behavior and the organization of social life. The process of recording and interpreting another people's way of life is called ethnography ...

8

J EFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

Whether the setting is city, town, village, or jungle hamlet, the mode of anthropo­ logical research is in many important respects the same. Most essentially, it entails a deep immersion into the life of a people.Instead of studying large samples of people, the anthropologist enters as fully as possible into the everyday life of a community, neighborhood, or group ...One learns by participant observation, by living as well as viewing the new patterns of life. Successful fieldwork is seldom possible in a period much shorter than a year, especially where a new language and culture must be learned. Ideally, the researcher stays a good deal longer, sometimes on several successive field trips.The value of fieldwork sustained over a long period is beginning to come clearly into view. Sustained and deep research yields insights into a culture, and into the processes of continuity and change, scarcely attainable any other way. (Keesing and Strathern 1998:7-9) In their definition, Keesing and Strathern stress that fieldwork is a two-sided

encounter between research participants and ethical researchers: Consider the en�ounter from the other side.A people's lives are interrupted by a strange foreigner, often with a family, who moves into the community ...This person seldom fits the types of foreigners the people have learned to deal with previously- mission­ aries, traders, government officers, politicians, or whatever.The newcomer is insatiably curious about things private, sacred, and personal, for reasons and motives that are incomprehensible. The person must be accorded a role of some sort; clumsy efforts to speak, bad manners, and intrusions into daily life must be tolerated. All this attention may be flattering, but it may breed suspicion, hostility, and jealousy. In a less isolated and more sophisticated community, "being studied" may smack of condescension and may offend pride, not arouse it. On the anthropologist's sif;ie, ethical problems loom large.Should one try to protect the identity of the community and its people by disguising names and places? Can one intervene in matters of custom and health? Can one betray the confidence of one's informants in some grave violation of the law? (Keesing and Strathern 1998:8-9)

Finally, Keesing and Strathern draw attention to the gap between the data described in field notes and the lived experiences, sounds, smells, and scenes that cannot be captured in writing but are sedimented in the unconscious. Their use of the term "unconscious" is somewhat misleading because it suggests that the field­ worker is unaware of these impressions, but Keesing and Strathern are right in arguing that the anthropologist draws upon an unpronounced background under­ standing that is larger than the field notes, and gives the ethnography a richness which could not have been obtained any other way than through an extended immersion in the field. . Keesing and Strathern conclude their brief introductory discussion of fieldwork by observing that anthropology has retained its "humanistic vision" because it remains based on the fundamental intimacy of face-to-face research (1998:10).

"Fieldwork," from the Dictionary of Anthropology

(1986)

Charlotte Seymour-Smith defines fieldwork in this way: fieldwork. Research undertaken by the anthropologist or ethnologist in a given ethno­ graphic area or community� Such an ethnographic area in modern anthropology is not

FIELDWORK IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

9

necessarily limited to the traditional tribal or peasant community, and may embrace studies of urban, industrial or other settings which the anthropologist selects for the purposes of intensive research. The anthropological perspective has similarly been employed in the study of subcultures and in institutional research within modern indus­ trial society. So, while it was once true to say that anthropology was the study of people considered to be primitive, of exotic and little-known tribal cultures, and of peasant communities, modern anthropological research can no longer be defined by this crite­ rion and must be defined instead by the application of its distinctive methods of field­ work and analysis. In many cases, however, disciplinary boundaries become blurred in the study of modern industrial and urban society, due to the emergence of novel the­ oretical and methodological syntheses resulting from interdisciplinary collaboration and interchange. (Seymour-Smith 1986a: 117)

Seymour-Smith then focuses on ethical and political issues in fieldwork, and sug­ gests that anthropologists might offer "to perform some useful or valued service in return for the collaboration he or she requires" (1986a:ll7). This call for reciprocity as an ethical requirement of fieldwork is a modern one, and Seymour-Smith notes that anthropologists are increasingly asked to legitimate their research before the communities under study, national politicians, administrators, and intellectuals, while being summoned to share the results and produce tangible benefits. Seymour-Smith's discussion incorporates the emergence of the "reflexive trend" in cultural anthropology, and recognizes the beginnings of new forms of fieldwork with built-in reciprocity then emerging as a response to the ethical issues and crit­ icisms of anthropology raised by research participants -the ethnographic "other" -that exploded in the discipline during the 1960s and 1970s. Reflexive anthropol­ ogy turns the fieldworker's ongoing negotiation of his or her professional role into an object of study, analyzes the power relations involved, and questions the nature of participant observation. Seymour-Smith also discusses the issue of neutrality, observing that "he or she may not always be able to conserve neutrality or may under certain circumstances feel that neutrality is not an ethically acceptable position" (1986a:l18), and addresses the emerging politics of modern fieldwork: In many Third World nations, intellectuals and representatives of indigenous peoples and other oppressed or subordinate groups share the general view of western anthro­ pology either as a form of espionage or an account of "folklore" and exotic customs perpetuating a totally false image of their national reality and the real problems of their minority groups.Anthropologists also enjoy a poor reputation for ethical behavior, and have been criticized principally for their lack of commitment to the welfare of the people they study, and the failure to share the results of their research . . .It is natural enough for people who observe the anthropologist, comparatively wealthy by local standards and apparently free to pursue the line of research he or she chooses, to resent what they regard as the exploitation of the local community for the purposes of advanc­ ing his or her own career at home, placing the goals of his or her individual research project over and above any commitment to the aspirations and basic needs of the local population. And it is only to be expected that communities and peoples of the Third World will come more and more to reject this type of investigation and demand that the anthropologist contribute something in return for his or her presence. (Seymour­ Smith 1986a:l18)

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JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

Thus, by the time this article was written in the mid-1980s, the trends in concern for ethics, criticism by research participants, neutrality, and reflexivity in cultural anthropology, which emerged in the 1960s and 1 970s, were continuing, and there were new concerns with collaboration, reciprocity, and the politics of fieldwork.

An Historical Outline of Fieldwork The way to do fieldwork is never to come up for air until it is all over. - Margaret Mead (1901-78; source unknown) In

Doing Fieldwork: Warnings and Advice ( 1 97 1:21-41), Rosalie Wax provided an

excellent thumbnail sketch of the history of fieldwork. The following historical outline of the evolution of fieldwork is an elaborated and updated synopsis of Wax's history (see Urry 1984 for another useful history of fieldwork). Wax began by o bserving that "Descriptive reporting of the customs, inclinations, and accomplishments of foreign peoples is almost as old as writing itself" ( 1 97 1 :21). Herodotus wrote accounts of the Persians and Scythians for the Greeks, and the Romans continued this practice. With the rise of the Islamic empires, they too began to write descriptions of the foreign peoples they encountered. The first Europeans to collect and record ethnographic data about foreign peoples were Catholic mis­ sionaries and frontier merchants. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the rapid growth and spread of European and American colonialism and imperial­ ism produced an explosion of ethnographic " fieldwork" and descriptive accounts of the new peoples and cultures encountered during this process. This resulted from the fact that "a good many literate and reasonably well-educated men governmental officials, administrators, missionaries, and political exiles - were obliged to spend many years and sometimes most of their lives living and working with an alien or 'backward' people" {Wax 1 97 1:23). Many of them learned to speak the native languages and produced excellent field descriptions. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, social research involving the direct observation of groups of people in the researcher's own society began to be practiced in Britain and France (the roots of "sociological" fieldwork as opposed to "anthropological" fieldwork with other cultures or peoples). Wax ( 1 971:28) notes that among the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philoso­ phers identilied as the "pioneers" or "fathers" of anthropology, sociology, and ethnograp\ly - such as Saint-Simon, de Tocqueville, Hume, Veniaminov, Smith, Maine, Bachofen, McLennan, Tylor, and Morgan - only Morgan did what could be called genuine fieldwork. Instead, the others relied on secondhand reports and sources. When, in the late 1890s and early 1 900s, some British anthropologists­ Haddon, Seligman, Rivers, and Radcliffe-Brown - broke with the earlier academic tradition of working only from derived sources and went into the field to obtain data at first hand, they seem to have carried on their investigations more like natural scientists than the fieldworking officials or missionaries from whom the historical theorists had obtained their data. Their funds were meager, their time short, and they were in a hurry. Consequently, they made surveys, looked for and collected interesting or relevant specimens, observed native ceremonies, and questioned native informants as best they could. They were unable to reside near or with an alien

FIELDWORK IN . CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

11

people for any length of time to observe or participate in the ongoing cultural and social events, even had this method of doing fieldwork occurred to them. And when Boas and his first students and research assistants began their fieldwork among the Indians of North America, they usually proceeded in much the same fashion (Wax 1971:30). Boas' influence and the American fieldwork tradition

Franz Boas is renowned as a fieldworker, and considered the "father" of fieldwork in American cultural anthropology. However: The fact is that Boas and his students did not customarily spend a great deal of their time in the field learning the native language and observing and taking part in native life. The kind of data they desired did not require this, and, besides, their funds rarely permitted them a field trip of more than a few weeks or, at most, a few [usually the summer] months. What most of them did was try to locate as rapidly as possible a competent informant who was fluent in English and the native language, knew the old stories and customs, and was willing to dictate and translate texts . . . It is not sur­ prising that the two hardships about which they complain most frequently in their letters are ( 1 ) wasting valuable time trying to find or keep a good informant or inter­ preter and (2) writer's cramp. They were, of course, interested in observing and record­ ing traditional ceremonies and in watching traditional craftsmen at their work. But most of them did not really try to do fieldwork in the style in which it was subsequently done by the British social anthropologists, and they did not, except for rare exceptions, become even moderately fluent in the native language. (Wax 197 1 :32)

Wax mentions further that Boas made 13 field trips during his lifetime, many of them less than two months long, to 40 different sites along the Northwest Coast. Boas complained in his letters home about the discomforts of fieldwork and the reluctant cooperation of the Indians, yet kept returning to the field because he believed in the utmost importance of collecting firsthand data. Only a few of his students or those who worked in his tradition wrote anything about how they did their fieldwork. Lowie's 1959 autobiography, written just before but published after his death, disclosed the serious difficulties of his first field trip , while a posthumously published collection of Ruth Benedict's articles and letters contains some material on her fieldwork (Mead 1959). They and their generation were reluctant to report openly on any fieldwork problems, afraid to tarnish the reputation of this young sctence. Malinowsk i's influence and the British fieldwork tradition

Bronislaw Malinowski was the first professional anthropologist to describe what intensive fieldwork was really like, and how he obtained his data by living among the Trobria.nd people to observe their daily lives. His description, published in 1922 as the Introduction to his classic ethnography Argonauts of the Western Pacific, is one of the earliest, most widely read, and most influential accounts of fieldwork in anthropology, and is included in this reader. Malinowski suggested that all ethno­ graphic studies should include an account of the research methods and conditions "so that at a glance the reader could estimate with precision the degree of the writer's

12

JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

personal acquaintance with the facts which he describes, and form an idea under what conditions information had been obtained from the natives" (Malinowski 1922:3). Malinowski is renowned for identifying what he termed "the proper conditions" or "secrets" of effective ethnographic fieldwork. He advocated living among the people under study and remaining far from Westerners. He emphasized the need for clear scientific objectives, a thorough methodology to obtain results, and the use of special data-gathering methods. Finally, he stressed that a fieldworker should stick his nose into all ongoing affairs, even at the risk of offending local etiquette, to dis­ cover how the people thought� behaved, and saw the world. Malinowski hoped thus to "grasp the native's point of view" as complementary to the more objective observer's perspective (Malinowski 1922:25). Inspired by Malinowski's enthusiasm for this "new method," some of his and Radcliffe -Brown's students went into the field and followed this procedure. They and the students they trained produced many of the most valuable and influential ethnographies that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century. However, once again, only a few of these highly trained and experienced fieldworkers wrote anything about their experiences or methods. The most notable are the writings of Evans-Pritchard, Bohannan, and Powdermaker (see Appendix 5 on early and classic accounts of fieldwork). In 1940, Evans-Pritchard published a short but excellent description of the difficulties he experienced doing fieldwork among the Nuer in the early 1930s. In 1954, Laura Bohannan, under the pseudonym Elenore Smith Bowen, published a fictionalized account of fieldwork in Africa which was a pastiche com­ posed of the stories of several people and numerous field trips. And in 1966, Hort­ ense Powdermaker, who had studied with Malinowski in the 1920s, published her detailed account of her fieldwork in four locations. In assessing what she had learned, Powdermaker (1966:287) concluded that the most important conditions for good communication between research participants and fieldworkers are phys­ ical proximity of the fieldworker to the people studied, sound knowledge of their language, and a high degree of psychological and emotional involvement. Powder­ maker identified the ability to become totally involved and yet to observe with com­ plete detachment, continually to "step in and out" of other cultures, as the key to successful fieldwork. She achieved this ideal to varying degrees in the societies in which she worked (Ellen 1984:97). The influence of the ''Ch icago School''

During the 1920s and 1930s, sociologists at the University of Chicago, primarily influenced by the work of social psychologist George Herbert Mead, exerted a considerable influence on the development of sociology and anthropology. Led by Herbert Blumer, William Thomas, Robert Park, Albion Small, Charles Horton Cooley, Florian Znaniecki, and Louis Wirth, they came to be known as the " Chicago School" and represented the first major attempt to conduct systematic ethnographic fieldwork - particularly "community studies" - in urban environments, beginning with Chicago and then spreading to other cities. The sociologists of the Chicago School produced ethnographic monographs about things like Jewish ghettos, taxi­ dance halls, professional thieves, hobos, boys' gangs, and the like. They encouraged their students to do fieldwork, and reconceptualized their methodology around

FIELDWORK IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

13

"participant observation." By focusing on participant observation, the Chicago soci­ ologists "emphasized their linkage to the tradition of ethnographic fieldwork from Malinowski onward . . . Like Malinowski, they wish[ed] to pitch their tents among the dwellings of the natives (even if these be drug addicts, mental patients, medical students, or rabbis)" (Wax 1971:40).

Common Subjective Aspects of' Fieldwork

In its broader conception, fieldwork in cultural anthropology is characterized by a number of typical subjective or personal experiences. These are usually elided in formal methods texts, but are explored more fully in many reflexive accounts of fieldwork, and frequently arise as topics of discussion in anthropology methods courses. As several of the "pithy quotes" which open this introduction suggest, field­ work is frequently described as "the professional ethnographer's necessary ini tia­ tion - variously referred to as a puberty rite, ritual ordeal, or rite de passage" {Tedlock 1991:70). Going native

Barbara Tedlock has observed that the "gone native" fieldworker is one of the arche­ types of "the mythic history of anthropology " (1991:69), and Katherine Ewing has · noted that: The idea of "GOING NATIVE, is one of the few taboos remaining within anthro­ pology. Considered antithetical to the social scientist's stance of objectivity and stand­ ing as a professional, going native has traditionally been a term of derision among anthropologists. Despite an array of challenges to notions of objectivity, the taboo remains in place and continues to carry a heavy affective load. (Ewing 1994:57 1 )

Powdermaker included a section on "Going Native" in Stranger and Friend {1966:115-19), and Barfield states: the lore about "going native," that quintessentially anthropological occupational hazard (albeit almost apocryphal), illustrates the advantages and perils of fieldwork. Participating too much results in one's going native; participating too little turns one into a superficial, ethnocentric, survey-wielding, number-crunching social scientist with, some say, zero insight into the people studied. (Barfield 1 997:190)

"Going native, is such a central idea in the anthropological tradition of field­ work that it is not surprising that writer Susanna Kaysen includes it in her novel about an anthropology graduate student doing PhD fieldwork in the Faroe Islands: Going bush. Like many anthropological ideas, this one had been born in jungles and savannahs and gave off a tropical scent. Some old-timers called it "troppo," an occu­ pational hazard that began with lassitude and ended by destroying your objectivity. Stories that went, "when we got there, two years later, he was living in a hut with three wives.,, The trouble was, anthropologists were supposed to be living in huts. The three wives were optional but not exceptional. The line between observer and participant is so fine as to defy detection much of the time. It started easily enough. When members

14

JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN of "your" tribe are going on a journey or planning to get married, they slaughter a chicken and read the blood for omens. They offer to read omens for you before your trip back down the river for supplies. What harm can it do? It wiJJ certainly give you a better sense of their worldview, and it might give you a little useful information. Pretty soon you have recourse to chicken slaughter every time you have to make a deci­ sion. (Kaysen 1990:192-3)

While only a very small number of anthropologists have actually "gone native" in the sense of giving up anthropology altogether to fully join the people they study, the idea has a much larger significance in the culture of fieldwork. Perhaps the most widely read example of an anthropologist accused of being at least a borderline case of going native is the experience of Kenneth Good, the author of Into the Heart: An Amazonian Love Story ( 1 991). The subtitle of the American edition - One Man,s Pursuit of Love and Knowledge Among the Yanomama - gives even more empha­ sis to the impression that there is more to fieldwork than just the fact that it is a sci­ entific method of gathering data. Good first contacted the Yanomama in 1975 while doing fieldwork for his doctorate. He was supposed to stay with them for 15 months , but ended up living with them for more than 6 years, spread over a 15-year period. Eventually, the tribe offered him a wife, Yarima, whom he married. He later took her back with him to New Jersey, where she lived as a "housewife" for 4 years and had three children. But, eventually, Yarima found she could not live in New Jersey; she divorced Good, and left her children there to return to the forest, in what has been described by reviewers (see Amazon.com) as "a fantastic love story." Good reflected that "in my wildest dreams it had never occurred to me to marry an Indian woman in the Amazon jungle. I was from suburban Philadelphia. I had no intention of going native" (1991 :122). Nonetheless: Down deep, all I really did want was to find some way to make a living and to get back into the jungle. Not only to study the Indians - I already had enough data for three books - but to live with them. More especially, to live with Yarima. That was what I had come to, after all these years of struggling to fit into the Yanomama world, to speak their language fluently, to grasp their way of life from the inside. My origi­ nal purpose - to observe and analyze this people as an anthropological researcher ­ had slowly merged with somethjng far more personal. (Good 1991:145)

In the postmodern era, reflection on the meaning of "going native" has evolved and generated new debates and insights. Where in the past it was a criticism to say an anthropol.ogist had " gone native," today an increasing number of anthropolo­ gists, having taken on board the postmodern critique of empiricism and objectivity, advocate rather than criticize the breaking down of the traditional barriers that sep­ arate the observer from the observed, and many -including "native anthropolo­ gists" - do fieldwork "at home" in their own culture (see Pink 2000). Tedlock suggests that: What seems to lie behind the belief that �'going native" poses a serious danger to the fieldworker is the logical construction of the relationship between objectivity and sub­ jectivity, between scientist and native, between Self and Other, as an unbridgeable oppo­ sition. The implication is that a subject's way of knowing is incompatible with the scientist's way of knowing and that the domain of objectivity is the sole property of

