This idea is well established

in the discipline, and was the central idea expressed in the title of Powdermaker's
classic study of her fieldwork Stranger and Friend ( 1966). She believed that "Whatever
the degree of the fieldworker's participation in the whole society, friendships
with a few people develop, and they help him to find a niche in the community. It
is these friends who often become his best informants" { 1966:420). (121)

Briggs concluded: "Although an anthropologist must have a recognized role or roles

in order to make it possible to interact with him sensibly and predictably, nevertheless
it will be evident from what I have described of my own case that the assignment
of a role may create as many problems as it solves for both the anthropologist
and his hosts" ( 1 977:78). (122) Jean Briggs (1 977) in her honest account of her fieldwork in 1963
with an Eskimo
{Inuit) community in the Canadian Arctic.

Published in 1 960, Wagley's account of his fieldwork in 1939 in a small village

of about 175 Tapirape Indians in Brazil. Wagley reflects that:
In the security of our studies and in the classroom, we claim that anthropology is a
social science ... But, at its source, in the midst of the people with whom the anthropologist
lives and works, field research involves the practice of an art in which emotions,
subjective attitudes and reactions, and undoubtedly subconscious motivations
participa te . . . Anthropological field research is a profoundly human endeavor . . . the
anthropologist almost inevitably is involved in a complex set of human relations among
another people . . . and each anthropologist is a distinctive personality and each
undoubtedly handles in his own way his dual role as a sympathetic friend to key informants
and as scientific observer of a society and culture which is not his own.
( 1 960:414-15) (123)

Gerald Berreman's " Behind Many Masks" was published as the prologue to his
outstanding ethnography Hindus of the Himalayas ( 1972). In the Preface to the
second edition, he states:
I believe firmly that ethnography cannot be understood independently of the experience
which produces it. just as I felt obliged to be thorough and candid in presenting
my research findings, so I have felt obliged to be thorough and candid about how I did
that research. If fault be found with the former, it is the result of the latter. Written
from an "interactionist" perspective, "Behind Many Masks" emphasizes the problems
for research generated by the conflicting interests of the various castes and by their
divergent culture and lifestyles, because even in small and isolated Sirkanda, social
heterogeneity
loomed as a major obstacle to my rapport and my understanding, just as it
does to the people's relationships with one another. ( 1972:vi-vii) (123)

This reality, of the competing interests of research participants, is also apparent

in Antonius Robben's article "Ethnographic Seduction, Transference, and Resistance
in Dialogues about Terror and Violence in Argentina. " Usually, cultural anthropologists
do fieldwork with people they like, respect, or even admire, but Robben raises
the issue of establishing research relationships with people you do not like and
whom you may even consider to be morally reprehensible. As a result of his fieldwork
with both victims and perpetrators of violence during the "dirty war" in
Argentina, Robben warns of the dangers of ''ethnographic seduction," which he
defines as "a complex dynamic of conscious moves and unconscious defenses that
may arise in interviews with victims and perpetrators of violence" ( 1 996:72) and
which undermine critical detachment (see also Robben 1995). Few anthropologists
have had his experience: "There were days when I talked in the morning to a victim
of political persecution and in the afternoon with a military officer who had been
responsible for the repression. These days· were stressful because they demanded
radical swings in empathetic understanding" ( 1996:97). (124)

The Tapirape, a friendly and humorous

people, seemed rather pleased with the curious
strangers in their midst. They found our antics
amusing; the gales of laughter that accompanied
the conversations that we could hear but
not understand seemed evoked by tales of our
strange behavior. (It is so easy to presume that
oneself is the subject of conversation when listening
to a strange language.) (128)

Gradually most of the villagers emerged as distinctive

personalities and among them was
Champukwi. I cannot remember when I first
came to know him as an individual, but his
name begins to appear regularly in field notebooks
about one month after our arrival. (128) field notes

Wa lking through the forest to and from

Champukwi's garden, we often hunted for
;a cu, a large forest fowl rather like a chicken.
I attemped to teach Champukwi how to use
my .22 rifle, but he had difficulty understanding
the gunsights and missed continually (129) he had rifle, I had sunblock – both trying to
defend ourselves from the perils of fieldwork

