Hi Cullen and Tom,

I've been reading Marcus' blog and I'm really impressed by it. One the whole I find it quite good and I'm looking forward to more. Of course the fact that Hugh Gusterson is engaging in little snipes at Marcus' posts is another sign, to me at least, that it is good !

As far as "going native" is concerned, Marcus is describing it quite accurately. If you want a more formalized description, it would be building a "persona" (sort of like a split personality) that is "native", but retaining the ability to come out of that persona.

I think it is this final point, being able to come out of that persona, that marks the difference between what Anthropologists and the military mean by "going native". In the MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) literature, this is called "switching", and it's pretty much what good fieldworkers do with the vital exception that we have control over which persona we are using. Think of it as a mental "trick".

Marc