FIELDWORK IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

15

the outsider.Several fieldworkers have rejected this sharp analytical distinction between Self and Other. (Tedlock 1991:71} This gives a new and interesting twist: Are anthropologists who are '�natives" of the culture they study immune from or even more at risk of the danger of "going native,,, or do they have an advantage because of their deeper level of participa­ tion? Ewing suggests that the taboo against going native is a result of the adoption of the scientific model's commitment to objectivity, but also represents a hegemonic Western practice aimed at control or domination, which has a deleterious effect, because in order to preserve a stance of what they imagine to be scientific objec­ tivity and detachment, ethnographers "may place the act of observing and record­ ing between himself or herself and others" (Ewing 1994:571}. While participation in the culture under study is encouraged, researchers in the field are usually considered to have gone too far - "gone native" - if it comes to constitute a threat to their professional identity. Ewing has explored her experience with this anthropological taboo, describing her deep participation during fieldwork to the point of "belief" or "going native." She recounts how, during her fieldwork in Pakistan, she was the recipient of a dream sent by a Sufi saint, who had earlier told her that he would come to her while she was sleeping. Her initial reaction was rejection of the veracity of the experience, which she attributed to her "internal­ ization of the anthropological taboo against going native, a reaction that I suspect is shared by many anthropologists under similar circumstances and that shapes the ·ethnographic project" (Ewing 1994:574). She "marveled aloud about the power of suggestion," but finally, before the end of her fieldwork, she chose to visit a Sufi saint "and, for once, to approach the whole encounter as a personal experience rather than as anthropological research" (Ewing 1994:574-5). Other anthropologists have also pushed the limits of "going native.,, For example: Ethnographers who have learned not only the language but also appropriate behavior (including nonverbal communication codes) have been transformed, sometimes quite radically, by their fieldwork experience . . . David Hayano . . . became so immersed in the subculture of California poker players that "within several years I had virtually become one of the people I wanted to study ! " Liza Crihfield Dalby not only took on the social role of a geisha during her fieldwork in Japan, but she also claims to have become one in both body and spirit. Her assertion that she learned to think and behave as a geisha suggests the "gone native" archetype of the anthropological imagination. (Tedlock 1991:70)

Similarly, Edie Turner (1999) has recounted her extraordinary experience while observing a ritual practiced by the Ndembu in Zambia. She reported that a "med­ icine man" named Singleton and his supporters were making a collective effort to draw out an afflicting spirit or ihamba from a woman named Meru: I felt the spiritual motion, a tangible feeling of breakthrough going through the whole

group. Then it was that Meru fell - the spirit event first and the action afterwards. I was clapping and singing with the others like one possessed, while the drums bellowed, and Singleton pressed Meru's back . . . Meru's face in a grin of tranced passion, her back quivering rapidly. Suddenly Meru raised her arm, stretched it in liberation, and I saw with my own eyes a large thing emerging out of the flesh of her back. This thing was a big gray blob about 6 inches across, a gray opaque plasma-like object appear-

16

JEFFREY A . SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. . M. ROBBEN

ing as a sphere. I was amazed - delighted. I still laugh with glee at the realization of having seen it, the ihamba, and so big! We were all one in triumph.The gray thing was actually out there, visible and you could see Singleton's hands working and scrub� bing on Meru's back - and then the thing was there no more. Singleton had it in his pouch, pressing it in his other hand as well. The receiving can was ready; he trans� ferred whatever it was into the can and capped a castor oil leaf and bark lid over it. It was done. (Turner 1999:46)

Did she "go native," hallucinate, or actually experience what she believes she did? These anthropologists did not really "go native" because they never abandoned their anthropological identities. But they were prepared to break the traditional taboo against "going native," and in doing so pushed the boundaries of the self/other dichotomy in anthropological fieldwork. Culture shock

The common experience of culture shock as a consequence of fieldwork in a foreign culture or context is one of the oldest themes in cultural anthropology. Virtually all fieldworkers have experienced culture shock in varying degrees. This shared sub­ jective experience provides one of the most fundamental bonds that unite anthro­ pologists and the discipline, and it is probably the emotional experience of culture shock that in the main leads to the characterization of fieldwork as a rite of passage. Somewhat surprisingly, in her entry for "fieldwork" in the International Encyclo­ pedia of the Social Sciences, Powdermaker dismissed culture shock on entering the field but warned of it on returning home from the field: Despite its reputation, the so�called culture shock is not often one of the problems of a trained anthropologist [because] he arrives with a general knowledge of the people and their culture through having immersed himself in the literature ...Culture shock is more likely to be experienced when he returns to his own modern urban society after an extended period in a tribal one. (Powdermaker 1 969:420- 1 )

But in the entry for "fieldwork" in her Dictionary of Anthropology, Seymour� Smith identifies culture shock as a characteristic difficulty of fieldwork, comment­ ing that "This state of disorientation is perhaps necessary, and is in the long term a productive one, since like a rite of passage it prepares the ethnographer for the imaginative leap involved in coming to terms with an alien culture or way of life" (Seymour-Smith 1986a:117). In many reflexive accounts of fieldwork, cultural anthropologists have commented on their experience of culture shock and adjust� ment, and it emerges that one very common or shared response to culture shock in the early phase of fieldwork is withdrawal from contact with the locals and escapism into reading novels, and the like. In the late 1950s, culture shock was first defined by anthropologist Kalervo Oberg as "the anxiety that results from losing familiar signs and symbols of social inter­ course" (1960:177). In a comprehensive analysis, he argued that culture shock was a natural part of the process of adjustment to a new culture which leads eventually to cultural awareness. Oberg identified the signs of culture shock as homesickness, withdrawal, chauvinistic excesses, the stereotyping of locals, the need for excessive amounts of sleep, marital stress, the loss of ability to work effectively, compulsive

FIELDWORK IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

17

eating or drinking , unexplainable fits of weeping, irritability, psychosomatic illness, boredom, exaggerated cleanliness, and family tension and conflict. From these observations, Oberg (1974) developed a normative six-month model of the process of cultural adjustment, and made practical recommendations for dealing with culture shock, including learning more about the place and its people, refraining from criticizing the host culture, finding a friend, keeping a sense of humor, avoid­ ing self-pity, getting enough rest, maintaining a healthy diet, getting enough exer­ cise, keeping a sense of adventure, using friends and family for support, asking for help when needed, keeping involved with others and avoiding withdrawal, devel­ oping new interests and skills, and recording experiences, insights, and frustrations in a ,journal.

Postmodernism and Fieldwork All variants of fieldwork have been thoroughly scrutinized and criticized since the mid-

1970s. Hyper-positivist fieldwork methods are under fire from postmodemism . . . Another source of critique is postcolonial studies, which deconstruct how a hegemonic Western social science such as anthropology fashions its particular alterity . . . Some

anthropologists have found traditional anthropological fieldwork so problematic that they advocate cultural history approaches. (Barfield 1997:190; emphasis added) The 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of postmodern perspectives and increas­ ing debate and eclecticism in cultural anthropology. A heightened awareness of the relationship between power and the construction of knowledge produced a new concern with reflexivity - a ''reflexive trend" - and new forms of fieldwork relations and ethnographic writing emerged. There was an increasing trend toward doing fieldwork "at home"; the emergence of interpretive or hermeneutic approaches; the development of feminist anthropology; a growing engagement with indigenous scholars; the emergence of autoethnography, narrative ethnography, indigenous anthropology, and new life-history approaches such as "testimonio"; and new practices of writing, communicating, and reading ethnographic accounts as "texts." This last development included a literary turn: Declared to be fictions "in the sense of something made or fashioned" (Clifford 1 986:6), ethnographies, according to those who advocate this position, are partial or selective truths. They should be approached as texts whose style, rhetoric, and narra­ tive structure can be subjected to the same kind of criticisms to which other works of literature are subjected. Writing about culture raises questions about modes of repre­ sentation, about objectivity and accountability, relarivism and ethnocentrism, science and truth. Textualists urge ethnographers to experiment with new forms of writing that are dialectical, dialogic, or polyphonic rather than analytic, authoritative, and univocal. Indeed, the omniscient "I know because I was there" voice of the post­ Malinowskian participant observer is perceived as a trope that is no longer acceptable in a postcolonial world. (Brettell 1 993:2)

At a more general level, these trends reinvigorated debate and controversy between protagonists of the universal and relativist, objectivist and subjectivist, sci­ entific and humanistic positions, and were mainly a response to two key develop-

18

JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

ments in the 1960s -the theoretical critique of "neutrality," "objectivity," "truth/' and "reality" in empiricism, and the political critique of the discipline's historical relationship with Western imperialism and colonialism. These developments included processes of "decolonization" (Harrison 1991) and the "reinvention" (Hymes 1969) of anthropology, and addressed the politics of the discipline, includ­ ing such critical issues as the relationship between anthropology and imperialism , academic colonialism, sexism, and issues involved in applied, action, and partisan research (Huizer and Mannheim 1979). One aspect of reflexive postmodern anthro­ pology . was a renewed and invigorated interest in the process by which data are gathered -the fieldwork experience.

The postmodern critique of fieldwork

During the postmodern turn in cultural anthropology, some anthropologists, sensi­ tized by the poststructuralist writings of Michel Foucault on power and knowledge, harshly criticized anthropological fieldwork as a kind of invasive, disciplinary "panopticon" - a type of prison building designed by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1791 to allow a guard to observe all prisoners without them being able to tell if they were being observed or not_, thus conveying a "sentiment of an invis­ ible omniscience." The anthropological interview was criticized as being similar to the medieval inquisitional confession through which church examiners extracted "truth" from their native and "heretical" peasant parishioners. Finally, they criti­ cized anthropological observation as a hostile act that reduces our subjects to mere "objects" of our scientific gaze. Consequently, some postmodern anthropologists gave up fieldwork and the practice of descriptive ethnography altogether. As a result of this at times ruthless critique and autocritique of anthropology from historical, political , gender, and postmodern perspectives, even the basic conceptions of the "field" and ''fieldwork" -perhaps the most fundamental bases of the anthropological approach -were and are still now being critiqued_ and con­ tested. An example of the most radical form of postmodern critique is Roger Berger's article "From Text to (Field)work and Back Again: Theorizing a Post(modern)­ Ethnography'' (1993), in which he argues that The "field" is not just produced by the discipline. The ethnographic "field" is also a cultural construct, a disciplinary epiphenomenon, a discursive effect, part of the dis­ cursive formation that is anthropology. Without anthropology there is no "field," no "objt!d" of study, and without the power to create "fields" there is no anthropology. Indeed, the "field" is a fundamental part of what Foucault terms �'the production of truth through power." It is not just the "theoretical framework" that produces ethno­ graphic facts but disciplinary power that enables the production of a "field" in which a conceptual framework can produce "facts." Our normative sense of the "field" func­ tions to hide the power that produces the "field." To put it another way, the "field" is the hidden configuration of western hegemonic power. (1993:178)

The conclusion is that, since "fieldwork" is fundamentally an act of domination and control, and the "field" represents "the dominated bodies of the colonized" (Berger 1993:176), the decolonization of the discipline requires that these be aban­ doned and new approaches developed.

FIELDWORK IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

19

The postm odern turn

While few cultural anthropologists have abandoned fieldwork, this autocriticism stimulated an experimental era, which continues today, in which new conceptions and ways of doing fieldwork have developed. For example, some postmodern anthro­ pologists see themselves as artisans fashioning ethnographies by forming communi­ ties and making conversations (Gudeman and Rivera 1995). In The Art of Fieldwork (2005), Harry Wolcott advocates approaching fieldwork as an art method; in Person to Person: Fieldwork, Dialogue, and the Hermeneutic Method (1996), Barry Mich­ rina and CherylAnne Richards present a "step-by-step" guide for a "dialogical hermeneutic" approach to fieldwork; and volumes such as Things as They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology (1996), edited by Michael Jackson, Shifting Contexts: Transformations in Anthropological Knowledge (1995), edited by Marilyn Strathern, and Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Con­ temporary World (2000), edited by Vered Amit , present a wide range of "experi­ mental" articles exploring new ways of approaching ethnographic research. The "new ethnography" that has emerged in the last few decades incorporates three int�rlocking concerns. First, an increased awareness of "multivocality" {mul­ tiple voices representing multiple interests or "realities") , which has raised issues of signature, authority, and advocacy. Second, a growing number of works concerned with the ethnographic encounter, with cross-cultural communication, and with making explicit the ways in which fieldwork is conducted and research participants are incorporated into the account. Third, an increased regard for the context and praxis of writing and reading ethnographic "texts." For example, one aspect of the postmodern turn is the "revolution" in readership; today, the ethnographic "other" is nearly always literate and can read and respond to -particularly criticize - what anthropologists write about them. As Driessen has observed, "The traditional dichotomy of the ethnographer who looks, listens, writes and reads, versus the native who talks and tries to figure out what the behavior and questions of the anthropologist mean, has largely collapsed'' {1993:3 ). Thus, the elements of con­ temporary ethnography include experimental form and method, reflexivity on the part of the ethnographer, collaboration and multiple authorship, and the details of fieldwork dialogue and experience. Narra tive ethn ography

Modern ethnographers have sought to increase the voice of the "other" through more active involvement of research participants in the co-production of ethno­ graphic accounts, narratives, or texts. This is done by extensive direct quotations, co-authorship , and collaboration with research participants. As Tedlock has observed, beginning in the 1970s, "there was a shift in emphasis from participant observation to the observation of participation" (1991:78), entailing "a represen­ tational transformation" in which both the fieldworker and "other" are "presented together within a single narrative ethnography, focused on the character and process of the ethnographic dialogue" (Tedlock 1991:69). Narrative ethnography became a creative intermingling of lived experiences, field data, methodological reflections, and cultural analysis by a situated and self-conscious narrator. Tedlock argues that the development of this new "narrative ethnography" is driven by

,·

20

JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

a new breed of ethnographer who is passionately interested in the co-production of ethnographic knowledge, created and represented in the only way it can be, within an interactive Self/Other [epistemological] dialogue.These new ethnographers - many of whom are themselves subaltern because of their class, gender, or ethnicity - cannot be neatly tucked away or pigeonholed within any of the four historical archetypes [of] the amateur observer, the armchair anthropologist, the professional ethnographer, or the "gone native" fieldworker.Rather they, or we, combine elements from all four of these categories. Thus, for example we embrace the designation "amateur," since it derives from the Latin amatus, the past participle of amare, "to love," and we are passion­ ately engaged with our endeavor. We accept the "armchair" designation because we have a serious concern with both reading and critiquing the work of other ethnogra­ phers in order to try to change past colonialist practices. We insist that we are "pro­ fessional," because of the seriousness of our field preparation and engagement, and also because of our attention to issues of representation in our own work. Finally, to the extent that fieldwork is not simply a union card but the center of our intellectual and emotional lives, we are, if not "gone native," at least becoming bicultural. (Tedlock 1991 :82)

Testimonio

One of the most important forms of narrative ethnography is the emergence of "tes­ timonio" or testimonial narrative -a first-person account of a real situation that involves repression, marginalization, and violence, intended to function as a narra­ tive that bears witness to and denounces human rights abuses. Such narratives, most coming out of Latin America since the mid-1970s, have been intended as a way to give voice to the voiceless. The most widely known example is the autobiographi­ cal I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (1984), which begins with this paragraph: My name is Rigoberta Menchu. I'm twenty-three years old. This is my testimony. I didn't learn it from a book and I didn't learn it alone. I'd like to stress that it's not only my life, it's also the testimony of my people.It's hard for me to remember every­ thing that's happened to me in my life since there have been many bad times but, yes, moments of joy as well. The important thing is that what has happened to me has hap­ pened to many other people too: My story is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal experience is the reality of a whole people. (Menchu, with Burgos-Debray 1 984: 1 )

John Beverley has defined testimonio and elaborated on its various approaches: By testimonio I mean a novel or novella-length narrative in book or pamphlet form, told in the first person by a narrator who is also a real protagonist or witness of the event he or she recounts, and whose unit of narration is usually a "life" or a signifi­ cant life experience. Testimonio may include, but is not subsumed under, any of the following categories, some of which are conventionally considered literature, others not: autobiography, autobiographical novel, oral history, memoir, confession, diary, interview, eyewitness report, life history, novel/a-testimonio, nonfiction novel, or "fac­ tographic" literature . . . This situation of narration in testimonio has to involve an urgency to communicate, a problem of repression, poverty, subalternity, imprisonment, struggle for survival, and so on. ( 1 996 :24-5)

FIELDWORK IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION In the context of Latin America,

21

testimonio developed as an important medium

through which subalterns finally found a literary voice of their own. First and fore­ most, it is considered to be a tactic for empowerment and survival, in which the subaltern brings the existence of oppressive and repressive conditions to the atten­ tion of the world to bring about social and political change. Thus, for the work that has been publicized through her testimonio, Rigoberta Menchu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. Testimonio represents a (to some) controversial (see Stoll 1999), form of experimental ethnography, based on a new approach to fieldwork and a new relationship between the anthropologist and the "other" (Beverley 2004). Reciprocity, collaboration, and partnership

Another development in postmodern fieldwork, or another approach to the "new ethnography,'' is an increased commitment to reciprocity and collaborative research. The traditional purpose of fieldwork was to collect ethnographic data, and in the 1960s this position was summarized by Powdermaker when she asserted that "The anthropologist is not primarily interested in helping his informants, although he may do so in3;dvertently. His motivation is to secure data" (1966:296). However, as noted above, by the mid-1980s there was an increasing commitment to reciprocity - to providing something useful back to research participants for their collaboration -as an ethical requirement of fieldwork. Reciprocity became more than an effective prac­ tical strategy to please informants and establish a good rapport, and acquired a moral dimension. This led to the emergence of a new type of applied anthropology, in which serving the local community and collecting ethnographic data are equally important, and "the researchers are concerned with conducting research in a team effort that benefits the local people as well as themselves" {Kuhlmann 1992:275). In particu­ lar, this has been evidenced in the development of new approaches to ethnographic fieldwork such as collaborative research and research partnerships {see Clifford 1980 and Kennedy 1995) in work with both groups (e.g., Kuhlmann 1992) and individ­ uals (e. g., Marcus and Mascarenhas 2005). In an article on collaborative research she conducted with members of the Kick­ apoo tribe of Oklahoma, Annette Kuhlmann states that "the goals of this approach include community participation, collaboration of the participants on all aspects of the project, reciprocal learning processes, and respect for the community's sense of tribal privacy in regard to publications" (1992:274). Kuhlmann worked with tribal members to develop books on Kickapoo history for classroom use. Traditionally, the Kickapoo related their past by passing on stories about events that happened to individuals and the tribe. Through interviews conducted by trained tribal members, these detailed and sometimes humorous life histories and stories were recorded from elders and put into history texts in a way that reflected this tradition. Kuhlmann identifies the basic elements of participatory research. One approach is to look to enhance research people may already be doing themselves. The orien­ tation of this collaborative research entails an attitude on the part of the outside professionals that their work and their relationships with the local members are governed by a commitment to the people, to work with them, i.e., not for them and not about them . . .This emphasis distinguishes collaborative research from other applied approaches in which the academic works for

22

JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

a specific employer, such as the federal government, another organization, or the tribe. Employer-employee relationships imply a hierarchy that the collaborative researchers strive to replace with reciprocity in learning in the context of mutually designed pro­ jects. (1 992:277)

In collaborative research, the participants attempt to work together as equals, and this teamwork includes every aspect of the project - planning, implementation , problem solving, and evaluation. Similarly, new approaches to fieldwork based on reciprocity and collaboration have emerged that emphasize partnership. This approach has been particularly developed by feminist anthropologists, and an increasing number of fieldworkers are choosing to enter into explicit research partnerships with individuals and groups. Research partnerships between anthropologists and the people with whom they work have already taken a variety of forms (e.g., see Shostak 1981), but generally it involves "partnerships between trained researchers and community members who are not trained in social research but who are interested in doing research into their own community" {Park 1992:581). One of the best examples that has revealed some of the basic elements of part­ nership-based research is a project on the place of alcohol in the lives of New Zealand women, based on partnerships between anthropologists and Samoan, Cook Islands, Maori, and lesbian women (Park 1992:581). julie Park observes that, as in business, research partnerships are negotiated relationships; the partnership does not necessarily have to be equal, but is one of joint engagement based on negotia­ tion {1992:582). Park argues that in order to be nonexploitative, research relation­ ships not only have to be open to people's experiences and voices, but have to return to the participants appropriate and accessible research-based information as part of an empowering process (1992:583). Skills and resources should be shared, and just as in other forms of participatory research, in partnership-based fieldwork it is essen­ tial to work in close cooperation with members of the group, including seeking their active involvement in planning, research, and analysis of the project.