He learned
when he should pause or repeat a phrase or
sentence in order that I might take notes. He
came to understand what writing meant, discovering
that what I wrote in my notebook I
could repeat to him later. In time he appreciated
the fact that I was not so much interested
in learning the Ta pirape language as I was in
comprehending the Ta pirape way of life. (129)

The potential fieldworker in any given

area often has to rely for advance information
about many of the practical problems of his
craft upon the occasional verbal anecdotes
of his predecessors or the equally random
remarks included in ethnographic prefaces. To
the person facing fieldwork for the first time,
the dearth of such information may appear to
be the result of a conviction, among those who
know, that experience can be the only teacher.
Alternatively, he may suspect ethnographers of
having established a conspiracy of silence on
these matters. When he himself becomes a
bona fide ethnographer he may join that conspiracy
inadvertently, or he may feel obligated
to join it not only to protect the secrets of
ethnography, but to protect himself. As a result
of the rules of the game which kept others
from communicating their experience to him, he may feel that his own difficulties of morale
and rapport, his own compromises between
the ideal and the necessary, were unique, and
perhaps signs of weakness or incompetence (137) not the case in 21 st century anthropology

As such, it is an attempt to
portray some features of that human experience
which is fieldwork, and some of the implications
of its being human experience for
ethnography as a scientific endeavor. (138)

The reasons for such reticence are not far

to seek. Contacts with outsiders have been
limited largely to contacts with policemen and
tax collectors - two of the lowest forms of life
in the Pahari taxonomy. Such officials are
despised and feared not only because they
make trouble for villagers in the line of duty,
but because they also extort bribes on the
threat of causing further trouble and often
seem to take advantage of their official positions
to vent their aggressions on these vulnerable
people. Since India's independence,
spheres of governmental responsibility have
extended to include stringent supervision of
greatly extended national forest lands,
rationing of certain goods, establishment of a
variety of development programs, etc. The
grounds for interfering in village affairs have multiplied as the variety of officials has proliferated.
Any stranger, therefore, may be a government
agent, and as such he is potentially
troublesome and even dangerous. (139) How have things changed now? People are conscious now of the
difference between government officials and development officials and researchers... How much of this is
a post-liberalization phenomenon?

I began introducing myself as Vaikuntam’s and Guruji’s shishya

Villagers never ceased to wonder, as I sometimes

did myself, why I had chosen this particular
area and village for my research (143) it wasn’t Vaikuntam, but my colleagues who wondered why I chose
this field for research

Villagers pointed out that

when the potter makes a thousand identical
cups, each has a unique destiny. Similarly, each
man has a predetermined course of life and
it was my fate to come to Sirkanda. (143)

That suspicions as to our motives were eventually

allayed did not mean we therefore could
learn what we wanted to learn in the village.
It meant only that villagers knew in a general
way what they were willing to let us learn;
what impressions they would like us to receive.
The range of allowable knowledge was far
greater than that granted a stranger, far less
than that shared by villagers.(143)

Three months were spent almost exclusively

in building rapport, in establishing ourselves
as trustworthy, h􀁷rmless, sympathetic, and
interested observers of village life. In this time
we held countless conversations, most of them
dealing with the weather and other timely and
innocuous topics. A good deal of useful ethnographic
information was acquired in the
process, but in many areas its accuracy proved
to be wanting. Better information was
acquired by observation than by inquiry in this
period. We found cause for satisfaction during
this frustrating and, from the point of view of
research results, relatively fruitless time in the
fact that we were winning the confidence of a
good many people which we hoped would pay
off more tangibly later. When the last open
opponent of our endeavor evidently had been
convinced of our purity of motive in the incident
described above, we felt that we could
begin our data collecting in earnest. (144) Vaikuntam wanted me to write about the greatness of the craft
and his contribution... in a way I am succumbing to his wishes

