~ Participant

Observation ~
 ~ Participant
Observation~
A Guide for Fieldworkers

Second Edition

Kathleen M. DeWalt and Billie R. DeWalt

0?~)
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PRE 55

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Participant observation: a guide for fieldworkers /Kathleen M. DeWalt and
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 ~ Contents 9C<

Preface ix
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION? 1
The Method of Participant Observation 1
History of the Method 5
Why Participant Observation Is Important 10
Enhancing the Quality of Data Collection and Analysis 10
Formulating New Research Questions 15
Notes 16
CHAPTER 2: LEARNING TO BE A PARTICIPANT OBSERVER: 19
THEORETICAL ISSUES
Learning To Be a Participant Observer 20
Observation and Participation 21
Participation and Observation: An Oxymoron in Action? 28
What Determines the Role a Researcher Will Adopt? 30
Limits to Participation? 33
Beyond the Reflexivity Frontier 35
Participant Observation on the Fast Track 38
Notes 39
CHAPTER 3: DOING PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION: 41
BECOMING A PARTICIPANT
Entering the Field 41
First Contact 44
Establishing Rapport 47
Breaking Through 54
Talking the Talk 56
Walking the Walk 58
Making Mistakes 61
Notes 66

v
vi Contents

CHAPfER 4: THE COSTS OF PARTICIPATION: 67

CULTURE SHOCK
Coping with Culture Shock 73
Participating and Parenting: Children and Field Research 74
Reverse Culture Shock (Reentry Shock) 77
Note 78
CHAPTER 5: DOING PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION: 79
BECOMING AN OBSERVER
The Role ofTheory and Conceptual Frameworks 80
Taking the Observer Role 81
Attending to Detail: Mapping the Scene 81
(Participatory) Community Mapping 84
Counting 85
Attending to Conversation 87
Field Notes as a Training Tool for Observation 87
Seeing Old Events with New Eyes 88
Practicing and Improving Observation and Memory 88
What to Observe 89
Just Experiencing 92
Limits to Observation 92
Ethnographer Bias 94
Notes 96
CHAPfER 6: GENDER AND SEX ISSUES IN PARTICIPANT 99
OBSERVATION
The Gendered Ethnographer 99
Up Close and Personal: Sex in the Field 102
Note 108
CHAPfER 7: DESIGNING RESEARCH WITH PARTICIPANT 109
OBSERVATION
Participant Observation and Research Design 109
Fundamentals of Design of Participant Observation 111
Objectivity 111
Reliability 112
Elements of Design 123
Choosing a Question 123
Appropriate Questions 124
Choosing a Site 126
Appropriate Methods and the Benefits ofTriangulation 127
Enhancing Representativeness: Sampling in Participant Observation 128
Proposing Participant Observation 133
Research Objectives 135
Notes 136
 Contents vii

CHAPTER 8: INFORMAL INTERVIEWING IN PARTICIPANT 137

OBSERVATION
Types of Interviews 138
Interview Techniques 142
Active Listening 14 2
Sensitive Silence 143
The Uh-huh Prompt 145
Repetition Feedback 14 7
Summary Feedback 148
Asking Questions in Interviewing 149
Tell Me More 149
For Clarification 150
Naive Questions 150
Avoiding Confrontation 151
Changing Topics 152
Talking About Sensitive Subjects 153
Concluding an Interview 155
Notes 156

CHAPTER 9: WRITING FIELD NOTES 157

History 157
Kinds of Field Notes 160
JotNotes 160
Expanded Notes: Field Notes Proper 165
Methodological Notes 168
Diaries and Journals 168
Logs 169
Meta-notes/Analytic Notes 170
Headnotes 171
Field Notes in Virtual Research 173
How to Record 17 4
Research Integrity: Who Owns the Field Notes 176
Notes 178

CHAPTER 10: ANALYZING FIELD NOTES 179

Process of Data Analysis 180
Managing Qualitative Data 180
Data Reduction 181
Approaches to Indexing 184
Coding for Themes 189
Coding for Characteristics 192
Managing Coding and Indexing 192
Word Searches 193
viii Contents