Contemporary Fieldwork in Cultural Anthropology Without the continued grounding in the empirical that scientific aspects of our tradi­ tion provide, our interpretive efforts may float off into literary criticism and into par­ ticularistic forms of history. Without the interpretive tradition, the scientific tradition that grou1,1ds us will never get off the ground. (Rappaport 19 94:76)

The compassionate turn

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, after more than three decades of intense postmodernist critique, cultural anthropology is passing through another shift in its relation to fieldwork. In the mid-1990s, there arose a growing opposition to the destructive cynicism and negativism of the most extreme forms of postmodern cri­ tique, because few anthropologists accepted the radical proposition that fieldwork is inherently a form of imperialism, oppression, and control, which must be aban­ doned altogether. If modernism (empiricism) represented anthropology's original

FI ELDWORK IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

23

thesis characterized by a preoccupation with how to analyze and represent cultures, and the "postmodern turn" was its antithesis with an emphasis on the reflexive ethnographer, then lately we are seeing a synthesis of these perspectives in the reassessment of the relation between anthropologists and the peoples they study. The discipline is in the middle of a period of soul-searching about the morality of fieldwork relations and the ethico-political implications of ethnography. One of the best examples of this critical stance toward a self-absorbed anthropology is the work of Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who has written: I am weary of these postmodernist critiques, and, given the perilous times in which we and our subjects live, I am inclined toward compromise, the practice of a "good enough" ethnography. While the anthropologist is always a necessarily flawed and biased instrument of cultural translation, like every other craftsperson we can do the best we can with the limited resources we have at hand: our ability to listen and to observe carefully and with empathy and compassion. (1995:417-1 8)

Most anthropologists today would agree with Scheper-Hughes' conviction that, rather than a "hostile gaze," anthropological fieldwork can be "an opportunity for self-expression. Seeing, listening, touching, recording can be, if done with care and sensitivity, acts of solidarity. Above all, they are the work of recognition. Not to look, not to touch, not to record can be the hostile act, an act of indifference and of turning away" ( 1 995:418). In the unfolding "compassionate turn," there is a growing acknowledgment that -like all academic disciplines -cultural anthropol­ ogy was, is, and will always be flawed or imperfect, and that vigorous internal debate and criticism are "normal" and beneficial. While recognizing that at any given time we are limited by the current state of knowledge and theory, we remain committed to fieldwork as our primary method, and still aspire to the production or creation of '�good enough'' or approximately right ethnography capable of pre­ senting "adequate explanations" of human and social behavior which are "adequate to the times we live in" (Becker 1993). An awareness of the moral and ethico-political dimensions of fieldwork has drawn anthropologists to the study of violence, genocide, suffering, trauma, resilience, healing, and reconstruction (e.g., Daniel 1996, Das 1995, Farmer 2003, Hinton 2005, Kleinman, Das, and Lock 1997, Mahmood 1996, Nordstrom 1997, Robben 2005, Sanford 2003 , Scheper-Hughes 1993, Sluka 2000). The opening phrases of the influential collection Social Suffering (1997) address several major dimensions of this "compassionate turn": Social suffering ... brings into a single space an assemblage of human problems that have their origins and consequences in the devastating injuries that social forces can inflict on human experience. Social suffering results from what political, economic, and institutional power does to people and, reciprocally, from how these forms of power themselves influence responses to social problems.Included under the category of social suffering are conditions that are usually divided among separate fields, conditions that simultaneously involve health, welfare, legal, moral, and religious issues. They desta­ bilize established categories. For example, the trauma, pain, and disorders to which atrocity gives rise are health conditions; yet they are also political and cultural matters. (Kleinman, Das, and Lock 1 997:ix)

24

JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

The shift from a solipsistic postmodern anthropology to the study of the real suf­ fering of real people carries multiple consequences for fieldwork. The multilayered and multidimensional complexity of research themes such as genocide, social suf­ fering, cultural trauma, and social reconstruction requires a holistic approach that, after a long detour, reconnects fieldwork to the tradition of Boas and Malinowski. Yet, unlike these founding fathers, contemporary anthropologists have acquired enough academic confidence to draw freely on other disciplines. The "compassion­ ate turn" makes anthropologists also reemphasize the importance of empathy, not empathy as a methodological technique to adopt the "native point of view" but as an epistemological approach. Compassionate empathy makes the fieldworker and the research participant share a subjective space , implicating them in each other's lives and in the production of ethnographic knowledge. This approach carries a political responsibility, which is not a return to the action anthropology of the 1970s but rather a form of social advocacy delivered mostly from the steps of the academy and only rarely engaged directly in the field. Robert Borofsky's agenda for an anthro­ pological outreach to the world is the public face of this compassionate fieldwork: Public anthropology demonstrates the ability of anthropology and anthropologists to effectively address problems beyond the discipline - illuminating the larger social issues of our times as well as .encouraging broad, public conversations about them with the explicit goal of fostering social change. It affirms our responsi­ bility, as scholars and citizens, to meaningfully contribute to communities beyond the academy - both local and global - that make the study of anthropology possible. (www.publicanthropology.org)

Public anthropology sees ethnographers as witnesses, instead of dispassionate observers or political activists, who connect their readers to the world's trouble spots and sensitize them to the suffering and struggles of underprivileged human beings. It wants to generate public discussion, influence opinion, and engage politicians and policy makers critically to achieve genuine social change without, however�. becom­ ing involved in its realization. ''Being there"

The postmodern critique of fieldwork and its compassionate reaction have stimu­ lated new conceptions of what constitutes "the field" and ethnography. This process continues today. People like James Fernandez (1985:19} argued two decades ago that fieldwork is mainly what anthropology is all about, and that the essential char­ acteristic of fieldwork is "being there." This is particularly reflected in two recent books on fieldwork - Being There: The Necessity of Fieldwork (Bradburd 1998} and Being There: Fieldwork in Anthropology (Watson 1999}. But the very "what, where, and when" of fieldwork has shifted. For example, Deborah D'Amico­ Samuels (1991:69) has questioned both the geographical and temporal construction of the traditional division between "home" being here and "the field" being there, between where we write and publish and where we do our fieldwork , and explored "where does the field begin and end, if ever?" Does fieldwork end when we "leave the field ," and what does "leave the field" mean in a high-tech, postmodern, and globalized world where even research participants in the remotest areas are acces­ sible by telephone? D'Amico-Samuels argues that the notion of being "back from

FIELDWORK IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

25

the field" implies an artificial separation in the ethnographic process, with unfor­ tunate consequences. She concludes that today ''the field is everywhere," and there is no division between home and the field because both exist in the same holistic context of globalized power relations (D'Amico-Samuels 1991:83). Traditionally, fieldwork ended when one returned from the field to analyze and write up the research results. However, in contemporary cultural anthropology, when researchers more frequently conduct long-term or diachronic fieldwork in the same location over many years and several field trips, and where the physical distance between "home" and "the field" is largely ameliorated by instantaneous means of electronic mass communication, this simple dichotomy between being "in the field" and then leaving no longer holds sway. Today, many anthropologists con­ sider that, in a sense, they never really leave the field entirely and thus their field­ work never really ends. For example, in 1994 one of Jeffrey Sluka's key research participants in Belfast, the leader of a nationalist paramilitary group, was killed. Within a few hours of his death he received a telephone call from other research participants, and they spoke for nearly two hours about what had happened. This discussion was predicated on fieldwork-based relations, was the same as a research interview, and the notes he wrote were indistinguishable from "field notes." But there was an immense physical distance between them: he was at "home" and they were "in the field." But while he was on the telephone, was he not essentially " in the field" and was this not a form of attenuated "fieldwork"? (See Sunderland 1999 for a discussion of "fieldwork and the phone.") Today, cultural anthropologists are increasingly exploring the implications for long-term fieldwork marked by the presence of the ethnographer at discreet periods over their life history and intellectual thought. For example, Anthony Cohen, who conducted fieldwork over 19 years on the island of Whalsay, in Shetland, has observed that during this time there was "continuous change: in the field; in the dis­ cipline; to the author himself; and in his view of the discipline, the field, and his earlier analysis of his data" (1992:339). He referred to "that mental notebook which is never closed and which certainly does not recognize the geographical and cultural limits and specificities of our putative fields" (1 992:339), called attention to "anthropologists' compulsion to carry 'their' field with them mentally, long after they have left it physically" (1992:344), and introduced the idea of "post-fieldwork fieldwork": ·

We bring to the analysis of our fieldnotes [and headnotes] continuously accumulating experience extraneous to the circumstances in which they were written. "In this sense," says Ottenberg, "the field experience does not stop. Things that I once read in my field­ notes in one way, I now read in another." Hastrup makes a similar point: "The past is not past in anthropology." It is precisely this process of rereading that I refer to by the phrase, "post-fieldwork fieldwork." {1 992:345)

Today, a com.mon pattern of fieldwork for cultural anthropologists is one year of PhD fieldwork followed by a series of shorter trips, frequently lasting for three months (over a summer break) or sometimes six months (a semester sabbatical), over the course of an academic career. Some do considerably more fieldwork, but some do considerably less. It is increasingly difficult for graduate students to get funding for a year's fieldwork, and for faculty to take that much time off as research leave.

26

JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

That is, economics often dictates the kind of fieldwork anthropologists do, and the tendency has been toward the development of more cost-efficient (i.e., cheaper) alter­ natives to long-term fieldwork. One result is that today much fieldwork res�mbles more the Boasian/American tradition than the Malinowskian/British one -namely, shorter periods working with one or a few key "research participants," rather than extended participant observation of a whole community for one or two years. In cultural anthropology, the process of critiquing, refining, and redefining ethnography and fieldwork continues. Today, the "best practice" of fieldwork is eth­ ically grounded, with the free and informed consent of research participants. It is participatory, shaped with the active collaboration of research "participants" rather than "subjects," and conducted with their needs in mind. That is, reciprocity giving something back to the community which they deem to be of use to them ­ is built into it by design. The new research orientations in fieldwork that emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s, such as narrative ethnography and testimonio, and the compassionate ones in the process of emerging today, are examples of the applica­ tion of these themes.

-

The Construction and Organization of the Reader That charming and intelligent Austrian-American anthropologist Paul Radin has said that no one quite knows how one goes about fieldwork. Perhaps we should leave the question with that sort of answer. But when I was a serious young student in London I thought I would try to get a few tips from experienced fieldworkers before setting out for Central Mrica. I first sought advice from Westermarck. All I got from him was "don't converse with an informant for more than twenty minutes because if you aren't bored by that time he will be." Very good advice, even if somewhat inadequate. I sought instruction from Haddon, a man foremost in field-research. He told me that it was really all quite simple; one should always behave as a gentleman. Also very good advice. My teacher, Seligman, told me to take ten grains of quinine every night and to keep off women. The famous Egyptologist, Sir Flinders Petrie, just told me not to bother about drinking dirty water as one soon became immune to it. Finally, I asked Malinowski and was told not to be a bloody fool. So there is no clear answer, much will depend on the man, on the society he is to study, and the conditions in which he is to make it. (Evans-Pritchard 1973:1)

So why this reader about fieldwork rather than methods? Should we not just improv� our data-collection techniques and leave all talk of fieldwork to after-dinner conversations or one-liners to reassure anxious students? In fact, our mentor Gerald Berreman told us when we were close to embarking on our doctoral fieldwork that what we had to do was "hang out" in cafes and on street corners. Yet , there is more here than meets the eye. Beneath the seemingly common-sense remarks by Berreman and Evans-Pritchard's teachers, there are hints at the complexities of field­ work relations and rapport (don't talk too long with an informant; keep off women; hang out), ethics (behave like a gentleman), conflicts, hazards, and dangers in field­ work (take quinine; don't worry about dirty water), and fieldwork identity (don't be a fool). . We therefore believe that the technicalities of field interviews or organizing field notes are not the problem, to mention two common concerns among students, but

FIELDWORK IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION

27

what goes on in the relation between ethnographer and research participants, and how to interpret field notes. Insight in the interview experience and the epistemol­ ogy of fieldnotes, rather than the technique, leads to better interviewers and better data. There are no recipes for gathering ethnographic data, just as there are no for­ mulas for designing a groundbreaking experiment in nuclear physics. Instead, a better understanding of the experience of conducting fieldwork will heighten the anthropolo gist's sensitivity to the research process and enhance access to rewarding data rather than relying solely on trodden paths led by a singular concern with methods . This is not to say that anthropologists should not train themselves thor­ oughly in fieldwork methods -we have added an appendix with extensive biblio­ graphic references to ethnographic data-gathering techniques for the interested reader (see Appendix 1) -but we are convinced that a sophisticated understanding of the fieldwork experience will make better fieldworkers and yield more profound and groundbreaking ethnographies. Given the great many books and articles available on ethnographic fieldwork, several choices had to be made for this reader. One, the selection concentrates on those texts which we believe to have continued relevance in the discipline and should be part 9f the background knowledge of every undergraduate and graduate student in cultural anthropology. Two, the selection aims to provide readers with a good sense of the breadth, variation, and complexity of the fieldwork experience. We have therefore not restricted this anthology to discussions of data gathering proper, but extended into issues of professional identity, fieldwork relations, ethics, and the practice of ethnographic writing. Three, since much has been written about a great number of topics, we have been forced to choose from several equally superb arti­ cles on the same subject. Style, accessibility, imagination, innovation, and personal preference were considered in selecting one text over another. The reader is divided into ten parts, each representing a major subfield or theme in ethnographic fieldwork in cultural anthropology: I Beginnings: Ethnographic fieldwork had been carried out in various guises and forms at the turn of the nineteenth century, but Bronislaw Malinowski is generally considered the "founding father" of extended, first-hand fieldwork in anthropology. II Fieldwork Identity: Self-reflection on research experiences has been more prominent in anthropology than in any other scholarly discipline. The long-term immersion in other societies and cultures , the status as foreigners and "others," the interactive research methods, and the nature of fieldwork as a professional rite of passage with often far-reaching effects on the self, have made fieldwork identity of great concern, and some authors argue that the anthropologist's identity has a deci­ sive influence on the data gathered. ill Fieldwork Relations and Rapport: The success of ethnographic fieldwork is in large measure determined by the ability to establish good rapport and develop meaningful relations with research participants. These relations range from friendship to hostility, and may be influenced by ethnicity, religion, class, gender, and age. IV The "Other" Talks Back: Access to schooling and the dissemination of anthropological writings have turned once illiterate "informants" into avid critics of their ethnographers. Such "talking back'' has made anthropologists aware of their

28

JEFFREY A. SLUKA AND ANTONIUS C. G. M. ROBBEN

conduct as researchers, led to soul-searching about their writings, and enhanced the quality of ethnographic research. V Fieldwork Conflicts, Hazards, and Dangers: Fieldwork is not free of tensions, dilemmas, conflicts, hazards, and dangers, and even lethal hostility. Awareness of such risks is of life-saving importance to students embarking on their first fieldwork experience, and research troubles, even failures, are a source of ethnographic knowl­ edge in themselves. VI Fieldwork Ethics: The relational nature of fieldwork addressed in Part Ill, the conflicts described in Part N, and the changing relation between anthropolo­ gists and their research participants referred to in Part V, have made contemporary fieldwork morally and ethically more complex. A grasp of the ethical implications of fieldwork is indispensable before students can develop their first research design. VII Multi-Sited Fieldwork: Long-term, face-to-face, empirical research in a small community has been the enduring hallmark of anthropological fieldwork. However, in the last decade, there has been an increase in multi-sited fieldwork because of a growing interdisciplinary interest among anthropologists and forces of globaliza­ tion which impinge on even the remotest community. Multi-sited fieldwork is not only concerned with different locales and migrants but also involves widely varying topics such as bodies, imaginary beings, the internet, and the scientific enterprise itself. VIII

Sensorial Fieldwork: Fieldwork is mostly based on verbal exchanges and

generally yields a written narrative of research results. However, attention to sight, sound, smell, and taste have also produced fascinating interpretations of culture. IX

Reflexive Ethnography: The ethnographic turn of the 1 9 70s heightened

anthropology's awareness of the epistemology of the fieldwork encounter. The ethnographer's crucial role in dialogic data collection gave her or him a central place in anthropological writings. Reflexivity has enriched fieldwork by making ethnog­ raphers pay much closer attention to the interactional processes through which knowledge is acquired, learned, and transmitted. X Fictive Fieldwork and Fieldwork Novels: Some anthropologists have been exploring literary styles to transmit their fieldwork experiences, thus blurring the boundaries between experience, impression, and emotion. Others have turned to poetry, experimental writing, and fiction to make readers share in the ethnographic encounter which makes fieldwork such a singular experience. With this introduction and structure in mind, welcome to the reader, and best wishes. for success in fieldwork.

Part I

Beginnings Antonius C. G. M. Robben

Since antiquity the Western world has been curious about other cultures. The exploits of the Greeks and Romans in Europe, Africa, and Asia yielded descriptions of subjected populations and sparked philosophical reflections about the nature of society and humankind. This interest declined after the fall of the Roman Empire. Europe entered the Dark Ages and was beset by political fragmentation, economic decline, and foreign invasions. The Renaissance brought a new elan with the emer­ -gence of strong states, flourishing arts, technological innovations, commercial expansion, and a desire for learning and knowledge. Portuguese explorers and traders, Spanish conquerors and missionaries, Dutch merchants and sailors, Euro­ pean slaves of the Ottoman Empire, English captives of Native Americans, and so forth described the strange customs and mores of the people they met. Their obser­ vations emphasized the exotic and were often random. The study of non-European cultures received tremendous impetus from the rise of a humanist philosophy which exalted the dignity of Man, emphasized that people are natural beings, and propagated the study of nature by scholars. From the six­ teenth century onward the more serious European students of foreign cultures had begun to call for the systematic collection of knowledge; a plea which had already been made in the fourteenth century by the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun (2005). Around the mid-eighteenth century, scientific expeditions which mapped the world's natural riches and legitimated imperialism were organized (see Honigmann 1 976, Malefijt 1976, Pratt 1992). Of the numerous instructions that were produced over the centuries, one particularly influential and even visionary example has been selected here. In 1800, the young French philosopher Joseph-Marie Degerando wrote a manual for a scientific expedition to Australia and South Asia led by Captain Baudin, entitled Considerations on the Various Methods to Follow in the Observa­ tion of Savage Peoples. These instructions served as a basis for the Genera/ Instruc­ tion to Travelers, published in 1840 by the Ethnological Society of Paris. This French guide, in turn, strongly influenced the 1841 British publication Queries respecting the Human Race to be addressed to travellers and others. The Queries developed in 1874 into the highly influential Notes and Queries on Anthropology which guided numerous generations of anthropologists through fieldwork (RAI 1951, Urry 1972}.