Considered
as a basic feature of social interaction,
therefore, impression management is of
methodological as well as substantive significance
to ethnographers.
The ethnographer comes to his subjects as
an unknown, generally unexpected, and often
unwanted intruder. Their impressions of him
will determine the kinds and validity of data
to which he will be able to gain access, and
hence the degree of success of his work. The
ethnographer and his subjects are both performers
and audience to one another. They
have to judge one another's motives and other
attributes on the basis of short intensive
contact and then decide what definition of
themselves and the surrounding situation they
want to project; what they will reveal and
what they will conceal and how best to do it.
Each will attempt to convey to the other the
impression that will best serve his interests as
he sees them. (146) what is successful ethnography
The ethnographer is likely to evaluate
his subjects on the amount of back-region
information they reveal to him, while he is
evaluated by them on his tact in not intruding
unnecessarily into the back region and, as
rapport improves, on his trustworthiness as
one who will not reveal back-region secrets (147)

To this man, as well as to other low-caste

friends, the ethnographer had become what
Goffman refers to as a "confidant," one who
is located outside of the team and who partie- ·

ipates " . . . only vicariously in back and fro.nt

region activity" (156) vicariously – andar ki baat

I use the term seduction

to denote ways in which interviewees
influence the understanding and research
results of their interviewers. (160)

I have
extended the concept to the conscious utilization
of the complex social, emotional, dialogic,
and transferential dynamic between ethnographer
and informant. (160)

Much has been written about the cultural

presuppositions and blind spots of anthropologists
that may skew their observations, and
we are also conscious of the impression management,
mistrust, deceit, exaggeration, backstage
defenses, and even disinformation by
informants who try to shield sensitive knowledge
from the inquisitive fieldworker. Such
circumventions are generally regarded as
obstructing rather than contributing to a
greater ethnographic understanding. Anthropology
simply lacks a theory of concealment
that transforms these obstructions into a
deeper cultural insight (161) obstructions can provide cultural insights – how a society veils its knowledge,
or how a society deflects, how a society avoids

He concludes by warning
anthropologists that "a new day is coming," and he advises us "to get down off
[our] thrones of authority and . . . begin helping Indian tribes instead of preying on
them" ( 1973 : 1 37). In particular, Deloria insisted that the "compilation of useless
knowledge for knowledge's sake should be utterly rejected by the Indian people. We
should not be objects of observation for those who do nothing to help us"
( 1 973: 136). Instead, he called for a new relationship between anthropologists and
Native Americans based on reciprocity and Indian needs, and a redistribution of
power in research relationships. (178) In 1 969, Vine Deloria, Jr., a Standing Rock
Sioux law student at the University
of Colorado, published his controversial book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian
Manifesto, in which he severely criticized anthropologists for the way they conducted
their research with Native Americans.
"Why should we continue to be the private zoos for anthropologists? Why
should tribes have to compete with scholars for funds when the scholarly productions
are so useless and irrelevant to real life"? ( 1 997:4} (179) Deloria in Biolsi and Zimmerman

Like other indigenous voices "speaking back" to anthropologists, Cecil King

combines
his criticism with a demand for reciprocity - a call for anthropologists to "become
instrumental to our ambitions, our categories of importance" ( 1 997: 1 1 7) (180)
Consideration of
cases of when "the other talks back" have helped us to move toward increased
sensitivity and "new ways to involve our ethnographic subjects in their selfrepresentation"
( 19 9 3:22). (182)

Drawing attention to the politics of ethnographic writing, particularly

the impact of the audience (readers) on both the anthropologist and text, (181) text as
site of contention
What are the proper relations between the
anthropologist and her subjects? To whom
does she owe her loyalties, and how can these
be met in the course of ethnographic fieldwork
and writing (208) who or what were my loyalties to – skill or craftsman

Anonymity makes us unmindful that we

owe our anthropological subjects the same
degree of courtesy, empathy and friendship in
writing as we generally extend to them face to
face in the field where they are not our 'subjects'
but our boon companions without whom
we quite literally could not survive. (208)

At the heart of the anthropological method

is the practice of witnessing, which requires
an engaged immersion over time in the lived
worlds of our anthropological subjects. Like
poetry, ethnography is an act of translation
and the kind of 'truth' that it produces is
necessarily deeply subjective, resulting from
the collision between two worlds and two
cultures. And so, the question often posed
to anthropologist-ethnographers about the
dangers of 'losing one's objectivity' in the field
is really quite beside the point. Our task
requires of us only a highly disciplined subjectivity.
There are scientific methods and models
appropriate to other ways of doing anthropological
research, but ethnography, as I understand
it, is not a science. (211)
Like any other
form of 'translation' ethnography has a predatory
and writerly motive to it. It is not done
'for nothing' in a totally disinterested way. It
is for something, often it is to help us understand
something - whether it is about schizophrenia
as a projection of cultural themes or
about ways of solving perennial human dilemmas
around the reproduction of bodies and
families and homes and farms. (211)