Data Display 196

Quotes 196
Vignettes and Cases 197
Tables and Matrices 198
Charts 199
Decision Modeling 202
Interpretation and Verification 202
Audit Trails 205
Writing Up 207
Notes 210
CHAPfER 11: ETHICAL CONCERNS IN PARTICIPANT 211
OBSERVATION
Need for Competency 212
The Meaning oflnformed Consent in Participant Observation 214
Right to Privacy 218
Ethical Conduct of Participant Observation in Online Settings 219
Ethical Publication 221
Relationships 222
Ethics and the Limits to Participation 224
Note 226
Appendix: SAMPLE FIELD NOTES FROM THREE PROJECTS 227

Bibliography 251

Index 265

About the Authors 277

 ~Preface~

As with the first edition of this book, we have written this volume with two
audiences in mind. This book is meant to serve as a basic primer for the
beginning researcher who is about to embark on a career that will employ
the use of qualitative research and ethnographic approaches. At the same
time, this work should be a useful reference and guide for experienced re-
searchers who wish to re-examine their own skills and abilities in light of
best practices of participant observation.
Participant observation is accepted almost universally as the central and
defining method in cultural anthropology but in the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries has become a common feature of qualitative re-
search in a number of disciplines. Qualitative research in such diverse areas
as sociology, education, nursing, and medical research draws on the in-
sights gained through the use of participant observation for gaining greater
understanding of phenomena from the point of view of participants. Par-
ticipant observation has been used to develop this kind of insight in every
cultural setting imaginable, from non-Western cultures little understood
by Western social science, to ethnic and subcultural groups with North
American and European settings, and to "virtual communities" that now
congregate through electronic media.
In writing about participant observation as a method, we were immedi-
ately confronted with a problem that is also an issue in the analysis of data
collected through the method. A good part of what makes up the method
of participant observation, both the collection of information and analysis,
is difficult to put into words. In part, it is because this is a method in which
control of the research situation is less in the hands of the investigator than
in other methods, even other qualitative methods. The investigator is react-
ing to and interacting with others in the events and situations that unfold
before him or her. At the same time, investigators are bringing their own
unique background and experience into the situation. Therefore, any dis-
cussion of "how to do it" must necessarily be abstract. There is no way to

ix
X Preface

anticipate more than a small proportion of the situations in which investi-

gators will find themselves. Just as learning about a new social or cultural
context is experiential and, to an extent unspoken or tacit, so is learning to
use participant observation effectively.
Since the first edition of this book appeared, participant observation as
a tool for research on the internet has become common. We have incorpo-
rated some of the newer approaches to online research and included the
work of several ethnographers who use computer-mediated communica-
tion or participation in massive multiplayer online role playing games in
their research. We have also expanded our discussion of the use of partici-
pant observation in participatory and rapid research. In addition, we have
reviewed some of the conventions of data management and analysis com-
mon in qualitative research that uses participant observation in the health
professions and education. In this edition we have been able to draw on
and learn from the work of a host of new researchers exploring new set-
tings and addressing new questions. However, the basic message remains
the same.
The beginning researcher is urged to experience field work at every op-
portunity and to practice the specific skills that we discuss in this book-
active looking and listening, improving memory, informal interviewing,
writing detailed field notes, and perhaps most importantly, patience. Be-
ginners and experienced researchers should realize that every ethnographer
and participant observer makes mistakes, and these are rarely fatal either
to the individual or the research enterprise. We also believe, however, that
the processes of learning how to be an effective participant observer can
be enhanced and improved by an introduction to the work and thinking
of more seasoned researchers. We believe that there are a number of basic
principles that can be distilled from the experiences and mistakes of others.
Our original inspiration for tackling this book continues to come from
our own mentors, Pertti (Bert) J. Pelto and Gretel H. Pelto, who helped
us to come to appreciate and share their enthusiasm and love for doing
field research. As pioneers in writing about anthropological methods, they
have contributed substantially to making ethnographic research less of a
mystical process. H. Russell Bernard continues to address new issues in
the development of our methodological toolkit. Speaking of "toolkits,"
the series The Ethnographer's Toolkit, edited by Jean J. Schensul and
Margaret LeCompte, has also provided inspiration. Mitch Allen, then at
AltaMira, encouraged us to tum an earlier chapter into the first edition of
this book. Since then, Rosalie Robertson and Jack Meinhardt, both formerly
at AltaMira, encouraged us to take on the writing of a second edition. Bert
Pelto's keen insights and cogent comments on the draft of the first edition
of the book were, as always, key to our improving the manuscript.
 Preface xi