30

PART

1:

BEGINNINGS

Joseph-Marie Degerando, in the excerpt from The Observation of Savage Peoples (1969}, gives a critique of the travel accounts by explorers and proposes a systematic study of simple societies for the edification of humankind. Explorers must become philosophical travelers who use scientific methods to know other people. Degerando wants the Science of Man to follow in the footsteps of natural science by empha­ sizing observation, analysis, and comparison. Simple societies are ideal study objects, so he argued, because crucial properties can be more easily isolated than in complex societies. Simple societies represent the original human society, and thus reflect our own distant past. Comparison will then yield a detailed cultural evolu­ tion through which all societies need to pass from savagery to civilization. Seventy­ seven years later, the American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1985) believed he had discovered the principal stages of this development. The botanists, zoologists, geographers, and other natural scientists on Captain Baudin's mission may not have used Degerando's manual, but his instructions were to become the principal standards of ethnographic fieldwork one century later. Degerando found eight shortcomings in the descriptions and travelogues of the rest­ less explorers who were keener on discovering than carefully mapping new territo­ ries. His eight recommendations are remarkably current and, with some stretch of imagination, will therefore be presented here in today's anthropological terms. One, ethnographers must study all facets of a ·society in a contextualized way, instead of just focusing on a few individuals or ceremonies. Two, ethnographers must make first-hand observations, obtain representative samples, and not rely on secondary accounts. Three, observations must be made in a systematic, unbiased, and holistic way, and confirmed by informants. Four, conclusions must be based on thorough data collection and drawn inductively, not through deduction or analogy. Five, ethnographic accounts must approximate local meanings and understandings as closely as possible instead of being presented in Western cultural terms. Six, ethno­ graphers should not rely on first impressions but should immerse themselves in the host society. Seven, a thorough knowledge of the native language is indispensable for trustworthy observations and conclusions. Finally, ethnographers snould pay dose attention to the historical origins and development of simple societies by study­ ing their oral tradition. In sum, Joseph-Marie Degerando recommends that ethno­ graphers should conduct sustained research in the native language, establish rapport, use an ernie approach, and see society from the native's point of view. Unfortunately, Degerando's sound recommendations were neither heeded by Baudin's expedition nor by future travelers, who relied more on brief observations, as botanists would, than on learning the local language, asking local people about their culture, and becoming one of them. At best, they kept item lists which reaped what they sowed, providing nineteenth-century anthropologists with decontextual­ ized answers that allowed comparative analyses which would feed into preconceived evolutionary notions. They lacked the lived experience, cultural knowledge, and local understandings which fascinated later generations of anthropologists, and did not conduct the long-term, systematic ethnographic studies propagated by Joseph-Marie Degerando and implemented to varying degrees by Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski, the two most famous and influential forefathers of modern fieldwork. The German-born Franz Boas was neither the first American scholar to system­ atically study cultures, because Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Ely Parker, Patrick T. L.

INTRODUCTION

31

Putnam, and Lewis Henry Morgan had preceded him, nor was he America's first ethnographer, because Frank Hamilton Cushing had already conducted more than two years of fieldwork among the Zuni and Alice Fletcher was studying the Nez Perce (Marks 1989), but Boas was certainly the first American anthropologist to professionalize the awakening discipline, introduce an inductive analysis of culture , and instill ethnographic fieldwork as its principal research method. Boas held the first Chair in Anthropology, founded the first Department of Anthropology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, awarded the first PhD in anthropology at Clark, and trained the first generation of American anthropologists at Columbia University, including Alfred Kroeber, Margaret Mead, Robert Lowie, Ruth Bunzel, Edward Sapir, Paul Radin, and Ruth Benedict. As an ethnographer Boas is best remembered for his fieldwork among Native Americans in British Columbia, on the northwest coast of America (see Stocking 1974, 2001). The selected article "The Methods of Ethnology" (Boas 1920) is a frontal attack on the evolutionary and diffusionist approaches that dominated European anthro­ pology, and also influenced American scholars. Boas emphasizes the study of cul­ tural change through meticulous ethnographic fieldwork with great attention to detail, before trying to answer larger questions about the long-term development of cultures and societies. In this sense, he agrees with Degerando's instructions, but not with his assumptions about social evolution. Boas also raises doubts about the older evolutionary notion that culture is determined by psychological needs and the, at the time novel, psychoanalytic explanation of culture as repressing destructive , unconscious desires by channeling them into social institutions. The title of the article included here is somewhat deceptive, because Boas does not describe field­ work methods per se but rather the object and nature of anthropological data col­ lection. He makes three crucial points: (1) social and cultural phenomena are both cause and effect in a dynamic process of continuous change, (2) individuals shape and are shaped by their social environment, and (3) larger anthropological conclu­ sions must be reached through induction. The lasting contribution of Franz Boas to ethnographic fieldwork is his empha­ sis on the careful study of societies undergoing rapid change without reducing their cultures to evolutionary Iaws, psychological processes, or collections of traits acquired through migration and diffusion. His critique is epistemological rather than methodological because he is more concerned with the type of knowledge accept­ able to the scientific study of culture than with how to acquire that knowledge. Boas leaves ethnographers in the dark about the practice and process of fieldwork. It was the Polish expatriate Bronislaw Malinowski who advanced the methodology of ethnographic investigation through his research among the Trobrianders of Melane­ sia. He reconciled Boas's desire for rigorous, detailed, and contextualized data col­ lection with the earlier experience-rich accounts of explorers, missionaries, captives, and other amateur scribes of foreign culture, adding his own attention to local worldviews. Malinowski became thus the great synthesizer of ethnographic field­ work who deeply influenced twentieth-century anthropological research methods. , The excerpt "Method and Scope of Anthropological Fieldwork, , from , Malinowski s seminal 1922 ethnography Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An

Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (Malinowski 1984), is anthropology,s most classic and enduring statement about ethnographic fieldwork. Malinowski begins this expose by stating

32

PART

1:

BEGINNINGS

that even many years of residence among a population leave the untrained eye blind to local culture. Fieldworkers can accomplish much more in just a year, when they live among a population as one of them and pursue dear scientific objectives in a systematic, methodical, and active way. Malinowski hammers on the importance of separating the wheat from the chaff by delineating the laws, regularities, social con­ stitution, and ".firm skeleton" of cultural phenomena in a holistic manner. This approach covers all cultural domains, the ordinary as well as the quaint, and tech­ nology as much as religion and kinship. The anatomy of rules and regularities is not apparent in nonliterate tribal societies and therefore has to be formulated induc­ tively from observed behavior and actions. Still, the skeleton is bare without the flesh and blood of everyday reality, with its intimate social life and excitement of feasts, rituals, and ceremonies. An ethnographer must not be satisfied with describ­ ing the structural features of culture but must also have an eye for the "imponder­ abilia of actual life" discovered through dose presence and participation. Malinowski advocates participant observation as a crucial method to obtain such inside perspective. Flesh, blood, and bones are inanimate without a spirit, so ethno­ graphers must also study people's ideas, opinions, and worldviews. How people feel and think in their own language as members of their community is crucial to com­ plete the picture of the culture under study. According to Malinowski, anthropol­ ogy's overarching aim is "to grasp the · native's point of view, " to see their world and their relation to life through the eyes of the local population. Thus, Malinowski sets a high standard for ethnographic fieldwork that relies on in situ research in the native language and from the native's perspective, while gathering data on the struc­ ture, practice, and worldview of society in a holistic fashion (see also Firth 1 957; Young 1 979, 2004). With Malinowski, fieldwork had come of age and his students, including Raymond Firth, Edward Evans-Pritchard, Meyer Fortes, Audrey Richards, Lucy Mair, Gregory Bateson, Edmund Leach, Max Gluckman, Hortense Powdermaker, and many others fanned out across the world to write their own ethnographies based on long-term research. Malinowski's fieldwork method remained heg�monic in anthropology, a true rite of passage for aspiring anthropologists, until the 1 990s, when encompassing processes of globalization raised the call for multi-sited field­ work (see Part VII ) .

1

The Observation of Savage Peoples Joseph-Marie Degerando I

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These considerations are addressed to Captain BAUDIN, correspondent of the society, about to leave for his expedition of discovery, and to

those reflective needs that reason discloses to us; his aim is satisfaction, not perfection. He considers only his individual self; his species is nothing to him. Perhaps he fears that in pene­ trating the my steries of his being he will ensure

the·various observers accompanying him; they

his own abasement, blush at his discoveries,

are addressed also to Citizen LEVAILLANT,

and meet his conscience.

·who is going to attempt a third expedition in

True philosophy, always at one with moral

the interior of Africa. Since it is possible that

science, tells a different tale. The source of

both have occasion to encounter peoples at

useful illumination, we are told, like that of

very different degrees of civilization or bar­

lasting content, is in ourselves. Our insight

barity, it seems the right course to provide for

depends above all on the state of our faculties;

any hy pothesis, and to make these CONSID­

but how can we bring our faculties to perfec­

ERATIONS so general that they can be applied

tion if we do not know their nature and their

to any society differing in its moral and politi­

laws? The elements of happiness are the moral

cal forms from those of Europe. The lead­

sentiments; but how can we develop these

ing purpose has been to provide a complete

sentiments without considering the principle

framework comprising any point of view from

of our affections, and the means of directing

which these societies can be envisaged by the

them? We become better by studying our­

philosopher. It has not been supposed that

selves; the man who thoroughly knows himself

certain simple questions that can easily be fore­

is the wise man. Such reflection on the nature

seen should be omitted, when they were nec­

of his being brings a man to a better aware­

essary to the completeness of the whole.

ness of all the bonds that unite us to our

It seems astonishing that, in an age of

fellows, to the re-discovery at the inner root of

egoism, it is so difficult to persuade man that

his existence of that identity of common life

of aU studies, the most important is that of

actuating us all, to feeling the full force of that

himself. This is because egoism, like all pas­ sions, is blind . The attention of the egoist is

fine maxim of the ancients: 'I am a man, and nothing human is alien to me.'

directed to the immediate needs of which his

But what are the means of the proper study

senses give notice, and cannot be raised to

of man? Here the history of philosophy, and

Joseph-Marie Degerando, pp. 60-70, 101-4 from The Observation of Savage Peoples, trans. F. C. T. Moore (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969). ©F. C. T. Moore 1969. Originally published in French as Con­ siderations sur les methodes a suivre dans /'observation des Peuples Sauvages (1 800).

Importance of the study of Man in general.

34

JOSEPH-MARIE DEGERANDO

the common voice of learned men give reply. The time for systems is past. Weary of its cen­ turies of vain agitation in vain theories, the

institutions, these natural variations are bound to emerge much more prominently: being less distinguished by secondary circumstances, they must chiefly be so by the first and funda­

pursuit of learning has settled at last on the way of observation. It has recognized nature

mental circumstances belonging to the very

as its true master. All its art is applied in lis­

principle of existence. Here we shall be able to

tening carefully to that voice, and sometimes

find the material needed to construct an exact

in asking it questions. The Science of Man too

scale of the various degrees of civilization, and

is a natura] science, a science of observation,

to assign to each its characteristic properties;

the most ·noble of alL What science does not

we shall come to know what needs, what

aspire to be a natural science? Even art, which

ideas, what habits are produced in each era of

men sometimes contrast with nature, aims

human society. Here, since the development of

only to imitate her. The method of observation has a sure pro­

passions and of intellectual faculties is much more limited, it will be much easier for us to

cedure; it gathers facts to compare them, and

penetrate their nature, and determine their

compares them to know them better. The natural sciences are in a way no more than a

fundamental laws. Here, since different gener­

series of comparisons. As each particular phe­

ence on each other, we shall in a way be taken

nomenon is ordinarily the result of the com­

back to the first periods of our own history;

bined action of several causes, it would be only

we shall be able to set up secure experiments

a deep mystery for us if we considered it on its

on the origin and generation of ideas, on the

own: but if it is compared with analogous phe­

formation and development of language, and

nomena, they throw light each on the other.

on the relations between these two processes.

The particular action of each cause we see as distinct and independent, and general laws are

The philosophical traveller, sailing to the ends of the earth, is in fact travelling in time; he is

the result. Good observation requires analysis;

exploring the past; every step he makes is the

now, one carries out analysis in philosophy by

passage of an age. Those unknown islands that

comparisons, as in chemistry by the play of

he reaches are for him the cradle of human

chemical affinities.

society. Those peoples whom our ignorant

ations have exercised only the slightest influ­

Man, as he appears to us in the individuals

vanity scorns are displayed to him as ancient

around us, is modified at the same time by a

and majestic monuments of the origin of ages:

multitude of varying circumstances, by educa­

monuments infinitely more worthy of our

tion, climate, political institutions, customs,

admiration and respect than· ·those famous

established opinions, by the effects of imita­

pyramids vaunted by the banks of the Nile.

tion, by the influence of the factitious needs

They witness only the frivolous ambition and

that he has created. Among so many diverse

the passing power of some individuals whose

causes that unite to produce that great and

names have scarcely come down to us; but the

interesting effect, we can never disentangle the

others recreate for us the state of our own

precise action that belongs to each, without

ancestors, and the earliest history of the world.

finding terrms of comparison to isolate man

And even should we not see in savage

from the particular circumstances in which he

peoples a useful object of instruction for our­

is presented to us, and to lift from him those

selves, would there not be enough high feelings

adventitious forms under which, as it were, art

of philanthropy to make us give a high impor­

has hidden from our eyes the work of nature.

tance to the contact that we can make with

Of the Now, of all the terms of comparison that we observation can choose, there is none more fascinating, of savages In more fruitful in useful trains of thought than particular.

them? What more moving plan than that of re-establishing in such a way the august ties of universal society, of finding once more those

that offered by savage peoples. Here we can

former kinsmen separated by long exile from

remove first the variations pertaining to the

the rest of the common family, of offering a

climate, the organism, the habits of physical

hand to them to raise them to a happier state!

life, and we shall notice that among nations

You who, led by a generous devotion on those

much less developed by the effect of moral

far shores, will soon come near their lonely

THE OBSERVATION OF SAVAGE PEOPLES

up nr.

huts, go before them as the representatives of all humanity! Give them in that name the vow of brotherly alliance! Wipe from their minds the memory of cruel adventurers who sought to stay with them only to rob or bring them into slavery; go to them only to offer benefits. Bring them our arts, and not our corruption, the standard of our morality, and not the example of our vices, our sciences, and not our scepticism, the advantages of civilization, and not its abuses; conceal from them that in these countries too, though more enlightened, men destroy each other in combat, and degrade each other by their passions. Sitting near them, amid their lonely forests and on their unknown shores, speak to them only of peace, of unity, of useful work; tell them that, in those empires unknown to them, that you have left to visit them, there are men who pray for their happineSs, who greet them as brothers, and who join with all their hearts in the generous intentions which lead you among them. In expressing here everything that we expect �f your careful and laborious work, we are far from wishing to underestimate the many ser­ vices done to society by the explorers who have gone before you. Had they merely prepared the way, by their brave undertakings, for those who were to follow them, and provided valuable guidance, by that alone they would have earned a great title to our gratitude. But they began to establish some communication with savage societies; they have reported to us various information on the customs and language of these peoples. It is merely that, divided by other concerns, and with a greater impetus to discover new countries than to study them, constantly moving when they should have stayed at rest, biased perhaps by those unjust prejudices that cast a slur in our eyes on savage societies, or at least, witness of our European indifference for them, they did not sufficiently devote themselves to bringing back exact and complete observations; they have met the invariable end of those who observe in a precipitate and superficial manner - their observations have been poor, and the imperfection of their reports has been the penalty of our carelessness.1 Since man's curi­ osity is aroused more by the novelties that strike his senses than by any instruction that his reason may gather, it was thought far more

35

worth while to bring back from these countries plants, animals and mineral substances, than observations on the phenomena of thought. So naturalists daily enriched their specimen cases with many genera, while philosophers spent time in vain disputes in their schools about the nature of man, instead of uniting to study him in the arena of the universe. Let us review the main faults of the obser­ vations on savage man made by these explor­ ers, and the gaps that they have left in their accounts. When we realize what they have not done, we shall see better what remains to be done. The first fault that we notice in the observations of explorers on savages is their incom­ pleteness; it was only to be expected, given the shortness of their stay, the division of their attention, and the absence of any regular tabulation of their findings. Sometimes, confining themselves to the study of some isolated individuals, they have given us no information on their social condition, and have thus deprived us of the means of estimating the influence which these social relations might have on individual faculties. Sometimes, pausing on the smallest details of the physical life of the savages, they have given us scarcely any details of their moral customs. Sometimes, describing the customs of grown men, they have failed to find out about the kind of education received in childhood and youth: and above all, preoccupied almost entirely with the external and overt characteristics of a people, of its ceremonies and of its dress, they have generally taken too little care to be initiated in the far more important circumstances of its theoretical life, of its needs, its ideas, its passions, its knowledge, its laws. They have described forms rather than given instructive reports; they have marked certain effects, and explained scarcely any causes. Further, such insufficient observations have not always been very certain or authentic, whether because they have sometimes been roo particular, and explorers have wished to judge a society by a few of its members, a character by a few actions, or because they have sometimes confined themselves to hearsay, to the stories of the Savages whom they met, and who perhaps were not properly understood, perhaps not welJ-versed in what was asked�

Fir.;r fault.

Set:ond f3 ulr.

36

Third fault.

Fourth fault.

Fihh fault.