And, then, there is ethnography and participant

observation - the settlement metaphor
par excellence. Here we enter, settle down, and
try to stay for as long as people will tolerate
our presence. As 'travelling people' we are at
the mercy of those who agree to take us in as_
much as they are at our mercy in the ways we
represent them after the living-in and livingwith
is over. Anthropologists are a restless and
nomadic tribe, hunters and gatherers of human
values. Often we are motivated by our own
sense of estrangement from the society and
culture into which we were existentially
thrown. I went to rural Ireland, in no small
part, in search of better ways to live (212)

Berreman's article is the most important and damning critique of the changes in
rhe AAA code of ethics. These changes were driven by the interests of the growing
number of anthropologists employed outside of universities in the private sector,
and the new code is partly intended to prevent the division of the profession into
"academic'' and "practicing" moieties. Berreman decries the shift away from idealism
(and aiJ notions of universal human rights, ethics, or morals are, by definition,
idealistic} toward self-centered practicality, and he identifies four major
removals that represent this shift - that paramount responsibility is to the people
studied, the censuring of covert research, the principle of accountability for
ethical violations, and the commitment to public duty rather than private interest.
Berreman scathingly concludes ( 1 99 1 :52) that omitting these concerns results in not
a code at all, but a mild statement of interest, and one conspicuously devoid of
ethical content. It is in fact, a license for unfettered free-enterprise research, advising
and engineering disguised as anthropology, with the intent of employing the ethical
reputation of the discipline to enable and facilitate a wide range of mission-oriented
activities, including those of dubious ethical and even egregiously unethical nature.
( 1 99 1 :52) (274-275)

Regardless of the ongoing debates and issues surrounding research ethics, today
anthropologists increasingly believe that solutions to ethical problems that arise
during fieldwork should be found through negotiation. The trend is toward ethical
"contracts" or agreements worked out in the field with research participants. While
codes of ethics provide useful guidelines, in the field ethical research relationships
must be actively, if not creatively, negotiated and adapted to the specifics of the
situation or context. (275)
Perhaps the most similar cases in
medical ethics concern the paramedics or even
less well-qualified individuals who are sometimes
called upon to render extraordinary
forms of medical care, even surgery, during
war, on ships, or elsewhere. But in these cases
there is usually a shared understanding
between the care giver and the care receiver of
the nature and level of treatment possible, and
of the relative consequences of doing something
versus doing nothing. This situation is
unlike the anthropological setting, in which
there is usually a complete lack of shared belief
about the nature of health and illness, the
nature and level of medical care available, and
the possible outcomes of various alternatives. (317) there was a shared understanding between
Vaikuntam and me that the monetary terms of our relationship were transgressional. Vaikuntam was
conscious of the fact, otherwise he would have not asked in a sheepish manner. It is interesting that
while he knew that what he was demanding was unethical, and he paid reverence to it in the way he
approached the topic, he also realized the kind of power such indiscretion had on the ethnography and
ethnographer

Perhaps we are compelled to provide

amateur medical care (support or advice) out of a combined sense,
usually implicit, that most of the illnesses (crisis of our subjects) we
confront in the field are relatively mild or
self-limiting, and that our treatments are
essentially benign. Far from responding with
anxiety toward our indigenous hosts, anthropologists
have historically been criticized for
slipping into more of a paternalistic attitude,
again normally tacit and unexamined. Both
cases seem to involve a paradox or dilemma of
power. (318)

I've described a community in which I was

seen to possess numerous signs of power - tape
recorder, typewriter, camera, medications - yet
I was myself a relatively powerless figure. (320)

why, in other words, would an

anthropologist who declines to pass moral
judgment on infanticide or polyga my, who is
hesitant (at least in the popular stereotype) to
bring matches into a community that rubs
sticks together to make fire, nonetheless be
willing to provide medical care even in a professional, let alone amateur way? (323)

we sometimes set aside our academic,

textbook ethics and our theoretical convictions
when we are faced with the real problems of
real people. (323) why isn’t anthropology equipped to anticipate/contemplate real problems of real
people