We would also like to thank the many students with whom we have
worked over the years. Their success in becoming anthropologists who are
making real contributions to the discipline, to the institutions in which
they are working, and especially to the people they study, is a great source
of satisfaction to us. We hope that we have successfully captured some of
what we taught them (as well as what they have taught us!) and that this
volume will assist others in following in their footsteps to becoming con-
tributing professionals. Our departments and centers at the Universities of
Kentucky and Pittsburgh have been supportive of our research and have
tolerated our long periods of time doing active field work.
Parts of the first edition were prepared while the authors were at the
Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy
where Kathleen was a scholar in residence for April 2000. We would like to
thank the Rockefeller Foundation and in particular the staff of the Bellagio
Center (most especially Gianna Celli) for their support and wonderful ac-
commodations during that time.
Most importantly, we would like to thank the many people with whom
we have done field research during the past 40 years in a number of differ-
ent settings-in Mexico, the people of Temascalcingo, Quebrantadero, El
Porvenir, Derramaderos, Bateas, Alcalde, and communities along the Gulf
of California; in Honduras, Pespire and many coastal communities around
the Gulf of Fonseca; in Ecuador, people in the provinces of Cotopaxi, Car-
chi, Manabf, and Napa; in Kentucky, people from Red River Gorge, Central
and Mountain Counties (pseudonyms), and Bourbon County; and the
many other places in which we have worked for shorter periods of time. In
each of these communities, people have welcomed us into their lives and
communities, allowing us to participate and make observations about their
lives and times. They taught us much and we hope that, in our published
work, we have been able to reflect some small part of what we have learned
from them.
On a personal level, we would like to thank our children, Saara and
Gareth, for their forbearance in traveling with us or enduring our absences.
Although our own partnership ended in 2002, we share the joy of seeing
them thriving as successful professionals (a tropical biologist and attorney
respectively). And, we delight in our two grandchildren, Owen Benjamin
and Sasha Renee Ickes, to whom this volume is dedicated. We hope that
the lives they have ahead of them are filled with as much enjoyment and
excitement as we have experienced.
 What Is Participant Observation?

Every one of us has had the experience of being a stranger in the midst
of a new crowd. We walk into a room or join a large cluster of people all
of whom seem to know and understand one another. As we nervously
approach some part of the chattering crowd, we look for individuals to
make eye contact or to shift their position to allow us to join the group.
Our senses are on full alert. We observe the people present, how they are
dressed, their relative age, who seems to be doing the most talking, and how
each individual responds to what others are saying. We listen to conversa-
tions taking place to try to gauge the pace of the conversation, the degree of
formality or informality of the language being used, and what it is that is
being discussed. We look for ways in which we might begin to contribute
to the dialogue. In such situations, each of us is engaging in something akin
to ethnographic' fieldwork, and using the method that anthropologists call
participant observation.

THE METHOD OF PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

For anthropologists and social scientists, participant observation is a

method in which a researcher takes part in the daily activities, rituals, inter-
actions, and events of a group of people as one of the means of learning the
explicit and tacit aspects of their life routines and their culture. Within this
formal definition, "explicit" culture is a part of what people are able to ar-
ticulate about themselves. "Explicit culture makes up part of what we know,
a level of knowledge people can communicate about with relative ease"
(Spradley, 1980:7). In contrast, "tacit" aspects of culture largely remain