JOSEPH-MARIE DEG�RANDO

and perhaps had no interest in telling the truth, or at least in making it known in its entirety. We should add that these observations have been badly ordered, and even in many cases quite without order. The explorers had not enough understood that there is a natural con­ nection between the various facts that one gathers about the condition and character of societies, that this order is necessary to the pre­ cision of the individual facts, and that often some of them should serve as preparation for the others. We should study effects before trying to go back to first principles; observe individuals before trying to j udge the society; become acquainted with domestic relations inside families before examining the political relations of society; and above all we should aim at full mutual understanding when we speak to men before basing certain conclusions on the accounts that we claim to have received. Often explorers have based the accounts that they bring us on incorrect or at least on dubious hypotheses. For example, they habit­ ually judge the customs of Savages by analo­ gies drawn from our own customs, when in fact they are so little related to each other. Thus, given certain actions, they suppose certain opinions or needs because among us such actions ordinarily result from these needs or opinions. They make the Savage reason as we do, when the Savage does not himself explain to them his reasoning. So they often pronounce excessively severe judgments on a society accused of cruelty, theft, licentiousness, and atheism. It were wiser to gather a large number of facts, before trying to explain them, and to allow hypothesis only after exhausting the light of experience. In the case of the accounts of explorers there is another cause of uncertainty, a fault of lan­ guage rather than of imperfect observation, namely that the terms used to pass on to us the results of their observations are often in our own language of vague and ill-determined meaning. Consequently, we are in danger of taking their accounts in a way which they did not intend. This happens particularly when they try to record the religious, moral, and political beliefs of a people. It happens too when instead of giving a detailed and cir­ cumstantial account of what they have actu­ ally seen, they limit themselves to summary

descriptions of the impressions which they received, and of the general judgments which they inferred on the character of peoples. Yet this drawback could easily have been avoided by making it a policy either to describe things without judging them, or to choose expres­ sions whose sense is more agreed, or to give a precise stipulation of the sense in which one intends their use. This is not the place to enumerate the inac­ curacies springing from a lack of impartiality in explorers, from prejudices imposed by their particular opinions, from the interests of vanity or the impulse of resentment. The char­ acter of the worthy men today devoting them­ selves to this noble undertaking is a sufficient guarantee that such a stamp will never shape their accounts. But explorers with the purest and most honest intentions have often been led into error about the character of peoples by the behaviour they meet with. They have inferred too lightly from the circumstances of their reception, conclusions about the absolute and ordinary character of the men among whom they have penetrated. They have failed to con­ sider sufficiently that their presence was bound to be a natural source of fear, defiance, and reserve; that reasons of policy might exag­ gerate this unusual circumspection; that the memory of former attacks might have left dark prejudices in the mind of such peoples; that a community might be gentle and sociable, and yet believe itself in a state of natural war with strangers whose intentions are unknown; and finally that for a just estimate of the character of a tribe, one should first leave time for the reactions of astonishment, terror, and anxiety bound to arise in the beginning to be dispelled, and secondly one should be able to be initiated into the ordinary relations which the members of the community have with each other. But of all the regrets left by the accounts of the explorers who went before you, the strongest is their failure to tell us of the lan­ guage of the peoples visited. In the first place, the scanty information which they do give lacks precision and exactness, whether because they fail to record how they went about ques­ tioning the Savages, or because they them­ selv-es have often taken little care to pose the questions properly. The demonstrative and natural gestures which they have used to ask

Sl� fault

faub

THE - OBSERVATION OF SAVAGE PEOPLES

. ighth ult.

the Savages the names of objects were often themselves liable to considerable uncertainty; one cannot know if those who were ques­ tioned understood the gestures in the same way as the explorers who were using them, and so whether they were giving proper replies to their questions. Further, to provide us with some useful and positive ideas of the idioms of savage peoples, it was wrong for explorers to limit themselves as they did to taking at random names of various objects with scarcely any relation between them; at least a family of analogous ideas should have been followed up, when it was impossible to make a record of the whole language, so that some judgment could be made on the generation of terms, and on the relations between them; it was not enough to be content with some detached words; but it would have been sensible to record whole sentences to give some idea of the construction of discourse. Further, one should have discovered whether these words were simple, or composite, as their length would often lead us to suppose; whether they were qualified by any articles or particles; and finally whether they were inflected or remained in the absolute, and whether they were liable to any kind of grammatical laws. Failing to acquaint themselves thoroughly with the idiom of savage peoples, explorers have been powerless to draw on perhaps the most interesting ideas that could have been available. They have been unable to pass on the traditions that such peoples may preserve of their origin, of the changes that they have undergone, and of the various details of their history; traditions which perhaps would have thrown great light on the important question of how the world was peopled, and on the various causes of the present state of these societies. They have been unable to explain the significance of a mass of ceremonies and customs which are probably no more than alle­ gorical; they have given us bizarre descriptions which tickle the idle curiosity of the many, but which offer no useful instruction to the philo­ sophically minded. Lacking the means to carry on connected conversation with such peoples, they have been able to form only very haz­ ardous and vague ideas of their opinions and notions; finally, they have been unable to provide us with these data, as revealing as they

37

are abundant, that the langu.age of a society presents on its way of seeing and feeling, and on the most intimate and essential features of its character. The main object, therefore, that should today occupy the attention and zeal of a truly philosophical traveller would be the careful gathering of all means that might assist him to penetrate the thought of the peoples among whom he would be situated, and to account for the order of their actions and relationships. This is not only because such study is in itself the most important of all, it is also because it must stand as a necessary preliminary and introduction to all the others. It is a delusion to suppose that one can properly observe a people whom one cannot understand and with whom one cannot converse. The first means to the proper knowledge of the Savages, is to become after a fashion like one of them; and it is by learning their language that we shall become their fellow citizens. But if there is a marked lack of good methods even for learning well the languages of neighbouring civilized nations; if this study often requires much time and effort, what position shall we be in for learning the idioms of savage tribes, when there is no dictionary, no spokesman to translate to us, and no shared habits and common associations of ideas as in the case of the former languages, through which explanations can be made? Let us not hesitate to say that the art of properly study­ ing these languages, if it could be reduced to rules, would be one of the master-works of philosophy; it can be the result only of long meditation on the origin of ideas. We shall confine ourselves here to making some general remarks; the reflective thought of the enlight­ ened men to whom we address them will assure their development, and direct their application. The most important thing to observe in the study of the signs of Savages, is the order of the enquiry. [. . . ] We are aware that the totality of problems here posed for the explorer's wisdom calls for a huge amount of work, whether because of the number and the very importance of the questions, or the detailed and painstaking observations that each one demands. We are

Observauom ro make. I S•gns of rhe Savages.

Conclusion.

38

JOSEPH-MARIE DEGERANDO

aware that this work is surrounded by all kinds of difficulties, and that one must expect to meet great obstacles in the first relations that one wishes to establish with the Savages. For these peoples cannot penetrate the real intentions of those who approach them, they cannot easily distinguish their friends from their enemies, and those who bring help, from those who come to invade their territory. But we may rightly expect anything of the

are perhaps penetrating to the heart of a new people, perhaps they are resting in the shade of antique forests from their long sufferings; perhaps they are beginning to enter into rela­ tions with a barbarous people, to eliminate its unsociable suspicions, to inspire in it a curios­ ity to know our ways and a desire to imitate them, and perhaps they are laying the founda­ tions of a new Europe.' Oh! who will tell in fact all the possible or probable results which may spring one day from these fine undertak­

patience, the perseverance, and the heroic courage of the travellers to whom today we bid

ings? I speak here not only of our fuller spec­

farewell; we are assured of it by their personal

imen cases, our more accurate and extensive

character, by the intentions animating them, by the dazzling proofs which they have already

ical and moral history of the world, of the

vouchsafed. Oh! What have they not already

name of France taken to unknown shores!

done for science, what noble course have they

Think of the other bewitching prospects still

not already run! It was worthy of them still to

offered to the reeling imagination!

defer its term, and to go on to complete so fine a work! Estimable men, as we salute you here

extended by new relations; the navy brought

on the eve of a departure soon to come, as we

neys made easier by discoveries; our political

see you tear yourselves from your land, your

grandeur increased by new colonies or new

family, and your friends, and leap beyond the

alliances! Who can tell? Perhaps whole nations

limits of the civilized world; as we dwell on

civilized, receiving from civilization the power

the thought of the fatigues, the privations and

to multiply themselves, and associate them­

the dangers which await you, and of that long

selves with us by the ties of a vast confedera­

exile to which you have voluntarily con­

tion; perhaps broader and more useful careers

demned yourselves, our souls cannot resist a

open to human ambition, talent and industry;

deep emotion, and the movement of sensibil­

these peoples of Europe, daily contesting at

ity in us is joined to the respect which we owe

the cost of their blood some narrow strip of

to so noble an undertaking. But our thought is

land, expanding at pleasure in more beautiful

settled in advance on the term of that under­

terrain; perhaps a new world forming itself at

taking; and dwelling on this prospect, all our

the extremities of the earth; the whole globe

feelings are mixed in that of admiration and

covered with happier and wiser inhabitants,

enthusiasm. lllustrious messengers of philoso­

more equally provided for, more closely joined,

phy, peaceful heroes, the conquests which you are going to add to the domain of science have

society raising itself to more rapid progress by

more brilliance and value in our eyes than vic­

these unexpected changes that perfection on

tories bought by the blood of men! All gener­

which our prayers call, but to which our

ous hearts, all friends of humanity join in your

enlightenment, our methods, and our books,

sublime mission; there is in this place more

contribute so little! ...Vain chimerae perhaps;

than one heart which envies you, which groans

but chimerae to which our long unhappiness,

in secret that inflexible duties keep him on

our sad dissensions, and the sight of our cor­

these shores, who would put his glory in

ruption, yet give so much charm! ...At least

following your path and your example. Our

it is certain that these

prayers at least will follow you across the Ocean, or in the lap of the desert; our thoughts

directed to the most obscure parts of the

maps, of our increased knowledge of the phys­

to perfection

Trade

by greater experience; jour­

greater competition and reaching perhaps by

brave enterprises,

Universe, lay up for posterity a new future,

will often be with you, when below the equa­ tor, or near the pole, you gather in silence pre­

descendants to gather the abundant fruits of

cious treasures for enlightenment.We shall say

this· course that you are going to open. See

to each other: 'On this day, at this hour, they

how

are landing perhaps on an unknown land, they

changed the face of society, and what amazing

and that it is only for the wisdom of our

much

the

discoveries

of

Columbus

THE OBSERVATION OF SAVAGE PEOPLES

39

destinies bore that fragile vessel to which he

aspire only to the good of all, to the glory of

trusted himself! It is true, this grand revolution

being of use! This glory, the sweetest, the

has not all been to our advantage, still less to

truest, or rather the only true glory, awaits

that of the peoples to whom it has given us

you, encompasses you already; you will know

access. But Columbus put in the New World

all its brilliance on that day of triumph and joy

only greedy conquerors; and you are proceed­

on which, returning to your country, wel­

ing towards the peoples of the South only as pacifiers and friends. The cruel adventurers of

comed amid our delight, you will arrive in our walls, loaded with the most precious spoils,

Spain brought only destruction before them,

and bearers of happy tidings of our brothers

and you will spread only good deeds. They

scattered in the uttermost confines of the

served but the passions of a few men, and you

Universe.

2

The Methods of Ethnology Franz Boas

During the last ten years the methods of inquiry into the historical development of civ­ ilization have undergone remarkable changes.

peoples. This idea is clearly expressed by Tylor in the introductory pages of his classic work "Primitive Culture." As soon as we admit that the hypothesis of a uniform evolution has to

During the second half of the last century evo­ lutionary thought held almost complete sway

be proved before it can be accepted, the whole

and investigators like Spencer, Morgan, Tylor,

structure loses its foundation. It is true that

Lubbock, to mention only a few, were under

there are indications of parallelism of devel­

the spell of the idea of a general, uniform evo­

opment in different parts of the world, and

lution of culture in which all parts of mankind

that similar customs are found in the most

participated. The newer development goes

diverse and widely separated parts of the

back in part to the influence of Ratzel whose

globe. The occurrence of these similarities

geographical training impressed him with the

which are distributed so irregularly that they

importance of diffusion and migration. The

cannot readily be explained on the basis of dif­

problem of diffusion was taken up in detail

fusion, is one of the foundations of the evolu­

particularly in America� but was applied in a

tionary hypothesis, as it was the foundation of

much wider sense by Foy and Graebner, and

Bastian's psychologizing treatment of cultural

finally seized upon in a still wider application

phenomena. On the other hand, it may be

by EUiot Smith and Rivers, so that at the

recognized that the hypothesis implies the

present time, at least among certain groups of

thought that our modern Western European

investigators in England and also jn Germany,

civilization represents

ethnological research is based on the concept

development towards which all other more

of migration and dissemination rather than

primitive cultural types tend, and that, there­

upon that of evolution.

fore, retrospectively, we construct an ortho­

the

highest

cultural

A critical study of these two directions of

genetic development towards our own modern

inquiry shows that each is founded on the

civilization. It is clear that if we admit that

application of one fundamental hypothesis.

there may be different ultimate and coexisting

The evolutionary point of view presupposes that the course of historical changes in the cul­ tural life of mankind follows definite laws

types of civilization, the hypothesis of one single general line of development cannot be maintained.

which are applicable everywhere, and which

Opposed to these assumptions is the modem

bring it about that cultural development is, in

tendency to deny the existence of a general

its main Jines, the same among all races and all

evolutionary scheme which would represent

Franz Boas, "The Methods of Ethnology,"

pp.

3 1 1-21 from American Anthropologist 22:4 (Oct.-Dec., 1920).

THE METHODS OF ETHNOLOGY the history of the cultural development the world over. The hypothesis that there are inner causes which bring about similarities of devel­ opment in remote parts of the globe is rejected and in its place it is assumed that identity of development in two different parts of the globe must always be due to migration and diffusion. On this basis historical contact is demanded for

enormously

large

areas.

The

theory

demands a high degree of stability of cultural traits such as is apparently observed in many primitive tribes, and it is furthermore based on the supposed correlation between a number of diverse and mutually independent cultural traits which reappear in the same combina­ tions in distant parts of the world. In this sense, modern investigation takes up anew

41

Verworn and, in his earlier writings, by von den Steinen.While I do not mean to deny that this development may have occurred, it would be rash to generalize and to claim that in every case the classification which has been made according to a definite principle represents an historical development. The order might as well be reversed and we might begin with a simple geometric element which, by the addi­ tion of new traits, might be developed into a representative design, and we might claim that this order represents an historical sequence. Both of these possibilities were considered by Holmes as early as 1885. Neither the one nor the other theory can be established without actual historical proof. The

opposite

attitude,

namely,

ortgm

a

through diffusion, is exhibited in Heinrich

number of cultural traits which were devel­

Schurtz's attempt to connect the decorative art

oped in one center and carried by man in his

of Northwest America with that of Melanesia.

migrations from continent to continent.

The simple fact that in these areas elements

Gerland's

theory

of

the

persistence of

It seems to me that if the hypothetical foun­

occur that may be interpreted as eyes, induced

dations of these two extreme forms of ethno­

him to assume that both have a common

logical research are broadly stated as I have

origin, without allowing for the possibility

tried to do here, it is at once clear that the cor­

that the pattern in the two areas - each of

rectness of the assumptions has nor been

which shows highly distinctive characteristics

demonstrated, but that arbitrarily the one or

- may

the other has been selected for the purpose of

sources. In this

obtaining a consistent picture of cultural devel­

Ratzel who had already tried to establish con­

opment. These methods are essentially forms

nections between Melanesia and Northwest

of classification of the static phenomena of

America on the basis of other cultural features.

culture according to two distinct principles,

While ethnographical research based on

and interpretations of these classifications as of

these two fundamental hypotheses seems to

historical significance, without, however, any attempt to prove that this interpretation is jus­

characterize the general tendency of European thought, a different method is at present

tifiable. To give an example: It is observed that

pursued by the majority of American anthro­

in most parts of the world there are resem­ blances between decorative forms that are rep­

pologists. The difference between the two

resentative and others that are more or less

marized by the statement that American schol­

have developed

from

independent

attempt Schurtz followed

directions of study may perhaps best be sum­

geometrical. According to the evolutionary

ars are primarily interested in the dynamic

point of view, their development is explained in the following manner: the decorative forms

phenomena of cultural change, and try to elu­ cidate cultural history by the application of the

are arranged in such order that the most rep­

results of their studies; and that they relegate

resentative forms are placed at the beginning.

the solution of the ultimate question of the

The other forms are so placed that they show a gradual transition from representative forms to purely conventional geometric forms, and this order is then interpreted as meaning that geometric designs originated from representa­ tive designs which gradually degenerated.This method has been pursued, for instance, by Putnam, Stolpe, Balfour, and Haddon, and by

relative importance of parallelism of cultural development in distant areas, as against world­ wide diffusion, and stability of cultural traits over long periods to a future time when the actual conditions of cultural change are better known. The American ethnological methods are analogous to those of European, particu­ larly of Scandinavian, archaeology, and of the

42

FRANZ BOAS

researches into the prehistoric period of the eastern Mediterranean area. It may seem to the distant observer that American students are engaged in a mass of detailed investigations without much bearing upon the solution of the ultimate problems of a philosophic history of human civilization. I think this interpretation of the American atti­ tude wo�d be unjust because the ultimate questions are as near to our hearts as they are to those of other scholars, only we do not hope to be able to solve an intricate historical problem by a formula. First of all, the whole problem of cultural history appears to us as a historical problem. In order to understand history it is necessary to know not only how things are, but how they have come to be. In the domain of ethnology, where, for most parts of the world, no histor­ ical facts are available except those that may be revealed by archaeological study, all evi- . dence of change can be inferred only by indi­ rect methods. Their character is represented in the researches of students of comparative philology. The method is based on the com­ parison of static phenomena combined with the study of their distribution. What can be done by this method is well illustrated by Dr Lowie's investigations of the military societies of the Plains Indians, or by the modern inves­ tigation of American mythology. It is, of course, true that we can never hope to obtain incontrovertible data relating to the chrono­ logical sequence of events, but certain general broad outlines can be ascertained with a high degree of probability, even of certainty. As soon as these methods are applied, prim­ itive society loses the appearance of absolute stability which is conveyed to the student who sees a certain people only at a certain given time. All cultural forms rather appear in a con­ stant state of flux and subject to fundamental modifications. It is intelligible why in our studies the problem of dissemination should take a promi­ nent position. It is much easier to prove dis­ semination than to follow up developments due to inner forces, and the data for such a study are obtained with much greater diffi­ culty. They may, however, be observed in every phenomenon of acculturation in which foreign elements are remodeled according to the pat-

terns prevalent in their new environment, and they may be found in the peculiar local devel­ opments of widely spread ideas and activities. The reason why the study of inner develop­ ment has not been taken up energetically, is not due to the fact that from a theoretical point of view it is unimportant, it is rather due to the inherent methodological difficulties. It may perhaps be recognized that in recent years attention is being drawn to this problem, as is manifested by the investigations on the processes of acculturation and of the inter­ dependence of cultural activities which are attracting the attention of many investigators. The further pursuit of these inquiries emphasizes the importance of a feature which is common to all historic phenomena. While in natural sciences we are accustomed to consider a given number of causes and to study their effects, in historical happenings we are com­ pelled to consider every phenomenon not only as effect but also as cause. This is true even in the particular application of the laws of phys­ ical nature, as, for instance, in the study of astronomy in which the position of certain heavenly bodies at a given moment may be considered as the effect of gravitation, while, at the same time, their particular arrangement in space determines future changes. This rela­ tion appears much more clearly in the history of human civilization. To give an example: a surplus of food supply is liable �o bring about an increase of population and an increase of leisure, which gives opportunity for occupa­ tions that are not absolutely necessary for the needs of every day life. In turn the increase of population and of leisure, which may be applied to new inventions, give rise to a greater food supply and to a further increase in the amount of leisure, so that a cumulative effect results. Similar considerations may be made in regard to the important problem of the rela­ tion of the individual to society, a problem that has to be considered whenever we study the dynamic conditions of change. The activities of the individual are determined to a great extent by his social environment, but in turn his own a<:!ivities influence the society in which he lives, and may bring about modifications in its form. Obviously, this problem is one of the most important ones to be taken up in a study

- THE METHODS OF ETHNOLOGY of cultural changes. It is also beginning to attract the attention of students who are no longer satisfied with the systematic enumera­ tion of standardized beliefs and customs of a tribe, but who begin to be interested in the question of the way in which the individual reacts to his whole social environment, and to the differences of opinion and of mode of action that occur in primitive society and which are the causes of far-reaching changes. In short then, the method which we try to develop is based on a study of the dynamic changes in society that may be observed at the present time. We refrain from the attempt to solve the fundamental problem of the general