After all,
anthropo logists who are not economists, who
are not policy experts, who are not political
scientists (or politicians) nonetheless work on
behalf of ind igenous communities for whom
political, economic, and policy decisions will
have profound and long-term consequences (323) anthropologists representing the ambitions of the
‘subjects’

Ethnographic fieldwork is generally presented in a written text, even though people's

sensory experience of the world reaches far beyond verbal or written expression. This
literary bias has resulted in the ethnographic neglect of the senses and the privileging
of writing over other means of representation, such as photogra phy, film,
and sound recordings (385)

Photography and moving pictures were used by ethnographers soon after they
were invented. George Catlin took what are believed to be the first ethnographic
photographs, only six years after the daguerreotype was invented in 1 8 39, and
Bronislaw Malinowski and Claude Levi-Strauss were avid photographers (Prins
2004, Levi-Strauss 1 995, Young 1998). The first ethnographic film was shot in 1 8 95
by the French physician-turned-anthropologist Felix-Louis Regnault. Alfred
Haddon used film as a recording device during the 1 8 9 8 Torres Straits expedition,
and so did Franz Boas among the Kwakiutl (De Brigard 1 995). These ethnographers
used pictures and film mainly for reasons of illustration. Gregory Bateson and
Margaret Mead were perhaps the first to employ photography and film as scientific
instruments to analyze and interpret cultures. Bateson and Mead had been looking
for ways to avoid the detachment of a too analytic etic approach and the
inaccessibility
of a too emphatic ernie approach. Furthermore, they were struggling with
the difficulties of expressing foreign cultural meanings, social practices, and
intangible
intracultural connections in a scientific (English) language. They took recourse
to film and photography. The selection from their groundbreaking photo-ethnography
Balinese Character (Bateson and Mead 1 942) demonstrates that photographs
can be more than an aide-memoire for fieldworkers or a pictorial illustration for
readers. Photographs become the primary causeway into Balinese culture and
thus organize the data analysis, the written commentary, and the ethnographic
interpretation. (385-385)

Visual anthropology took flight after Balinese Character with the photoethnography
on mortuary rituals in rural Greece by Loring Danforth and Alexander Tsiaras
( 1 982), and the ethnographic documentaries by filmmakers such as Robert Gardner,
Timothy Asch, John Marshall, and Jean Rouch (see Edwards 1 992, Hockings 1 995,
Rouch 2003 ). Anthropologists soon realized that the visual image is not an accurate
registration of reality, as early practitioners believed, but that "raw" photos
and footage, just like "raw" field notes, are constructions encapsulating the intention,
agency, and objectives of the ethnographer, and thus subject to reinterpretation.
The finished product is the outcome of an elaborate editing process informed
by an ethnographic understanding of the culture under study (Heider 1 976, Scherer
1 992). (386)

Training is “visual rather than verbal, and kinaesthetic rather than disciplinary” (386)

Michael Herzfeld argues that the Cartesian bias of Western science, namely the
separation of body (the sensorial domain) and mind (the ideational domain), is the
principal obstacle to a mature anthropology of the senses. Western culture came to
regard the mind as the seat of reason, and vision as its principal judge. Science
became dominated by verbal and visual representation, while smell, touch, and taste
were dismissed as too subjective. This bias became reinforced by the rapid
development
of technology which registered the world through visual means, whether
in writing and diagrams or in photography and test equipment. We can also add
Descartes's conviction that knowledge advances through ideas as a second influence,
thus giving further credence to the superiority of the written word. Herzfeld
encourages
sensorial fieldworkers to make the study of the entire sensorium indispensable
to other domains of ethnographic inquiry, such as economics or politics, in order
to lift the anthropology of the senses out of its relative isolation. Just as attention
to gender and reflexivity is now part and parcel of most ethnographic work, so the
entire range of senses should become of similar concern. The rapid development of
technical equipment and the declining costs and improved quality of sonic and visual
reproduction are contributing to visual and musical anthropology in ways that may
someday also benefit the ethnography of smell and taste (388)