1
2 Chapter 1

outside our awareness or consciousness. It is the feeling of discomfort we

have, for example, when someone stands too close to us or touches us in a
way that seems too familiar. 2
Participant observation is accepted almost universally as the central and
defining method of research in cultural anthropology. Indeed, for writers
such as McCall and Simmons (1969), Spradley (1980), VanMaanen (1988),
Grills (1998), and Agar (1996), participant observation subsumes the bulk
of what we call field research or, as it is more typically referred to in anthro-
pology, fieldwork Spradley (1980) used the term participant observation
to refer to the general approach of fieldwork in ethnographic research, and
Agar ( 1996) used participant observation as a cover term for all of the ob-
servation and formal and informal interviewing in which anthropologists
engage. 3 Schensul, Schensul, and LeCompte {1999:91) write, "Participant
observation represents the starting point in ethnographic research." They
see participant observation as the foundation method for ethnographic re-
search. For Bernard (2006) participant observation is a "strategic method"
(343). That is, a method that comprises several methods at once. In Ber-
nard's sense, one or more of the elements of a strategic method can be cho-
sen depending on the question being asked. Participant observation "puts
you where the action is and lets you collect data ... any kind of data that
you want, narratives or numbers."
In this book, in order to examine the specific issues in participating and
observing in ethnographic research, we will take a somewhat more narrow
view of participant observation. For us, participant observation is one of
several methods that fit into the general category of qualitative research.
Qualitative research has as its goal an understanding of the nature of phe-
nomena, and is not necessarily interested in assessing the magnitude and
distribution of phenomena (i.e., quantifying it). Participant observation is
just one of a number of methods that are employed to achieve this kind
of understanding. Other qualitative methods include structured and semi-
structured interviewing, pure observation, and the collection and analysis
of texts. The method of participant observation is a way to collect data in
naturalistic settings by ethnographers who observe and/or take part in the
common and uncommon activities of the people being studied.
We take this position because, while much of what we call fieldwork
includes participating and observing the people and communities with
whom we are working, the method of participant observation includes the
use of the information gained from participating and observing through
explicit recording and analysis. That is, all humans are participants and ob-
servers in all of their everyday interactions, but few individuals actually en-
gage in the systematic use of this information for social scientific purposes.
The method of participant observation requires a particular approach to
the recording of observations (in field notes), and the perspective that the
 What Is Participant Observation? 3

information collected through participation is as critical to social scientific

analysis as information from more formal research techniques such as
interviewing, structured observation, and the use of questionnaires and
formal elicitation techniques. However, participant observation underlies
much of the other techniques used in ethnographic fieldwork. It is a way
of approaching the fieldwork experience, and gaining understanding of the
most fundamental processes of social life. It provides context for sampling,
open-ended interviewing, construction of interview guides and question-
naires, and other more structured and more quantitative methods of data
collection. It is rarely, if ever, the only technique used by a researcher
conducting ethnographic research. In this volume we have separated the
specific issues related to the collection, recording, and analysis of data from
participant observation in order to discuss them more fully.
While anthropologists had carried out ethnographic fieldwork before
him, Malinowski (1961 [1922], 1978 [1935]) is usually credited with
developing "something novel" (Sanjek 1990b; Stocking Jr. 1983)-an
approach to fieldwork that gradually became known as the method of
participant observation. Firth (1985) also notes that Malinowski did not
invent long-term research, living with the subjects of research, or working
in the vernacular. What Malinowski contributed was to "supply principles
of systematic, intensive collection and interpretation of field data to a de-
gree of sophistication not known before" (30). Or, as Tedlock (1991) has
said, "Malinowski's invention lay in elevating the fieldwork method into a
theory" (83).
However, original or not, Malinowski's discussion of his approach still
serves as the fundamental description of the method:

Soon after I had established myself in Omarkana 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 village occurrences; to wake up every morning to a new day, presenting
itself to me more or less as it does to the natives. 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 or also the
season, for they get up and begin their labors 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 starting on their errands, or groups of men and women
busy at some manufacturing tasks. Quarrels, jokes, family scenes, events usu-
ally trivial, sometimes dramatic but always significant, form the atmosphere
of my daily life, as well as of theirs. It must be remembered that 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
4 Chapter 1

happens with a newcomer 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 a part
and parcel of their life, a necessary evil or nuisance, mitigated by donations of
tobacco. (1961:7-8) 4

Malinowski's approach was distinguished from earlier forms of fieldwork

in that it included an emphasis on everyday interactions and observations
rather than on using directed inquiries into specific behaviors. And, Sanjek
notes, following others (Leach 1957), "As he observed, he also listened"
(1990b:211).
Writing more than 70 years later, Bourgois, who lived for more than four
years in the neighborhoods in which he worked, described his approach to
research in a more contemporary context in similar terms:

I spent hundreds of nights on the street and in crackhouses observing dealers

and addicts. I regularly tape-recorded their conversations and life histories.
Perhaps more important, I also visited their families, attending parties and
intimate reunions-from Thanksgiving dinners to New Year's Eve celebrations.
I interviewed, and in many cases befriended, the spouses, lovers, siblings,
mothers, grandmothers, and-when possible-the fathers and stepfathers of
the crack dealers featured in these pages. (1995:13)