43

deep influence which Spanish ideas have had upon Zuni culture, and, together with Pro­ fessor Kroeber's investigations, give us one of the best examples of acculturation that have come to our notice. The psychological expla­ nation is entirely misleading, notwithstanding its plausibility, and the historical study shows us an entirely different picture, in which the unique combination of ancient traits (which in themselves are undoubtedly complex) and of European influences, have brought about the present condition. Studies of the dynamics of primitive life also show that an assumption of long continued stability such as is demanded by Elliot Smith

development of civilization until we have been able to unravel the processes that are going on

is without any foundation in fact. Wherever primitive conditions have been studied in

under our eyes.

detail, they can be proved to be in a state of

Certain general conclusions may be drawn

flux, and it would seem that there is a close

from this study even now. First of all, the

parallelism between the history of language

history of human civilization does not appear

and the history of general cultural develop­

to us as determined entirely by psychological

ment. Periods of stability are followed by

necessity that leads to a uniform evolution the

periods of rapid change. It is exceedingly

world over. We rather see that each cultural

improbable that any customs of primitive

group has its own unique history, dependent

people should be preserved unchanged for

partly upon the peculiar inner development of

thousands of years. Furthermore, the phenom­

the social group, and partly upon the foreign

ena of acculturation prove that a transfer of

influences to which it has been subjected.

customs from one region into another without

There have been processes of gradual differen­

concomitant changes due to acculturation,

tiation as well as processes of leveling down

are very rare. It is, therefore, very unlikely

differences

that ancient Mediterranean customs could

between

neighboring

cultural

centers, but it would be quite impossible to

be found

understand, on the basis of a single evolution­

unchanged in different parts of the globe, as

ary scheme, what happened to any particular

Elliot Smith's theory demands.

at the

present

time practically

people. An example of the contrast between

While on the whole the unique historical

the two points of view is clearly indicated by

character of cultural growth in each area

a comparison of the treatment of Zuni civi­

stands out as a salient element in the history

lization by Frank Hamilton Cushing on the

of cultural development, we may recognize at

one hand, on the other by modern students,

the same time that certain typical parallelisms

particularly by Elsie Clews Parsons, A. L.

do occur. We are, however, not so much

Kroeber and Leslie Spier.Cushing believed that

inclined

it was possible to explain Zuni culture entirely

detailed customs but rather in certain dynamic

on the basis of the reaction of the Zuni mind

conditions which are due to social or psycho­

to its geographical environment, and that the whole of Zuni culture could be explained as the development which followed necessarily

to look

for

these similarities

in

logical causes that are liable to lead to similar results. The example of the relation between food supply and population to which I referred

from the position in which the people were

before may serve as an example. Another type

placed. Cushing's keen insight into the Indian

of example is presented in those cases in which

mind and his thorough knowledge of the most intimate life of the people gave great plausi­

solved by a limited number of methods only.

bility to his interpretations. On the other hand, Dr Parsons' studies prove conclusively the

a certain problem confronting man may be When we find, for instance, marriage as a uni­ versal institution, it may be recognized that

FRANZ BOAS

44

marriage is possible only between a number of men and a number of women; a number of men and one woman; a number of women and one man; or one man and one woman. As a matter of fact, all these forms are found the world over and it is, therefore, not surprising that

analogous

forms

should

have

been

adopted quite independently in different parts

appears, perhaps, most clearly in the history of science which has gradually extended the scope of its inquiry over an ever-widening field and

which

has

raised

into

consciousness

human activities that are automatically per­ formed in the life of the individual and of society. I have not heretofore referred to another

of the world, and, considering both the general

aspect of modern ethnology which is con­

economic conditions of mankind and the char­ acter of sexual instinct in the higher animals,

Sigmund Freud has attempted to show that

it also does not seem surprising that group marriage and polyandrous marriages should be comparatively speaking rare. Similar con­ siderations may also be made in regard to the

nected with the growth of psycho-analysis. primitive thought is in many respects analo­ gous to those forms of individual psychic activity which he has explored by his psycho­ analytical

methods. In

many respects his

philosophical views held by mankind.In short,

attempts are similar to the interpretation of

if we look for laws, the laws relate to the

mythology by symbolists like Stucken. Rivers

effects of physiological, psychological, and social conditions, not to sequences of cultural

has taken hold of Freud's suggestion as well as

achievement.

Smith, and we find, therefore, in his new writ­

of the interpretations of Graebner and Elliot

In some cases a regular sequence of these

ings a peculiar disconnected application of a

may accompany the development of the psy­

psychologizing attitude and the application of

chological or social status. This is illustrated

the theory of ancient transmission.

by the sequence of industrial inventions in the

While I believe some of the ideas underlying

Old World and in America, which I consider

Freud's psycho-analytic studies may be fruit­

as independent. A period of food gathering

fully applied to ethnological problems, it does

and of the use of stone was followed by the

not seem to me that the one-sided exploitation

invention of agriculture, of pottery and finally

of this method will advance our understanding

of the use of metals. Obviously, this order is

of the development of human society. It is cer­

based on the increased amount of time given

tainly true that the influence of impressions

by mankind to the use of natural products, of

received during the first few years of life have

tools and utensils, and to the variations that

been entirely underestimated and that the

developed with it. Although in this case paral­

social behavior of man depends to a great

lelism seems to exist on the two continents, it

extent upon the earliest habits which are estab­

would be futile to try to follow out the order

lished before the time when connected memory

in detail . As a matter of fact, it does not apply

begins, and that many so-called racial or

to other inventions. The domestication of

hereditary traits are to be considered rather as

animals, which, in the Old World must have

a result of early exposure to a certain form of

been an early achievement, was very late in the

social conditions. Most of these habits do not

New World, where domesticated animals, except the dog, hardly existed at all at the time

rise into consciousness and are, therefore,

of discovery.A slight beginning had been made

ference in the behavior of adult male and

in Peru with the domestication of the llama,

female may go back to this cause. If, however,

and birds were kept in various parts of the

we try to apply the whole theory of the influ­

continent. A similar consideration may be made in

ence of suppressed desires to the activities of

regard to the development of rationalism. It seems to be one of the fundamental character­

we extend beyond their legitimate limits the

istics of the development of mankind that activities which have developed unconsciously

vation of normal and abnormal individual psy­

are gradually made the subject of reasoning. We may observe this process everywhere. It

broken with difficulty only. Much of the dif­

man living under different social forms, I think inferences that may be drawn from the obser­ chology. Many other factors are of greater importance. To give an example: The phe­ nomena of language show clearly that condi-

- !HE METHODS OF ETHNOLOGY

45

tions quite different from those to which

The theologians who interpreted the Bible on

psycho-analysts direct their attention deter­

the basis of religious symbolism were no less

mine the mental behavior of man.The general concepts underlying language are entirely

certain of the correctness of their views, than

unknown to most people.They do not rise into

of thought and conduct based on sexual sym­

consciousness until

the scientific study of

bolism. The results of a symbolic interpreta­

grammar begins. Nevertheless, the categories

tion depend primarily upon the subjective

of language compel us to see the world arranged in certain definite conceptual groups

attitude of the investigator who arranges phe­

which, on account of our lack of knowledge of linguistic processes, are taken as objective

order to prove the applicability of the symbol­ ism of psycho-analysis, it would be necessary

categories and which, therefore, impose them­

to show that a symbolic interpretation from

selves upon the form of our thoughts. It is not

other entirely different points of view would

known what the origin of these categories may

not be equally plausible, and that explanations

be, but it seems quite certain that they have

that leave out symbolic significance or reduce

nothing to do with the phenomena which are

it to a minimum, would not be adequate.

the subject of psycho-analytic study.

the psycho-analysts are of their interpretations

nomena according to his leading concept. In

While, therefore, we may welcome the

est doubt. We should remember that symbolic

application of every advance in the method of psychological investigation, we cannot accept as an advance in ethnological method the

interpretation has occupied a prominent posi­

crude transfer of a novel, one-sided method of

tion in the philosophy of all times. It is present

psychological investigation of the individual to

not only in primitive life, but the history of

social phenomena the origin of which can be

philosophy and of theology abounds in exam-

shown to be historically determined and to be

. pies of a high development of symbolism, the

subject to influences that are not at all com­

type of which depends upon the general mental

parable to those that control the psychology of

The applicability

of the psycho-analytic

theory of symbolism is also open to the great­

attitude of the philosopher who develops it.

the individual.

3

Method and Scope of Anthropological Fieldwork Bronislaw Malinowski Imagine yourself then, making your first

[. . 1 .

entry into the village, alone or in company with your white cicerone. Some natives flock

Ill

round you, especially if they smell tobacco. Others, the more dignified and elderly, remain

Imagine

yourself

suddenly set

down

sur­

seated where they are. Your white companion

rounded by all your gear, alone on a tropical

has his routine way of treating the natives, and

beach close to a native village, while the launch

he neither understands, nor is very much con­

or dinghy which has brought you sails away

cerned with the manner in which you, as an

out of sight. Since you take up your abode in

ethnographer, will have to approach them. The

the compound of some neighbouring white

first visit leaves you with a hopeful feeling that

man, trader or missionary, you have nothing

when you return alone, things will be easier.

to do, but to start at once on your ethno­

Such was my hope at least.

graphic work. Imagine further that you are a

I came back duly, and soon gathered an

beginner, without previous experience, with

audience around me. A few cqmpliments in

nothing to guide you and no one to help you.

pidgin-English on both sides, some tobacco

For the white man is temporarily absent, or

changing hands, induced an atmosphere of

else unable or unwilling to waste any of his

mutual amiability. I tried then to proceed to

time on you. This exactly describes my first ini­

business. First, to begin with subjects which

tiation into fieldwork on the south coast of

might arouse no suspicion, I started to "do"

New Guinea. I well remember the long visits I paid to the villages during the first weeks; the feeling of liopelessness and despair after many obstinate but futile attempts had entirely failed

technology. A few natives were engaged in manufacturing some object or other. It was easy to look at it and obtain the names of the tools, and even some technical expressions

to bring me into real touch with the natives, or supply me with any material. I had periods

about the proceedings, but there the matter

of despondency, when I buried myself in the

English is a very imperfect instrument for

reading of novels, as a man might take to drink in a fit of tropical depression and boredom.

ended. It must be borne in mind that pidgin­ expressing one's ideas, and that before one gets a good training in framing questions and

Bronislaw Malinowski, pp. 4-25 from Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Western Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Mela11esiatr New Guit�ea (Prospect Heights, lL: Waveland Press, 1984 [ 1 922)).

METHOD AND SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL FIELDWORK

understanding answers one has the uncom­ fortable feeling that free communication in it with the natives will never be attained; and I was quite unable to enter into any more detailed or explicit conversation with them at first. I knew well that the best remedy for this was to collect concrete data, and accordingly I took a village census, wrote down genealo­ gies, drew up plans and collected the terms of kinship. But all this remained dead material, which led no further into the understanding of real native mentality or behaviour, since I could neither procure a good native interpre­ tation of any of these items, nor get what could be called the hang of tribal life. As to obtain­ ing their ideas about religion, and magic, their beliefs in sorcery and spirits, nothing was forthcoming except a few superficial items of folk-lore, mangled by being forced into pidgin English� Information which I received from some white residents in the district, valuable as it was in itself, was more discouraging than any­ thing else with regard to my own work. Here were men-who had lived for years in the place with constant opportunities of observing the natives and communicating with them, and who yet hardly knew one thing about them really well. How could I therefore in a few months or a year, hope to overtake and go beyond them? Moreover, the manner in which my white informants spoke about the natives and put their views was, naturally, that of untrained minds, unaccustomed to formulate their thoughts with any degree of consistency and precision. And they were for the most part, naturally enough, full of the biassed and pre-judged opinions inevitable in the average practical man, whether administrator, mis­ sionary, or trader, yet so strongly repulsive to a mind striving after the objective, scientific view of things. The habit of treating with a self-satisfied frivolity what is really serious to the ethnographer; the cheap rating of what to him is a scientific treasure, that is to say, the native's cultural and mental peculiarities and independence - these features, so well known in the inferior amateur's writing, I found in the tone of the majority of white residents.1 Indeed, in my first piece of Ethnographic research on the South coast, it was not until I was alone in the district that I began to make

47

some headway; and, at any rate, I found out where lay the secret of effective fieldwork. What is then this ethnographer's magic, by which he is able to evoke the real spirit of the natives, the true picture of tribal life? As usual, success can only be obtained by a patient and systematic application of a number of rules of common sense and well-known scientific prin­ ciples, and not by the discovery of any mar­ vellous short-cut leading to the desired results without effort or trouble. The principles of method can be grouped under three main headings; first of all, naturally, the student must possess real scientific aims, and know the values and criteria of modern ethnography. Secondly, he ought to put himself in good con­ ditions of work. that is, in the main, to live without other white men, right among the natives. Finally, he has to apply a number of special methods of collecting, manipulating and fixing his evidence. A few words must be said about these foundation stones of field­ work, beginning with the second as the most elementary.

IV

Proper conditions for ethnographic work These, as said, consist mainly in cutting oneself off from the company of other white men, and remaining in as close contact with the natives as possible, which really can only be achieved by camping right in their villages. It is very nice to have a base in a white man's compound for the stores, and to know there is a refuge there in times of sickness and surfeit of native. But it must be far enough away not to become a permanent milieu in which you live and from which you emerge at fixed hours only to "do the village." It should not even be near enough to fly to at any moment for recreation. For the native is not the natural companion for a white man, and after you have been working with him for several hours, seeing how he does his gardens, or letting him tell you items of folk­ lore, or discussing his customs, you will natu­ rally hanker after the company of your own kind. But if you are alone in a village beyond reach of this, you go for a solitary walk for an

48

BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI

hour or so, return again and then quite natu­ rally seek out the natives' society, this time as a relief from loneliness, just as you would any other companionship. And by means of this natural intercourse, you learn to know him, and you become familiar with his customs and beliefs far better than when he is a paid, and often bored, informant. There is _all the difference between a spo­ radic plunging into the company of natives, and being really in contact with them. What does this latter mean? On the Ethnographer's side, it means that his life in the village, which at first is a strange, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes intensely interesting adventure, soon adopts quite a natural course very much in harmony with his surroundings. Soon after I had established myself in Omarakana (Trobriand Islands), I began to take part, in a way, in the village life, to look forward to the important or festive events, to take personal interest in the gossip and the developments of the small village occurrences; to wake up every morning to a day, presenting itself to me more or less as it does to the native. I would get out from under my mosquito net, to find around me the village life beginning to stir, or the people well advanced in their working day according to the hour and also to the season, for they get up and begin their labours early or late, as work presses. As I went on my morning walk through the village, I could see intimate details of family life, of toilet, cooking, taking of meals; I could see the arrangements for the day's work, people start­ ing on their errands, or groups of men and women busy at some manufacturing tasks. Quarrels, jokes, family scenes, events usually trivial, sometimes dramatic but always signifi­ cant, formed the atmosphere of my daily life, as well as of theirs. It must be remembered that as the natives saw me constantly every day, they ceased to be interested or alarmed, or made self-conscious by my presence, and I ceased to be a disturbing element in the tribal life which I was to study, altering it by my very approach, as always happens with a new­ comer to every savage community. In fact, as they knew that I would thrust my nose into everything, even where a well-mannered native would not dream of intruding, they finished by regarding me as part and parcel of their life, a

necessary evil or nuisance, mitigated by dona­ tions of tobacco. Later on in the day, whatever happened was within easy reac� and there was no possibil­ ity of its escaping my notice. Alarms about the sorcerer's approach in the evening, one or two big, really important quarrels and rifts within the community, cases of illness, attempted cures and deaths, magical rites which had to be performed, all these I had not to pursue, fearful of missing them, but they took place under my very eyes, at my own doorstep, so to speak. And it must be emphasised whenever anything dramatic or important occurs it is essential to investigate it at the very moment of happening, because the natives cannot but talk about it, are too excited to be reticent, and too interested to be mentally lazy in supplying details. Also, over and over again, I commit­ ted breaches of etiquette, which the natives, familiar enough with me, were not slow in pointing out. I had to learn how to behave, and to a certain extent, I acquired "the feeling" for native good and bad manners. With this, and with the capacity of enjoying their company and sharing some of their games and amusements, I began to feel that I was indeed in touch with the natives, and this is certainly the preliminary condition of being able to carry on successful fieldwork.

v But the Ethnographer has not only to spread his nets in the right place, and wait for what will fall into them. He must be an active hunts­ man, and drive his quarry into them and follow it up to its most inaccessible lairs. And that leads us to the more active methods of pursuing ethnographic evidence. It has been mentioned at the end of Division III that the Ethnographer has to be inspired by the knowl­ edge of the most modern results of scientific study, by its principles and aims. I shall not enlarge upon this subject, except by way of one remark, to avoid the possibility of mis­ understanding. Good training in theory, and acquaintance with its latest results, is not iden­ tical with being burdened with "preconceived ideas." If a man sets out on an expedition, determined to prove certain hypotheses, if he

METHOD AND -SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL FIELDWORK is incapable of changing his views constantly and casting them off ungrudgingly under the pressure of evidence, needless to say his work will be worthless. But the more problems he brings with him into the field, the more he is in the habit of moulding his theories accord­ ing to facts, and of seeing facts in their bearing upon theory, the better he is equipped for the work. Preconceived ideas are pernicious in any scientific work, but foreshadowed problems are the main endowment of a scientific thinker, and these problems are first revealed to the observer by his theoretical studies. In Ethnology the early efforts of Bastian, Tylor, Morgan, the German Volkerpsycholo­ gen have remoulded the older crude informa­ tion of travellers, missionaries, etc., and have shown us the importance of applying deeper conceptions and discarding crude and mis­ leading ones.2 The concept of animism superseded that of "fetichism" or "devil-worship," both mean­ ingless terms. The understanding of the classi­ ficatory systems of relationship paved the way .for the brilliant, modern researches on native sociology in the fieldwork of the Cambridge school. The psychological analysis of the German thinkers has brought forth an abun­ dant crop of most valuable information in the results obtained by the recent German ex­ peditions to Africa, South America and the Pacific, while the theoretical works of Frazer, Durkheim and others have already, and will no doubt still for a long time inspire fieldworkers and lead them to new results. The fieldworker relies entirely upon inspiration from theory. Of course he may be also a theoretical thinker and worker, and there he can draw on himself for stimulus. But the two functions are separate, and in actual research they have to be sepa­ rated both in time and conditions of work. As always happens when scientific interest turns towards and begins to labour on a field so far only prospected by the curiosity of ama­ teurs, Ethnology has introduced law and order into what seemed chaotic and freakish. It has transformed for us the sensational, wild and unaccountable world of "savages" into a number of well ordered communities, gov­ erned by law, behaving and thinking accord­ ing to consistent principles. The word "savage," whatever association it might have