Anthropology, like all academic disciplines, is

primarily a verbal activity. Even the study of
visual media must always be expressed in
words. Recent attempts to introduce pictorial
representations of human movement (notably
Williams 1 9 9 1 ; Williams, ed., 1 997; Farnell
1995) suggest the inadequacy of this Cartesian
Commitment. We have seen already that
modern representational practices are heavily
dependent on visual formats, but even this
restriction seems to appear most commonly
as an extension of verbal te:\."ts. A diagram
without a caption would not be easily understood.
In consequence of this bias built into the
preferred modes of represenration, the role of
smell and hearing, not to speak of touch, has
been grossly under-represented. Can suffering,
the theme of the previous chapter, be understood
without reference to sensation? (431)
The fundamental premise underlying the
concept of an "anrh ropology of the senses·· is
that sensory perception is a cultural as well as
a physical act: sight. hearing. touch, taste. and
smell are not only means of apprehending
physical phenomena bur are also avenues for
the transmission of cultural values (431)

In this regard, the study of

the senses is remarkably like that of, say,
economies: it is resistant to such anthropological
relativization because this relativization
threatens the security of our own unconsciously
cherished perceptions and thus - especially
- of the idea of a transcendent "common
sense." Indeed, the etymological splitting of
terms like "sense" and "taste" into two
streams - the cerebral and the sensual - is diagnostic
of the extent to which Cartesian and
even earlier western assumptions about the
separation of body from mind have taken hold
of our consciousness. (432)

The
small number of scholars so far engaged in this
enterprise suggests, above all, the risk that the
senses - other than those already dominant -
will remain marginal to ethnographic description
unless, in some practical fashion, all of
anthropology can be recognized as necessarily
shot through with alertness to the entire gamut
of sensory semiosis. I use the term "semiosis"
rather than "perception'' here advisedly, for I
wish to signal the importance of recognizing
that what this new development offers is a specifically social, as opposed to psychological,
assessment of how the various senses are
used. (432-433) ethnographers need to demonstrate that ethnography is produced through the
application of all the senses

culture mediates experience... how such mediation is negotiated and

modulated through actual changes in the social
sphere. (433)

An anthropology that
refuses to admit the significance of what it
lacks the technical means to measure or
describe would nevertheless be a poor empirical
discipline indeed. (437)

The phrase "the cultural anthropology of

the senses" was coined by the historian Roy
Porter in his preface to The Foul and the Fragrant:
Odor and the French Social Imagination,
by Alain Corbin (Porter 1 986). The
anthropology of the senses did not, however,
arise as a distinct field until the late 1 980s. In
1 989 Paul Stoller, arguing that "anthropologists
should open their senses to the worlds of
their others," called for the production of
"tasteful" ethnographies with vivid literary
descriptions of "the smells, tastes and textures
of the land, the people, and the food" ( 1 989:
29). In order for anthropologists to achieve
this, he cautioned that they must reorient theirsenses away from the visualism of the West
and toward the sensory landscapes of other
cultures (see further Fabian 1 983; Tyler 1987). (438)

Desjarlais ( 1 992) has

explored the sensory aesthetics of pain and
healing among the Tibetan Yolmo Sherpa in
order to present an ''embodied" analysis of
emotional and physical suffering and the ritual
cures used to treat them. (439)

In Europe, for example,

the decline in the importance of the nonvisual
senses from the Middle Ages to modernity
(Classen 1 993a) was especially accelerated by
the development of phorographic technology a
technology in which "anything can be separated,
can be made discontinuous from anything
else," as Susan Sontag ( 1 978: 22)
remarks. (440)

It seems that even the pure light of science requires, in order to shine, the darkness of
ignorance. (Karl Marx 1856) (465)

tell us tales about ogres or

wolves, about Little Red Riding Hood.
Frighten us, but make it clear that it's only a
story; or that they are j ust peasants: credulous,
backward and marginal. Or alternatively:
confirm that out there there are some people
who can bend the laws of causality and morality,
who can kill by magic and not be punished;
but remember to end by saying that they do
not really have that power: they only believe it
because they are credulous, backward peasants
. . . (see above). (466)
To say that one is studying beliefs abo􀚋t
witchcraft is automatically to deny them any
truth: it is just a belief, it is not true. (466)