Boellstorff (2010) created an avatar and participated fully in the mas-

sively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), Second Life. He
used many of the conventional methods associated with ethnographic
fieldwork (participant observation, interview, and focus groups) in his re-
search. As a participant observer he (his avatar) set up a household, made
friends, participated in group activities, and engaged in informal (as well
as more formal) interviewing. He attended weddings and parties; went
to dance clubs and bars, dropped in on friends and hung out. He bought
things, sold things, and even chatted with other participants on the meth-
odological issues of conducting research on a "virtual" society. Over the
course of several years he spent thousands of hours in Second Life. 5 His writ-
ing of field notes was facilitated by being able to archive the text of conver-
sations, although he wrote field note descriptions of his activities as well.
To differing extents, each of these ethnographers practiced the method
of participant observation by living in the community, taking part in usual
and unusual activities, "hanging out," and conversing (as compared with
interviewing), while consciously observing and, ultimately, recording what
they observed. The participating observer seeks out opportunities to spend
time with and carry out activities with members of communities in which
he or she is working. Because enculturation6 takes place (Schensul et al.
1999) at the same time (it is hard to avoid), we believe that a tacit under-
standing of the experience is also being developed. It is an understanding
 What Is Participant Observation? 5

that is not easily articulated or recorded, but that can be mobilized in sub-
sequent analysis.
In addition to one of the first explicit descriptions of participant obser-
vation, another of Malinowski's major contributions to anthropology was
the development of the functionalist theoretical perspective that assumed
"that the total field of data under the observation of the fieldworker must
somehow fit together and make sense" (Leach 1957:120). Sanjek (1990b)
argues that Malinowski's particular approach to fieldwork resulted in the
development of the functionalist theoretical approach. Holy ( 1984) argues
that his theoretical perspective predated his fieldwork and influenced his
method of collecting information. Wax (1971) suggests that Malinowski
needed to invent functionalism in order to justify both his method and
his promotion of that method following his return to academia after the
war. Whatever the actual succession of events and intellectual development
was, the method of participant observation was closely tied to functionalist
theory from its beginning.
To sum up, the key elements of the method of participant observation as
used by anthropologists usually involve the following.

• Living in the context for an extended period of time

• Learning and using local language and dialect
• Actively participating in a wide range of daily, routine, and extraor-
dinary activities with people who are full participants in that context
• Using everyday conversation as an interview technique
• Informally observing during leisure activities (hanging out)
• Recording observations in field notes (usually organized chronologi-
cally)
• Using both tacit and explicit information in analysis and writing

In the chapters that follow, we will have more to say about each one of
these.

HISTORY OF THE METHOD

While Malinowski may have been the first anthropologist to describe this
approach as a research method, he was not the first person or the first
anthropologist to practice it. Wax (1971) begins her discussion of the his-
tory of participant observation with the mention of Herodotus and other
ancient writers, and, for later times, points to amateur writers such as
Condrington, Callaway, and Bogoras, who spent extended time with the
people they wrote about, spoke the languages, and described everyday life
in the nineteenth century. While Atkinson and Hammersley (1994) see
6 Chapter 1

participant observation as primarily twentieth-century phenomenon, they

trace the philosophical and methodological roots of participant observa-
tion in the historicism of the Renaissance; and, in the nineteenth century,
to the development of hermeneutics as an approach to understanding hu-
mans in different settings and time periods.
The first anthropologist to write about using something akin to par-
ticipant observation appears to be Frank Hamilton Cushing. Cushing was
assigned by the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology to collect
information about Zuni Pueblo in the southwestern United States in 1879
(Hinsley 1983; Sanjek 1990b). His supervisor, Spencer Baird, expected him
to spend about three months in Zuni Pueblo but Cushing spent four and
one-half years. Sanjek reports that Cushing wrote Baird in 1879 saying:

My method must succeed. I live among the Indians, I eat their food, and sleep
in their houses .... On account of this, thank God, my notes will contain
much that those of all other explorers have failed to communicate. (Green
1978:136-37)

