Ill-Defined Problem Sets: A Discussion

[marct]

Hi Mike,

In grad school, I was fascinated by the subject of anthropology, but I always thought it a bit presumptious that one could believe that they could penetrate a society without making waves.

Any Anthropologist who says that is lying through his/her teeth ! Of course we're going to make wave - the question is are they big ones or small ones? Personally, I'm in favour of really, really small ones. Basically, the best tactic once you are in the field that I've found is find an analog and learn to act in a very roughly similar manner. The people we're studying may or may not know what we do (they should, but that's another story...), but as long as they have a pretty good idea of why we are there, how we are going to operate and what we are going to do in return for the information we get, I'm pretty cool with it.

We do, if we are doing a lot of fieldwork with the same group over a long time, end up more as members (often absent) of that community - in effect, we go more native than most others, but that keeps all of us sane.

It reminds me of all the times that we had embedded reporters within our unit. Guys would put on all their tricked out "kits" around the photographers and pose hoping to get the "GI Joe" photo-shot. I imagine that it is the same for villagers when an anthropologist comes to town. Some will posture, others will exaggerate....In the end, the visitor becomes a bit of amusement outside their normal day to day life.

I've seen that when some of the sociologists I've run across try to do ethnographic fieldwork. Probably the best analog would be a DoS dweeb who flies in for a couple of two day staged tours and then "knows all about the situation". Pathetic! I actually ahd one guy tell me he could get a complete social structural model of organizations by spending no more than 15 hours actually in them !

Good analogy. I only wish that dealing with wives was as simple as dealing with tribal sheiks. At least the locals are from earth. Women are from Venus

Having said that, I won't repeat what my wife said when she found out !

Cheers,

Marc