49

had originally, connotes ideas of boundless liberty, of irregularity, of something extremely and extraordinarily quaint. In popular think­ ing, we imagine that the natives live on the bosom of Nature, more or less as they can and like, the prey of irregular, phantasmagoric beliefs and apprehensions. Modern science, on the contrary, shows that their social institu­ tions have a very definite organisation, that they are governed by authority, law and order in their public and personal relations, while the latter are, besides, under the control of extremely complex ties of kinship and clan­ ship. Indeed, we see them entangled in a mesh of duties, functions and privileges which cor­ respond to an elaborate tribal, communal and kinship organisation. Their beliefs and prac­ tices do not by any means lack consistency of a certain type, and their knowledge of the outer world is sufficient to guide them in many of their strenuous enterprises and activities. Their artistic productions again lack neither meaning nor beauty. It is a very far cry from the famous answer given long ago by a representative authority who, asked, what are the manners and customs of the natives, answered, "Customs none, manners beastly, " to the position of the modern Ethnographer! This latter, with his tables of kinship terms, genealogies, maps, plans and diagrams, proves the existence of an extensive and big organisation, shows the con­ stitution of the tribe, of the clan, of the family; and he gives us a picture of the natives sub­ jected to a strict code of behaviour and good manners, to which in comparison the life at the Court of Versailles or Escurial was free and easy.3 Thus the first and basic ideal of ethno­ graphic fieldwork is to give a clear and firm ol]tline of the social constitution, and disen­ tangle the laws and regularities of all cultural phenomena from the irrelevances. The firm skeleton of the tribal life has to be first ascer­ tained. This ideal imposes in the first place the fundamental obligation of giving a complete survey of the phenomena, and not of picking out the sensational, the singular, still less the funny and quaint. The time when we could tol­ erate accounts presenting us the native as a dis­ torted, childish caricature of a human being are gone. This picture is false, and like many

BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI

so

other falsehoods, it has been killed by Science.

its organisation, so it would be futile to

The field Ethnographer has

seriously and

attempt questioning a native in abstract, soci�

soberly to cover the full extent of the phe­

ological terms. The difference is that, in our

nomena

culture

society, every institution bas its intelligent

studied, making no difference between what is

members, its historians, and its archives and documents, whereas in a native society there

in each aspect of tribal

commonplace, or drab, or ordinary, and what strikes him as astonishing and out-of-the-way.

are none of these. After this is realised an expe­

At the same time, the whole area of tribal

dient has to be found to overcome this diffi­

culture

has to be gone over in

culty. This expedient for an Ethnographer

research. The consistency, the law and order

consists in collecting concrete data of evidence,

which obtain within each aspect make also for

and drawing the general inferences for him­

joining them into one coherent whole.

self. This seems obvious on the face of it, but

in all its aspects

An Ethnographer who sets out to study only

was not found out or at least practised in

religion, or only technology, or only social

Ethnography till fieldwork was taken up by

organisation cuts out an artificial field for

men of science. Moreover, in giving it practi­

inquiry, and he will be seriously handicapped

cal effect, it is neither easy to devise the con­

in his work.

crete applications of this method, nor to carry them out systematicaUy and consistently. Though we cannot ask a native about abstract, general rules, we can always enquire

VI

how a given case would be treated. Thus for instance, in asking how they would treat

Having settled this very general rule, let us

crime, or punish it, it would be vain to put to

descend to more detailed consideration of

a native a sweeping question such as, "How

method. The Ethnographer has in the field,

do you treat and punish a criminal?" for even

according to what has just been said, the duty

words could not be found to express it in

before him of drawing up all the rules and reg­

native, or in pidgin. But an imaginary case, or

ularities of tribal life; all that is permanent and

still better, a real occurrence, will stimulate a

fixed; of giving an anatomy of their culture, of

native to express his opinion and to supply

depicting the constitution of their society. But

plentiful information. A real case indeed will

these things, though crystallised and set, are

start the natives on a wave of discussion, evoke

nowhere

There is no written or

expressions of indignation, show them taking

explicitly expressed code of laws, and their

sides - all of which talk will probably contain

whole tribal tradition, the whole structure of

a wealth of definite views, of moral censures,

their society, are embodied in the most elusive

as well as reveal the social mechanism set in

of all materials; the human being. But not even

motion by the crime committed. From there, it

in human mind or memory are these laws to

will be easy to lead them on to speak of other

be found definitely formulated. The natives

similar cases, to remember other actual occur­

obey the forces and commands of the tribal

rences or to discuss them in all their implica­

code, bu! they do not comprehend them;

tions and aspects. From this material, which

exactly as they obey their instincts and their

ought to cover the widest possible range of

impulses, but could not lay down a single law

facts, the inference is obtained by simple

of psychology. The regularities in native insti­

induction. The scientific treatment differs from

tutions are an automatic result of the inter­

that of good common sense, first in that a

action of the mental forces of tradition, and

student will extend the completeness and

of the material conditions of environment.

minuteness of survey much further and in

Exactly as a humble member of any modern

a

institution, whether it be the state, or the

manner; and secondly, in that the scientifically

church, or the army, is

it, but has

trained mind, will push the inquiry along

no vision of the resulting integral action of the

really relevant lines, and towards aims pos­

whole, still less could furnish any account of

sessing real importance. Indeed, the object of

formulated.

of it

and

in

pedantically

systematic

and

methodical

METHOD AND SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL FIELDWORK scientific training is to provide the empirical investigator with a mental chart, in accordance with which he can take his bearings and lay his course. To return to our example, a number of definite cases discussed will reveal to the Ethnographer the social machinery for pun­ ishment. This is one part, one aspect of tribal authority. Imagine further that by a similar method of inference from definite data, he arrives at understanding leadership in war, in economic enterprise, in tribal festivities - there he has at once all the data necessary to answer the questions about tribal government and social authority. In actual fieldwork, the com­ parison of such data, the attempt to piece them together, will often reveal rifts and gaps in the information which lead on to further investigations. From ·my own experience, I can say that, very often, a problem seemed settled, every­ thing fixed and clear, till I began to write down a short preliminary sketch of my results. And �nly then, did I see the enormous deficiencies, which would show me where lay new prob­ lems, and lead me on to new work. In fact, I spent a few months between my first and second expeditions, and over a year between that and the subsequent one, in going over all my material, and making parts of it almost ready for publication each time, though each time I knew I would have to re-write it. Such cross-fertilisation of constructive work and observation, I found most valuable, and I do not think I could have made real headway without it. I give this bit of my own history merely to show that what has been said so far is not only an empty programme, but the result of personal experience. In this volume, the description is given of a big institution con­ nected with ever so many associated activities, and presenting many aspects. To anyone who reflects on the subj ect, it will be clear that the information about a phenomenon of such high complexity and of so many ramifications, could not be obtained with any degree of exac­ titude and completeness, without a constant interplay of constructive attempts and empiri­ cal checking. In fact, I have written up an outline of the Kula institution at least half a dozen times while in the field and in the inter-

51

vals between my expeditions. Each time, new problems and difficulties presented themselves. The collecting of concrete data over a wide range of facts is thus one of the main points of field method. The obligation is not to enumer­ ate a few examples only, but to exhaust as far as possible all the cases within reach; and, on this search for cases, the investigator will score most whose mental chart is clearest. But, whenever the material of the search allows it, this mental chart ought to be transformed into a real one; it ought to materialise into a diagram, a plan, an exhaustive, synoptic table of cases. Long since, in all tolerably good modern books on natives, we expect to find a full list or table of kinship terms, which includes all the data relative to it, and does not just pick out a few strange and anomalous relationships or expressions. In the investiga­ tion of kinship, the following up of one rela­ tion after another in concrete cases leads naturally to the construction of genealogical tables. Practised already by the best early writers, such as Munzinger, and, if I remember rightly, Kubary, this method has been devel­ oped to its fullest extent in the works of Dr. Rivers. Again, studying the concrete data of economic transactions, in order to trace the history of a valuable object, and to gauge the nature of its circulation, the principle of com­ pleteness and thoroughness would lead to con­ struct tables of transactions, such as we find in the work of Professor Seligman. It is in fol­ lowing Professor Seligman's example in this matter that I was able to settle certain of the more difficult and detailed rules of the Kula. The method of reducing information, if possi­ ble, into charts or synoptic tables ought to be extended to the study of practically all aspects of native life. All types of economic transac­ tions may be studied by following up con­ nected, actual cases, and putting them into a synoptic chart; again, a table ought to be drawn up of all the gifts and presents custom­ ary in a given society, a table including the sociological, ceremonial, and economic defini­ tion of every item. Also, systems of magic, con­ nected series of ceremonies, types of legal acts, all could be charted, allowing each entry to be synoptically defined under a number of head­ ings. Besides this, of course, the genealogical

BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI

52

census of every community, studied more in detail, extensive maps, plans and diagrams, illustrating ownership in garden land, hunting

To summarise the first, cardinal point of method, I may say each phenomenon ought to be studied through the broadest range possible

and fishing privileges, etc., serve as the more

of its concrete manifestations; each studied by

fundamental research.

an exhaustive survey of detailed examples. If

documents

of

ethnographic

possible, the results ought to be tabulated into

A genealogy is nothing else but a synoptic

some sort of synoptic chart, both to be used as

chart of a number of connected relations of

an instrument of study, and to be presented as

kinship. Its value as an instrument of research consists in that it allows the investigator to put

an ethnological document. With the help of such documents and such study of actualities

questions which he formulates to himself

in

the clear outline of the framework of the

but can put concretely to the native

natives' culture in the widest sense of the word,

informant. As a document, its value consists in

and the constitution of their society, can be

that it gives a number of authenticated data,

presented. This method could be called

abstracto,

presented in their natural grouping. A synop­ tic chart of magic fulfils .the same function. As

the method of statistic documentation by concrete evidence.

an instrument of research, I have used it in order to ascertain, for instance, the ideas about

VII

the nature of magical power. With a chart before me, I could easily and conveniently go over one item after the other, and note down

�eedless

the relevant practices and beliefs contained in

fieldwork is far above even the best amateur

each of them. The answer to my abstract

productions. There is, however, one point in

problem could then be obtained by drawing a

which the latter often excel. This is, in the pre­

general

all the cases . . . I

sentation of intimate touches of native life, in

cannot enter further into the discussion of

bringing home to us these aspects of it with

this

further

which one is made familiar only through being

distinctions, such as between a chart of con­

in close contact with the natives, one way or

crete, actual data, such as is a genealogy, and

the other, for a long period of time. In certain

a chart summarising the outlines of a custom

results of scientific work - especially that

or belief, as a chart of a magical system would

which has been called "survey work" - we are

be.

given an excellent skeleton, so to spt;ak, of the

inference

question,

from

which

would

need

to add, in this respect, the scientific

Returning once more to the question of

tribal constitution, but it lacks flesh and blood.

I wish to point out here, that the procedure of concrete and tabularised presentation of data ought to be applied first to the Ethnographer's own cre­ dentials. That is, an Ethnographer, who wishes

We learn much about the framework of their

to be trusted, must show clearly and concisely,

some singular occurrence. In working out the

methodological candour,

.

.

.

society, but within it, we cannot perceive or imagine the realities of human life, the even flow of everyday events, the occasional ripples of excitement over a feast, or ceremony, or

in a tabularised· form, which are his own direct

rules and regularities of native custom, and in

observations, and which the indirect informa­

obtaining a precise formula for them from the

tion that form the bases of his account. The

collection of data and native statements, we

Table will serve as an example of this proce­

find that this very precision is foreign to real

dure and help the reader of this book to form

life, which never adheres rigidly to any rules.

an idea of the trustworthiness of any statement

It must be supplemented by the observation of

he is specially anxious to check. With the help

the manner in which a given custom is carried

of this Table and the many references scattered

out, of the behaviour of the natives in obeying

throughout the text, as to how, under what cir­

the rules so exactly formulated by the ethnog­

cumstances, and with what degree of accuracy

rapher, of the very exceptions which in socio­

I arrived at a given item of knowledge, there

logical phenomena almost always occur.

will, I hope remain no obscurity whatever as to the sources of the book.

If all the conclusions are solely based on the statements of informants, or deduced from

METHOD AND SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL FIELDWORK objective documents, it is of course impossible to supplement them in actually observed data of real behaviour. And that is the reason why certain works of amateur residents of long standing, such as educated traders and planters, medical men and officials, and last, but not least, the few intelligent and unbiassed missionaries to whom Ethnography owes so much, surpass in plasticity and in vividness most of the purely scientific accounts. But if the specialised fieldworker can adopt the con­ ditions of living described above, he is in a far better position to be really in touch with the natives than any other white resident. For none of them lives right in a native viUage, except for very short periods, and everyone has his own business, which takes up a consider­ able part of his time. Moreover, if, like a trader or a missionary or an official he enters into active rehttions with the native, if he has to transform or influence or make use of him, this makes a real, unbiassed, impartial observation impossible, and precludes all-round sincerity, at least in the case of the missionaries and officials. Living in the village with no other business but to follow native Life, one sees the customs, ceremonies and transactions over and over again, one has examples of their beliefs as they are actually lived through, and the full body and blood of actual native life fills out soon the skeleton of abstract constructions. That is the reason why, working under such condi­ tions as previously described, the Ethnogra­ pher is enabled to add something essential to the bare outline of tribal constitution, and to supplement it by all the details of behaviour, setting and small incident. He is able in each case to state whether an act is public or private; how a public assembly behaves, and what it looks like; he can judge whether an event is ordinary or an exciting and singular one; whether natives bring to it a great deal of sincere and earnest spirit, or perform it in fun; whether they do it in a perfunctory manner, or with zeal and deliberation. In other words, there is a series of phenom­ ena of great importance which cannot possibly be recorded by questioning or computing doc­ uments, but have to be observed in their full actuality. Let us call them the imponderabilia of actual life. Here belong such things as the

53

routine of a man's working day, the details of his care of the body, of the manner of taking food and preparing it; the tone of conversa­ tional and social Life around the village fires, the existence of strong friendships or hostili­ ties, and of passing sympathies and dislikes between people; the subtle yet unmistakable manner in which personal vanities and ambi­ tions are reflected in the behaviour of the indi­ vidual and in the emotional reactions of those who surround him. All these facts can and ought to be scientifically formulated and recorded, but it is necessary that this be done, not by a superficial registration of details, a.s is usualJy done by untrained observers, but with an effort at penetrating the mental attitude expressed in them. And that is the reason why the work of scientifically trained observers, once seriously applied to the study of this aspect, will, I believe, yield results of surpass­ ing value. So far, it has been done only by ama­ teurs, and therefore done, on the whole, indifferently. Indeed, if we remember that these impon­ derable yet all important facts of actual life are part of the real substance of the social fabric, that in them are spun the innumerable threads which keep together the family, the clan, the village community, the tribe - their significance becomes clear. The more crystallised bonds of social grouping, such as the definite ritual, the economic and legal duties, the obligations, the ceremonial gifts and formal marks of regard, though equally important for the student, are certainly felt less strongly by the individual who has to fulfil them. Applying this to our­ selves, we all know that "family life" means for us, first and foremost, the atmosphere of home, all the innumerable small acts and attentions in which are expressed the affection, the mutual interest, the little preferences, and the little antipathies which constitute intimacy. That we may inherit from this person, that we shall have to walk after the hearse of the other., though sociologically these facts belong to the definition of "family" and "family life," in per­ sonal perspective of what family truly is to us, they normally stand very much in the background. Exactly the same applies to a native com­ munity, and if the Ethnographer wants to bring their real life home to his readers, he

54

BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI

must on no account neglect this. Neither

doubt that the personal

aspect, the intimate, as little as the legal, ought

observer comes in here more prominently, than

to be glossed over. Yet as a rule in ethno­

in the collection of crystaJlised, ethnographic

graphic accounts we have not both but either

data. But here also the main endeavour must

the one or the other - and, so far, the intimate

be to let facts speak for themselves. If in

one has hardly ever been properly treated. In

making a daily round of the village, certain

all social relations besides the family ties, even

small incidents, characteristic forms of taking

those between mere tribesmen and, beyond

food, of conversing, of doing work are found

that, between hostile or friendly members of

occurring over and over again, they should be

different tribes, meeting on any sort of social

noted down at once. It is also important that

business, there is this intimate side, expressed

this work of collecting and fixing impressions

by the typical details of intercourse, the tone

should begin early in the course of working

of their behaviour in the presence of one

out a district.

equation

of the

another. This side is different from the definite,

Because certain subtle peculiarities, which

crystallised legal frame of the relationship,

make an impression as long as they are novel,

and it has to be studied and stated in its own

cease to be noticed as soon as they become

right.

familiar. Others again can only be perceived

In the same way, in studying the conspicu­

with a better knowledge of the local condi­

ous acts of tribal life, such as ceremonies, rites,

tions. An ethnographic diary, carried on sys-

festivities, etc., the details and tone of behav­

. tematically throughout the course of one's

iour ought to be given, besides the bare outline

work in a district would be the ideal instru­

of events. The importance of this may be

ment for this sort of study. And if, side by side

exemplified by one instance. Much has been

with the normal and typical, the ethnographer

said and written about survival. Yet the sur­

carefully notes the slight, or the more pro­

vival character of an act is expressed in

nounced deviations from it, he will be able to

nothing so well as in the concomitant behav­

indicate the two extremes within which the

iour, in the way in which it is carried out. Take

normal moves.

any example from our own culture, whether it

In observing ceremonies or other tribal

be the pomp and pageantry of a state cere­

events . . . it is necessary, not only to note

mony, or a picturesque custom kept up by

down those occurrences and details which

street urchins, its "outline" will not tell you

are prescribed by tradition and custom to be

whether the rite flourishes still with full vigour

the essential course of the act� /but also the

in the hearts of those who perform it or assist at the performance or whether they regard it as almost a dead thing, kept alive for tradi­ tion's sake. But observe and fix the data of their behaviour, and at once the degree of vital­ ity of the act will become clear. There is no doubt, from all points of sociological, or psy­

Ethnographer ought to record carefully and precisely, one after the other, the actions of the actors and of the spectators. Forgetting for a moment that he knows and understands the structure of this ceremony, the main dogmatic ideas underlying it, he might try to find himself only in the midst of an assembly of human­

chological analysis, and in any question of

beings, who behave seriously or jocularly, with

theory, the manner and type of behaviour

earnest concentration or with bored frivolity,

observed in the performance of an act is of the

who are either in the same mood as he finds.

highest importance. Indeed behaviour is a fact,

them every day, or else are screwed up to a

a relevant fact, and one that can be recorded.

high pitch of excitement, and so on and so on.

And foolish indeed and short-sighted would be

With his attention constantly directed to this

the man of science who would pass. by a whole class of phenomena, ready to be garnered, and

aspect of tribal life, with the constant endeav­

leave them to waste, even though he did not

fact, a good deal of reliable and expressive

see at the moment to what theoretical use they

material finds its way into his notes. He will

might be put!

be able to "set" the act into its proper place in

our to fix it; to express it in terms of actual

As to the actual method of observing and

tribal life, that is to show whether it is excep­

recording in fieldwork these imponderabilia of

tional or commonplace, one in which the

actual life and of typical behaviour, there is no

natives behave ordinarily, or one in which their

METHOD AND SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL FIELDWORK whole behaviour is transformed. And he will also be able to bring all this home to his readers in a clear, convincing manner. Again, in this type of work, it is good for the Ethnographer sometimes to put aside camera, note book and pencil, and to join in himself in what is going on. He can take part in the natives' games, he can follow them on their visits and walks, sit down and listen and share in their conversations. I am not certain i f this is equally easy for everyone perhaps the Slavonic nature is more plastic and more naturally savage than that of Western Europeans - but though the degree of success varies, the attempt is possible for everyone. Out of such plunges into the life of the natives - and I made them frequently not only for study's sake but because everyone needs human company - I have carried away a dis­ tinct feeling that their behaviour, their manner of being, in all sorts of tribal transactions, became more transparent and easily under­ standable than it had been before. AJl these methodological remarks, the reader will find again illustrated in the following chapters.

VIII Finally, let us pass to the third and last aim of scientific fieldwork, to the last type of phe­ nomenon which ought to be recorded in order to give a full and adequate picture of native culture. Besides the firm outline of tribal con­ stitution and crystallised cultural items which form the skeleton, besides the data of daily life and ordinary behaviour, which are, so to speak, its flesh and blood, there is still to be recorded the spirit - the natives' views and opinions and utterances. For, in every act of tribal life, there is, first, the routine prescribed by custom and tradition, then there is the manner in which it is carried out, and lastly there is the commentary to it, contained in the natives' mind. A man who submits to various customary obligations, who follows a tradi­ tional course of action, does it impelled by certain motives, to the accompaniment of certain feelings, guided by certain ideas. These ideas, feelings, and impulses are moulded and conditioned by the culture in which we find them, and are therefore an ethnic peculiarity of the given society. An attempt must be made

55

therefore, to study and record them. But is this possible? Are these subjective states not too elusive and shapeless? And, even granted that people usually do feel or think or experience certain psychological states in asso­ ciation with the performance of customary acts, the majority of them surely are not able to formulate these states, to put them into words. This latter point must certainly be granted, and it is perhaps the real Gordian knot in the study of the facts of social psy­ chology. Without trying to cut or untie this knot, that is to solve the problem theoretically, or to enter further into the field of general methodology, I shall make directly for the question of practical means to overcome some of the difficulties involved. First of all, it has to be laid down that we have to study here stereotyped manners of thinking and feeling. As sociologists, we are not interested in what A or B may feel qua individuals, in .the accidental course of their own personal experiences - we are interested only in what they feel and think qua members of a given community. Now in this capacity, their mental states receive a certain stamp, become stereotyped by the institutions in which they live, by the influence of tradition and folk-lore, by the very vehicle of thought, that is by language. The social and cultural environment in which they move forces them to think and feel in a definite manner. Thus, a man who lives in a polyandrous community cannot experience the same feelings of jeal­ ousy, as a strict monogynist, though he might have the elements of them. A man who lives within the sphere of the Kula cannot become permanently and sentimentally attached to certain of his possessions, in spite of the fact that he values them most of all. These exam­ ples are crude, but better ones will be found in the text of this book. So, the third commandment of fieldwork runs: Find out the typical ways of thinking and feeling, corresponding to the institutions and culture of a given community, and formulate the results in the most convincing manner. What will be the method of procedure? The best ethnographical writers - here again the Cambridge school with Haddon, Rivers, and Seligman rank first among English Ethnographers - have always tried to quote verbatim statements of .crucial importance.

BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI

56

They also adduce terms of native classification; sociological,

psychological

termini technici,

and

industrial

and have rendered the verbal

contour of native thought as precisely as pos­ sible. One step further in this line can be made by the Ethnographer, who acquires a knowl­

1

The organisation of the tribe, and the anatomy of its culture must be recorded in firm, clear outline. The method of concrete, statistical documentation is the means through which such an outline has to be given. 2

Within this frame, the and the

imponderabilia of type of behaviour have to

edge of the native language and can use it as an instrument of inquiry. In working in the

actual life,

Kiriwinian language, 1 found still some diffi­

minute, detailed observations, in the form of

culty in writing down the statement directly in

some son of ethnographic diary, made possi­

translation which at first I used to do in the act

ble by close contact with native life.

of taking notes. The translation often robbed

be filled in. They have to be collected through

3

A collection of ethnographic statements,

the text of all its significant characteristics -

characteristic narratives, typical

rubbed off all its points - so that gradually I

items of folk-lore and magical formulre has to

was led to note down cenain important

be given as a

phrases just as they were spoken, in the native

ments of native mentality.

tongue. As my knowledge of the language progressed, I put down more and more in Kiriwinian, till at last I found myself writing exclusively in that language, rapidly taking notes, word for word, of each statement. No sooner had I arrived at this point, than I recog­ nised that I was thus acquiring at the same time an abundant linguistic material, and a series of ethnographic documents which ought to be reproduced as I had fixed them, besides being utilised in the writing up of my account.4 This

corpus inscriptionum Kiriwiniensium

can be utilised, not only by myself, but by all those who, through their better penetration and ability of interpreting them, may find points which escape my attention, very much as the other

corpora

form the basis for the

various interpretations of ancient and prehis­ toric cultures; only, these ethnographic inscrip­ tions are all decipherable and clear, have been almost all translated fully and unambiguously, and have been provided with native cross­ commentaries or

scholia

obtained from living

sources. No more need be said on this subject here, . . . The

Corpus

will of course be published

separately at a later date.

utterances,

corpus inscriptionum,

as docu­

These three lines of approach lead to the final goal, of which an Ethnographer should never lose sight. This goal is, briefly, to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realise

his

vision of

his

world. We have to

study man, and we must study what concerns him most intimately, that is, the hold which life has on him. In each culture, the values are slightly different; people aspire after different aims, follow different impulses, yearn after a different form of happiness. In each culture, we find different institutions in which man pursues his life-interest, different customs by which he satisfies his aspirations, different codes of law and morality which reward his virtues or punish his defectio�s. To study the institutions, customs, and codes or to study the behaviour and mentality without the subjec­ tive desire of feeling by what these people live, of realising the substance of their happiness is, in my opinion, to miss the greatest reward which we can hope to obtain from the study of man. These generalities the reader will find illus­ trated in the following chapters. We shall see there the savage striving to satisfy certain aspi­ rations, to attain his type of value, to follow his line of social ambition. We shall see him led on to perilous and difficult enterprises by

IX

a tradition of magical and heroical exploits, shall see him following the lure of his own romance. Perhaps as we read the account of

Our considerations thus indicate that the goal

these remote customs there may emerge a

of ethnographic fieldwork must be approached

feeling of solidarity with the endeavours and

through three avenues:

ambitions of these natives. Perhaps man's men-

METHOD AND SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL FIE LDWORK

57

tality will be revealed to us, and brought near,

our own. In this, and in this case only, we shall

along some lines which we never have fol­

be justified in feeling that it has been worth our

lowed

realising

while to understand these natives, their insti­

human nature in a shape very distant and

tutions and customs, and that we have gath­ ered some profit from the Kula.

before.

Perhaps

through

foreign to us, we shall have some light shed on

Part II

Fieldwork Identity Antonius C. G. M. Robben

Bronislaw Malinowski was sensitive to the social life on Kiriwina Island but he did not critically examine his own role and feelings to the Trobrianders, even though his loneliness filters through the opening sentence of the excerpt from his "Method and Scope of Anthropological Fieldwork" (Chapter 3). He had written an intimate diary about his problems and depressions, and his chagrin at the local population, but these revelations only became available after his death (Malinowski 1 967). His student Hortense Powdermaker was among the first to openJy reveal the personal hardships, role conflicts, and identity crises of fieldworkers. Laura Bohannan had preceded Powdermaker with Return to Laughter ( Chapter 36) by more than a decade, but she had published under a pseudonym and written in a popularizing style. Bohannan and Powdermaker initiated a trend of self-reflection on the prac­ tice of fieldwork that became more prominent in anthropology than in any other scholarly discipline. The lengthy immersion in foreign cultures, the status of ethno­ graphers as outsiders, the interactive anthropological research methods in general and participant observation in particular, and the nature of fieldwork as a profes­ sional rite of passage with often far-reaching effects on the self, made the concern for identity during fieldwork of great and enduring importance from the 1 960s onward. Hortense Powdermaker carried out her first fieldwork in 1 929-30 among the Lesu on the island of New Ireland in Melanesia. In the excerpt " A Woman Going Native," taken from her book Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist ( 1 967), Powdermaker demonstrates how her gender and ethnic status influenced her research. Melanesian societies enforce a rather strict division between men and women into different social domains, and therefore she drifts naturally to those roles which women occupy in Lesu society: working in the taro gardens, preparing food, carrying and delivering babies, and dancing at women's feasts. Her research among men carries more restrictions because of her female status. It consists mostly of ethno­ graphic interviews, even though she participates in fishing, feasts, and mortuary rituals whenever invited. Fortunately, Powdermaker is not fully categorized as a woman by the Lesu and is therefore able to cross gender boundaries with relative ease. Still, this gender neutrality has the cost of not being confided in by either men or women. Only after she throws herself fully into a dance during the

60

PART

11:

FIELDWORK I DENTITY

incorporation ritual of boys who had been initiated into manhood does Powder­ maker become accepted by the women, and is, for the duration of the ceremony, treated by men with the same symbolic gender hostility as Lesu women. Such treat­ ment, however benign, cannot but raise the awareness of anthropologists about the impact of gender on their data collection and research results. Powdermaker con­ cludes that female anthropologists seem to have easier access to both sexes than male anthropologists, whose contact with women is often regarded by men as threaten­ ing. Yet, Gregory ( 1984) has argued the contrary, while Golde ( 1 9 86) has pointed out that once a woman has been accepted into a society, she is expected to conform to the prevailing gender roles and has less freedom to move around at will than men in comparable situations {see Wolf 1996 for a feminist critique of fieldwork). After completing her research among the Lesu, Hortense Powdermaker returned to the United States and conducted fieldwork on African Americans in Mississippi between 1 932 and 1 934. She traced this interest to her student days when she rode a crowded streetcar on a blistering hot day in Baltimore. A white woman com­ plained to her about the foul air around the sweaty African American workers. Pow­ dermaker noticed the same odor, took a few steps towards the white workers, discovered that they smelled just as much of perspiration, and finally realized that in fact she herself reeked equally bad, after spending the day working on her summer job at the playground (Powdermaker _1967: 1 32). This anecdote reveals Powder­ maker's anthropological intuition, even before her formal training: she noticed a racial remark, tested its validity, ascertained it to be unfounded, and then reflected on her similar personal state. Powdermaker concealed her Jewish identity in the Mississippi Bible Belt com­ munity and tried to establish a good rapport with black and white. This was a time of strong Southern racial segregation, when lynchings of African Americans were common and the Ku Klux Klan was strong. Understandably, Powdermaker had to walk a fine line between the white and black neighborhoods in the town she called Indianola. Her confrontation with the exploitation of African American fellow­ citizens, the racism of the white inhabitants, and the fear between both groups, made her conscious of her own status as a white Jewish woman in a segregated Ameri­ can society. She also began to doubt whether she would have behaved differently toward African Americans had she been born in Indianola, hemmed in by social taboos and racial stereotypes. She became insecure about her own identity as she shuttled back and forth between blacks and whites, adopting as if through osmosis some of the qualities of each group. Just as she had straddled the gender gap among _ the Lesu, she crossed the color barrier as if belonging to both segregated communities. Powdermaker went through another serious crisis when a lynching party set out to hunt down an African American accused of raping a white woman. Feeling pow­ erless, she decided to retreat into her role as the neutral observer trying to make sense of her fellow-citizens' behavior. This distancing must have been a form of self­ protection against the racial discrimination and blatant social disparity she was seeing in her country. Her ethnographic initiation on New Ireland allowed her to cope with her ambiguous social role in Mississippi, distance herself by assuming a professional attitude, and overcome her depressions, fears, and anxieties. Powdermaker's slow entry and acceptance into female Lesu society and less than full participation in a strongly segregated Indianola have the characteristics of a rite

INTRODUCTION

61

of passage. Arnold van Gennep has argued that "The life of an individual in any society is a series of passages from one age to another and from one occupation to another" ( 1960:2-3). Norris Brock johnson ( 1 984), in his article "Sex, Color, and Rites of Passage in Ethnographic Research," demonstrates that fieldworkers undergo a similar transition. They bid farewell to their country or city, reappear as strangers in their host society or community, and pass a period of time in limbo as they await acceptance. They learn local social rules and cultural practices, become eager apprentices, and will finally be incorporated as full, albeit temporary residents. Johnson draws special attention to the influence of the ethnographer's identity, in terms of skin color and gender, on the form, degree, and length of the liminal period between arrival and admission. Johnson traveled to the Caribbean island of Bequia as a young, single, bearded African American man interested in studying traditional boatmaking. The recent Marxist revolution on nearby Grenada and the political turmoil on Bequia raised suspicions about him being a revolutionary. People kept their distance and it took nearly a week before he was able to meet two highly esteemed shipwrights. His pol­ itics were now perhaps beyond question, but what about his gender identity? Was he rea� ly up to the local standards of a "real man" who was worthy of respect, knowledgeable about boatmaking, skillful with his hands, and competent at sea? Johnson passed the test as he sailed a small boat across the bay of Bequia, turning himself from an outsider into an apprentice boatbuilder. It is crucial to realize that this passage reveals something about the .fieldworker's various social identities and indicates that acceptance translates into privileged knowledge and a respectable social status that otherwise would not have been forthcoming. Johnson also shared in the banter about women and sex, thus revealing another aspect of Bequian male identity as well as showing its clear gender divisions. In other words, the success­ ful passage and incorporation into the professional world of respected shipwrights had a direct effect on the quality of his fieldwork and revealed crucial aspects of Bequian society. Johnson's identity as a black American helped his admission to the world of black Caribbean shipwrights but had hindered his previous fieldwork in a primary public school in the American Midwest (see Sudarkasa 1986 for comparable experiences of an African American woman in Africa). Just as in Bequia, he had difficulty enter­ ing this small social universe, encountering strong spatial and social divisions between men and women, and a prominent gender stratification among teachers and administration. Johnson's male status raised such suspicion and social distanc­ ing from the female teachers that it took several months before he earned their trust. He accomplished this by showing them his respect, displaying his teaching skills and knowledge about school affairs, avoiding male company and, unlike the male staff, showing a proper sexual restraint toward the women. He became incorporated into the school community, even though his contacts were closer with black than with white female teachers. Clearly, skin color and gender roles may be so prescriptive of social interaction in many complex societies that they influence the reception of ethnographers, and limit their access to particular social groups and their knowl­ edge. Competence helps to bridge some gaps, while a genuine affinity with and affec­ tion for a culture will open other doors. Powdermaker and Johnson demonstrated the influence of gender and ethnicity on fieldwork but did not discuss the importance of sexuality. Anthropologists have

62

PART

11:

FIELDWORK IDENTITY

shown a keen interest in the sex lives of other societies, but they have failed to examine their own erotic subjectivity. Kulick ( 1995) attributes this neglect to anthro­ pology's objectivist approach to the study of culture and its rejection of personal narratives, at least till the postmodern turn of the 1 970s. Furthermore, sexuality continues to be a taboo subject in Western culture while the male heterosexual anthropological community has concealed the sexist, racist, and colonialist biases hiding behind much anthropological discourse about sexuality, argues Kulick. Manda Cesara (1982) was the first anthropologist to address at length her sexual feelings and affairs in the field, albeit under a pseudonym. Several collections on fieldwork and sexuality have appeared since then, especially by gay and lesbian anthropologists (e.g., Kulick and Willson 1995, Lewin and Leap 1996). The issue of sexual identity is of particular relevance to them as members of a group stigma­ tized in almost every society. The question of whether homosexual anthropologists should reveal their sexual identity in a largely heterosexual world is a matter of debate. Conce�lment versus openness is of a different relevance when studying neutral or homosexual topics, but the relative advantages of either strategy are highly dependent on the host culture, as some may be hostile while others will be indifferent or sympathetic to the forthright fieldworker. Ethical concerns about the inequality of intimate relations in the field have made teachers urge students to refrain from sexual engagements with research collabora­ tors. Aside from the fact that such sexual encounters will nevertheless take place, a far more interesting issue is to what extent the fieldworker's erotic subjectivity enters into the gathering and interpretation of research data. Many anthropologists may not act on their sexual desires in the field, but the presence and even interference of erotic feelings and fantasies during fieldwork is beyond question. Do these emo­ tions undermine the gathering of data and take away the fieldworker's critical objec­ tivity, or do they instead enrich the fieldwork experience and open new .cultural interpretations? Kate Altork ( 1 995) addresses these issues in the selection "Walking the Fire Line: The Erotic Dimension of the Fieldwork Experience." Altork conducted fieldwork among 1,100 male and about 30 female firefighters living in a temporary base camp in the forests of Idaho. The overwhelming expan­ siveness of the natural environment and the danger of forest fires increased Altork's sensory perception and stimulated her sexual and emotional passions. These erotic feelings were not simply aroused by her physical attraction to the male firefighters and the seduction of their innuendoes, gazes, and flirtations, but especially by the human bonding and camaraderie within an isolated community built around the commori mission of fighting forest fires. Altork advocates a fieldwork approach that gives due attention to the sensual and sexual as well as the intellectual and analytic dimensions of fieldwork because the two are inextricably linked in the human con­ dition. Such complete immersion in a field setting, and a conscious awareness of emotional and erotic attachments during fieldwork, will heighten the senses and contribute significantly to a deeper emotional understanding and more comprehen­ sive rendition of the people under study and, ultimately, of the fieldworker's self. Anthony P. Co\len ( 1 992) takes these reflections about social roles and identities one step further in the article ''Self-Conscious Anthropology" by examining the ethnographer's self inside and outside the field, and his or her intersubjective rela­ tion with research participants. There is a paradox here in the understanding of the fieldworker's self and that of others: whereas ethnographers tend to give more

INTRODUCTION

63

importance to what a community thinks about its members than what the members think about themselves, fieldworkers rely more on their self-knowledge through par­ ticipant observation as a source of cultural understanding than on the community's views of them {see Basso 1979, Okely and Callaway 1 992, and Reed-Danahay 1 997 for notable exceptions). Fieldworkers have a tendency to regard people as rather indistinct bearers of culture. They are overwhelmed by the ethnographic task at hand, the time constraints on their research period, and the impossibility to know all members in depth and fully account for their uniqueness. Furthermore, they have been trained in an epistemological tradition that privileges the social over the per­ sonal. In other words, anthropologists often see people as society-driven rather than self-driven, and more in terms of personhood than of selfhood. Instead, Cohen pro­ poses to acknowledge the intrinsic complexity of the self, to recognize the self's cre­ ative agency, and to examine local concepts of selfhood (see Cohen 1 994 for a theoretical development of the concept of self; also Battaglia 1995). Empathy plays a crucial role in this research agenda because, like everybody else, fieldworkers understand themselves by mentally observing their own social position and selfhood through the perspectives of others. At the same time, Cohen empha­ sizes that there are discrepancies between how we see ourselves (and by implication how others whom we study see themselves), how others see us, and how we imagine others see us. Cohen questions the opinion of cultural-relativist anthropologists who regard "the self" as a Western cultural construct. He argues that other cultures may . have different notions of selfhood but that everywhere the self has an inner state, a certain degree of autonomy with an internal dialogue, and a personal sense of time and space. What these four contributions show is that fieldwork is not a detached activity carried out by an objective observer but that subjective experiences and selfhood are part and parcel of fieldwork and its results. The ethnographer's multiple social identities and his or her dynamic self may be liabilities but also research assets. Anthropologists may use their gender, sexual orientation, skin color, physical skills, nationality, age, marital status, parenthood, and self to obtain data that are un­ available to those with different personal assets (see Okely and Callaway 1992; Whitehead and Conaway 1986). Fieldwork involves a negotiation between ethnographers and research collaborators into which each of their unique constitu­ tions enters.

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A Woman Going Native Hortense Powdermaker