'their language is
roo simple', 'they are incapable of symbolizing',
you won't get anytrung out of them
because 'they don't talk': (466)

The doctors and vets answer him by denying

the existence of any series: illnesses, deaths and
mechanical breakdowns do not occur for the
same reasons and are not treated in the same
way. These people are the curators of objective
knowledge about the body, (467)

In the
field, however, all I came across was language.
For many months, the only empirical facts I
was able to record were words. (468)

So perhaps, I was not entirely mistaken

when I said I wanted to study practices: the
act, in witchcraft, is the word. That may seem an elementary statement, but
it is full of implications. The first is this: until
now, the work of ethnographers has relied on
a convention (one too obvious to be stated)
. about the use of spoken words. For ethnography
to be possible, it was necessary that the
investigator and the 'native' should at least
agree that speech has the function of conveying
information. To be an ethnographer is
first to record the utterances of appropriately
chosen native informants. How to establish
this information-situation (the studio in my case), the main source of
the investigator's knowledge, how to choose
one's informants, how to involve them in a
regular working relationship . . . the handbooks
always insist on this truly fundamental
point in fieldwork. (469)

In the Bocage, the situation happens to

be less comfortable: nobody ever talks about
witchcraft to gain knowledge, but to gain
power. The same is true about asking questions.
Before the ethnographer has uttered a
single word, he is involved in the same power
relationship as anyone else talking about it.
Let him open his mouth, and his interlocutor
immediately tries to identify his strategy,
estimate his force, guess if he is a friend or foe,
or if he is to be bought or destroyed. As
with any other interlocutor, speaking to the
ethnographer one is addressing either a
subjed supposed to be able (a witch, an
unwitcher) or unable (a victim, a bewitche􀚌
person). (470)

So long as I claimed the usual status of

an ethnographer, saying I wanted to know for
the sake of knowing, my interlocutors were
less eager to communicate their own knowledge
than to test mine, to try to guess the necessarily
magic use I intended to put it to, and
to develop their force to the detriment of my
own. I had to accept the logic of this totally
combative situation and admit that it was
absurd to continue to posit a neutral position
which was neither admissible or even credible
to anyone else. When total war is being waged
with words, one must make up one's mind to
engage in another kind of ethnography (470)

I was probably not yet ready to maintain

this speech process in the only way conceivable
to my interlocutors (471) ethnography as speech process

Of course this position existed before me

and was acceptably occupied and maintained
by others. But now I was the one being placed
there, and my name was being attached to this
position as well as to my particular personal
existence. (471)

More generally, to claim an external

position for oneself is to abandon hope of ever
learning this discourse: first (remember)
because those concerned react with silence or
duplicity to anyone who claims to be outside.... To take one example: if you want to know
the substance of a diviner's consultation, you
can simply ask him what usually takes place in
a seance, or what his clients consult him about.
But you should not be surprised at trivial
answers: 'They come because of illness, love
affairs, animals, to recover money they have
lost . ' - 'And what about spells?' - 'That
..

might be the case, but I don 't deal with that'

will be tlie diviner's systematic reply. A barrier,
then, of silence and duplicity: the diviner
can only admit 'dealing with that' in front of
someone who puts forward a personal request
for divination. (473-474)

It may
be wondered how, at a certain point, I
managed to surmount this inability, that is, try
to get it out in words (474) try to get it out in words

But of all the snares which might

imperil our work, there are two we had learnt
to avoid like the plague: that of agreeing to
'participate' in the native discourse, and that
of succumbing to the temptations of subjectivism. (475)

In the case of the ethnography I was

practising, the problem was, each time, to
evaluate correctly the limits of my position in
speech. (475)

I mean the ethnographer's

dependence on a finite corpus of
empirical observations and native texts collected
in the field. This kind of ethnography
meets any new question with the answer that
it is included, or not, in the corpus; it can be
verified, or not, in the empirical data - and of
anything not referred to in the corpus, nothing
can be asserted. In my case, the fact that Bocage peasants forced me to come up with a
number of statements in the same way as they
did (i.e. to be an encoder) enabled me to break
away from the limits of the corpus; or, and this
comes to the same thing, to include my own
discourse in it (475)