Cushing learned to speak Zuni and was inducted into a Zuni Pueblo and
then the Bow priesthood (Green 1978; Green et al. 1990; Sanjek 1990b).
In 1881, after two years of time with the Zuni, Cushing wrote to Baird say-
ing: "I would be willing to devote, say, a year or two more to it to study
for a period almost as great, from the inside, the life of the Zuni, as I have
from the outside." Cushing's insistence on an internal, holistic, and organic
understanding of Zuni life and culture born of long-term participation,
fluency in the language, and intuitive, even poetic, insight presage both
Malinowski's approach and more contemporary approaches to ethnogra-
phy. However, either because of Cushing's personality or his approach, he
produced few publications from his Zuni work relative to the length of time
he spent with the Zuni. His successor and others criticized him for having
become too involved with Zuni culture to write analytically and objectively
about it and he was accused of having "gone native" (Hinsley 1983). How-
ever, Cushing left Zuni, married and, with only a brief return to Zuni, spent
the rest of his career in New England. Eakins's well-known, romanticized,
and controversial portrait of Cushing, for which Cushing posed in Eakins's
studio after leaving Zuni, shows Cushing dressed in, and surrounded by,
Zuni artifacts and clothing assembled from several sources. The 1881-1882
photo taken by John Hilliers is titled Ethnologist Frank Hamilton Cushing dur-
ing his years as a member of Zuni Pueblo, wearing a Native American costume of
his own design. Both of these works suggest a more self-conscious adoption
of the trappings of Zuni culture than the kind of adoption of the culture
that "going native" might imply. Muller (2009) suggests that "the case of
Frank Cushing's Zuni-man identity ultimately sheds light on the means by
 What Is Participant Observation? 7

which the material culture of a subordinate group can, under unique cir-
cumstances, be used by an individual from a dominant culture to construct
an identity that provides him with unusual power and privileges." The case
of Frank Cushing does illustrate a persistent conflict in the method of par-
ticipant observation, that is the interplay of power in and identity for the
researcher who insets herself into the lives of the subjects of her research.
Another important figure who used participant observation was Beatrice
Potter Webb. In her 1926 memoir, My Apprenticeship, Webb described her
work as a researcher with Charles Booth in the 1880s. Although she was
the daughter of a nineteenth-century British industrialist and was raised in
privileged conditions, she had a life-long concern for the poor. In order
to learn more about the conditions of London's poor, she sought to gain
acceptance in London's working class neighborhoods and in 1883, with
the aid of her mother's nurse, she disguised her identity and visited poor
neighborhoods. Later, she took a job as a rent collector in public housing
in order to be able to spend her days in the buildings and offices in which
her subjects of research lived and sought services. In 1888 Webb took a
position as a seamstress in a London sweatshop.
Her approach contained many of the elements characteristic of partici-
pant observation. Although she may have spent her days among the poor,
she did not live in the neighborhoods in which she was working. She cer-
tainly observed, but the degree of participation was limited to that which
a rent collector would have had. Also, it is not clear that she systematically
recorded field notes, although the stories of individuals she encountered
do appear in her writings. A description of her findings is included in the
volume Problems of Modern Industry written with her husband, Sidney Webb
(Webb and Webb 1902).
During these years, Webb was much influenced by social reformer and
researcher Charles Booth. Booth developed a group of researchers who car-
ried out qualitative research within the context of statistical studies. Wax
(1971) argues that Booth may have been the first researcher to combine
the analysis of statistical data with information derived from participant
observation.
At about the same time that Malinowski was researching and writing his
book on the Trobriands, Margaret Mead may have independently arrived
at using a method quite similar to Malinowski's. Sanjek suggests that she
had not read Malinowski's book Argonauts of the Western Pacific when she
traveled to Samoa in 1925 to conduct her first research based on original
fieldwork among the Manu' a. In this project she focused on the lives of
adolescent girls, but also carried out a more general ethnographic study of
Manu'an social organization. Mead's description of her approach, in the
introduction of her ethnography of Manu'a, is similar in many ways to Ma-
linowski's and she speaks of "speech in action" as the heart of the method:
8 Chapter 1

My material comes not from half a dozen informants but from scores of
individuals. With the exception of two informants, all work was done in the
native language....Very little of it was therefore gathered in formal interviews
but was rather deviously extracted from the directed conversations of social
groups, or at formal receptions which the chiefs of a village afforded me on
account of my rank in the native social organization.... The concentration
upon a small community and detailed observations of daily life provided me
with a kind of field material rarely accessible to the field ethnographer. (Mead
1969 (1930]:5)

While a good deal of information was gathered through informal inter-

viewing and conversation, Mead also undertook to learn the skills required
of Manu'an girls.

A rather disproportionate amount of my knowledge about Samoan custom

and style came through my exposing myself to teaching-both in matters of
etiquette, dancing. recitation of fa'alupenga-the stylized courtesy phrases and
the making of artifacts .... I felt it was necessary to actually labor through the
specific tasks ... which a Samoan girl had to perform.
I combined the learner or novice's point of view with that of the ethnogra-
pher, a more explicit interpretation of the term "participant observation"-a term
that had not then been invented-than is usual, or even necessary, in any kind
of field work. (1969 (1930]:xix)

Mead's use of the method of participant observation is even more re-

markable in that it represented a dramatic break with the approach of
her mentor Franz Boas and other students he was training. They were still
focused on the collection of texts and historical materials to document the
disappearing native cultures in North America. Unlike her mentor, Mead
was focused on understanding contemporary, living cultures, rather than
disappearing cultures. Mead's use of the method of participant observation
was also important because, rather than being used to gain a comprehen-
sive and holistic description of the "totality" of a culture as Malinowski had
(Sanjek 1990a), her work was focused on a particular problem. By 1930,
then, participant observation had been employed both as an approach to a
holistic description of a culture and as an approach to a focused discussion
of a particular aspect of social life.
In a somewhat revisionist frame of mind, Stocking (1983) pointed out
that if we consider that the ethnographic method can be divided into three
main modes-participation, observation, and interrogation-Malinowski
relied more heavily on the second and third of these. It is clear from his
diaries (Malinowski 1967) that he was often left on the beach while his
informants went off on exchange expeditions. Also, Malinowski was clearly
not approaching the Trobrianders on the basis of social parity. Stocking
 What Is Participant Observation? 9

suggests that Malinowski's relationship with the Trobrianders was closer

to that of "petty lordship" because his informants apparently treated him
as one of high rank (Malinowski 1967; Stocking 1983). As Mead's descrip-
tion quoted above indicates, she also was accorded a privileged position in
Samoan society and much of her data were also derived from observation
and interrogation. 7
It is not clear when the actual term "participant observation" came into use
to describe the method. The earliest use we can find of "participant observa-
tion" is in a treatise on methods published in the early 1920s (Lindeman
1924). In this work, Lindeman attempted to standardize and make more "sci-
entific" the conduct of social research. He argued that observation is a form
of asking questions ("What is the individual doing?" (185)), and that asking
questions is a form of observation. He was also an early advocate of what has
become known as the emic/etic approach. 8 That is, he thought that the full
answer to the question what is going on comes both from the point of view
of the researcher and from the point of view of the participant. To this end
then, he advocated the use of "participant-observers" in social research about
groups of people. In using this term, however, Lindeman was referring to par-
ticipants who have been trained to be observers-" cooperating observers" in
his terminology (Lindeman 1924:191)-rather than investigators who have
adopted a participant role among a group of people. 9
By the mid-1920s, a number of papers and books reference Lindeman's
concept of participant-observer. However, references to the method as de-
scribed by Malinowski and Mead do not appear in the sociology literature
until the 1930s. A 1933list of research projects being conducted by sociolo-
gists notes a project being carried out by Robert Merton (Lundberg 1937).
By 1940, the term participant observation was in wide use in both anthro-
pology and sociology and was included in the titles of papers by Lohman
(1937) and Kluckhohn (1940).
The nature of the "communities" in which social research takes place,
and the purposes to which research is put, participant observation has
taken on new subjects and forms. As we note later in this volume, forms of
participant observation that retain some of the historically relevant aspects
of the method have been adapted to short-term research in aid of program
planning, implementation, and evaluation. Also, as the description of the
work carried out by Boellstorff illustrates, as the communities in which
research takes place have come to include virtual communities of many
types based on computer mediated communication (CMC), participant
observation in virtual communities has become commonplace (see Boell-
storff 2010; Constable 2003; Hine 2000, 2005). In later chapters we will
discuss the methodological and ethical issues that new forms of participant
observation raise for researchers and the readers of ethnography.
10 Chapter 1

WHY PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION IS IMPORTANT

Irrespective of the topic or principal methods used in doing social scientific

studies, we believe that the practice of participant observation provides
several advantages to research. First, it enhances the quality of the data
obtained during fieldwork. Second, it enhances the quality of the inter-
pretation of data, whether those data are collected through participant ob-
servation or by other methods. Participant observation is thus both a data
collection and an analytic tool. Third, it encourages the formulation of new
research questions and hypotheses grounded in on-the-scene observation.

ENHANCING THE QUALI'IY OF

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

What does attempting to participate in the events and lives around one
mean to data collection and analysis? Living, working, laughing, and crying
with the people that one is trying to understand provides a sense of the self
and the other that is not easily put into words. It is a tacit understanding
that informs the form of research, the specific techniques of data collection,
the recording of information, and the subsequent interpretation of materi-
als collected.
In studying Yolmo healing, for example, Robert Desjarlais ( 1992) trained
to become an apprentice Yolmo shaman. To do so, he found it necessary
to learn how to move and to experience his body as a Yolmo. He argues
that much of what ethnographers can learn regarding peoples' lives is tacit
and at the level of the body. He notes that as he gained cultural knowledge,
learned how to sip tea, caught the meaning of jokes, participated in the
practice of everyday life, these interactions shaped his "understanding of
local values, patterns of actions, ways of being, moving, feeling" (Desjarlais
1992:26). Desjarlais argues that his body incorporated the meanings and
gave a greater understanding of the images he experienced in trances as part
of his training as a shaman.

Through time, experiencing the body in this manner (including the residual,
intermingling effect it had on how I stepped through a village, climbed a hill,
or approached others) influenced my understanding of Yolmo experiences;
it hinted at new styles of behavior, ways of being and moving through space
that I did not previously have access to. By using the body in different ways,
I stumbled on (but never fully assimilated) practices distinct from my own.
Touching head to heart merged thinking and feeling (two acts unsegregated
in Yolmo society); a sense of the body as a vessel dynamically compact led
me to see Yolmo forms as vital plenums of organ and icon; and my loose
assemblage of bent knees and jointed bones contributed to the springboard
 What Is Participant Observation? 11

technology that gradually brought some force and ease to my shamanic "shak-
ing.• (Desjarlais 1992:27)

The process by which this might take place, while difficult to convey in
words, comes as the result of sharing the lives of people over a significant
amount of time. Part of what we know about life in rural Mexico (or other
places in which we have worked) is tacit. It is embodied in the way we walk,
move, and talk (imperfectly translated, of course, because everyone still
knows we are not Mexicans). We note that the timbre of our voices changes
in Spanish to approximate that of Temascalcingo voices, and that we are
much more animated in our speech and bodily gestures. Similarly, reflect-
ing on many years of field experience in many different places, Mead wrote:

Pictures taken in the field show the extent to which I adapted to the style of the
people with whom I was working. In photographs taken in Bali I look disas-
sociated, sitting among a people each of whom was separated from the others.
In Samoa the pictures show me dressed up, sitting and standing to display my
Samoan costumes and rank; in Manus I am alert and tense, half strangled by a
child clinging around my neck; in Arapesh I have become as soft and respon-
sive as the people themselves. (1970b:320)

This embodiment of tacit cultural form also informs interpretation of

meaning. In the most obvious ways, it allows us to understand nonverbal
communication, to anticipate and understand responses. It shapes the way
in which we interact with others and, in a more fundamental way, it shapes
the way we interpret what we observe.
Desjarlais is one of many ethnographers who have apprenticed them-
selves in the field in order to gain new perspectives. Coy (1989) argued
that the apprenticeship experience results in "ways of knowing" and "learn-
ing to see" that are distinct from less participatory approaches. He argues,
like Desjarlais, that these ways of knowing are connected to the physical
performance of the duties required in the role being examined. Singleton
(1989) notes that the experience of an apprentice of any sort is parallel to
that of the ethnographer because both learn through participation/obser-
vation. Tedlock argues that successful formal and informal apprenticeships
are ways of undergoing intensive enculturation ( 1991:71 ). The fieldworker
who does not attempt to experience the world of the observed through par-
ticipant observation will find it much harder to critically examine research
assumptions and beliefs, and themselves (see Clifford 1997:91). A part of
this process is coming not only to understand, intellectually, the perspec-
tive of participants in the context in which the researcher is working, but to
"feel" the point of view of the other (Grills 1998; