Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Getting it Wrong

I have been looking at collections of ethnographic essays and several essays show in up most or all texts: Bohannan’s “Shakespeare in the Bush” (1966), Lee’s “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari” (1969) and Miner’s “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” (1956). There is another essay that is often included, Geertz’s “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” (1972). In looking over these 4 essays, I wondered, why are these the most widely anthologized?

What they have in common is that in Bohannan’s, Lee’s and Geertz’s essays, the first-person authors are revealed to be completely wrong in an amusing and memorable fashion. In Miner’s essay it is the reader who learns that they were wrong as the essay is set up to de-familiarize American culture (Nacirema = American).

In Bohannan’s, Lee’s and Geertz’s texts, the first-person narrator starts out facing a common field-work task and ends up being the one out of control. Bohannan wants to explain Hamlet to a group of interlocutors she has been gathering stories from, but she is taught the true meaning of the play. Lee wants to get a fat bull to give his interlocutors a feast but, although he gets the largest animal he can find, he is accused of being stingy. Geertz and his wife are trying to integrate into their new research environment, a small village in Bali. They succeed not by their academic reasonings but because they run away when police raid a cock fight. Fleeing in terror and ending up in a stranger’s courtyard pretending to drink tea is what gets them included in village life.

Bohannan, Lee and Geertz confidently set out on their paths, get linguistically/ culturally/ physically lost but end up with valuable insights that help them understand the cultures they are studying. To me, they are popular for the same reason The Wizard of Oz, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland and the new Super Mario Brother’s Movie are popular. It’s fun to watch someone else live through a tornado/ drop down a rabbit hole/ fall into a tunnel, arrive in a foreign county and slowly learn the ropes.

And I think there is something hopeful and reassuring in hundreds of anthropology professors assigning these essays over the last 50-odd years. Reading them is a reminder that things can go very wrong in fieldwork and still turn out ok. They are anthropological equivalent of the Tolkien quote:

It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something.

Brief, non-life-threatening panic is useful, like the concept that nightmares aren’t telling you something terrible will happen, but simply trying to get your attention. And it’s helpful that all three essays highlight the randomness of the panic in that the three narrators felt confident in what they were doing until, suddenly, they were lost. That’s exactly how ethnographic research goes; the panic can come at any time.

A few months ago, I brought food for a meeting with the research guys. I usually bring the firewood and drinks as I don’t cook, but there is one restaurant in town that is trusted so I try to bring dinner now and then.

Like Lee, I was happy to know that I had managed to bring good food for people who have been helping me with my research for years. I unpacked the hummus, salads, bread and plates of grilled meats with pride. One of the men motioned me to put one of the plates of meat back into a cooler, saying “there is enough.” I knew this was in keeping with their normal practice of not setting all the food out as untouched food could be given to other people if not needed. It’s better to have everyone eat from one or two plates which are picked clean than have three or four half-eaten plates with the leftovers thrown out for animals.

We started to eat and, after a while I noticed that the plates were emptying faster than I had anticipated. Soon, there were only scraps left on table. I looked at the man I know best (X) and he glared at me. I felt horrible. I had failed. I had not provided enough food. I was miserly. What a stupid mistake to not bring enough! I glanced again at X and he glared at me again. I was a huge disappointment! I wanted to sink into the sand.

Then I reflected – wait, these guys do not care about food! I wrote an entire book about these men do not care about food. They can handle being hungry for hours; they take pride in their self-control. And they had all eaten at least some meat; no one was starving. So why was X glaring at me?

I looked at X for a third time and he glanced over at the cooler. Suddenly I remembered, I had put an extra plate in the cooler to save for a late comer. So I reached over, opened the cooler, pulled out the plate, took off the tin-foil and set it in the middle of the mat. Everyone dived in.

Ah-ha! The issue was NOT that I had not brought enough dinner but that I had not offered all that I had. Given the importance of self-control in their cultures, they were not going to ask me to give them more food. I brought the meal, so I needed to be the one to offer it. Since I was not offering the last plate, perhaps I wanted to keep that food for myself. And they were not going to lose their dignity by asking for it.

X wasn’t glaring because I had underestimated how much to buy but because I was acting like a miser. Not buying enough is ok; selfishness and stupidity are not ok. I should have remembered the last plate and immediately set it out.

A few weeks later, I checked my insight with X and he agreed with my understanding. He thought maybe I had forgotten the extra plate, but he wasn’t sure, and he had to leave the decision up to me. Then I ran this whole story by another research guy who was not there that night and got the same reaction: no one would care if I didn’t provide as much as everyone wanted to eat, but to have food in the cooler and not share it – that was bad behavior.

The event made me think of Lee’s essay and Alice playing croquet with flamingos. It’s fun to read about other people’s moments of confusion and frustration, and so difficult to live through those moments yourself.

(photo by S. B.)

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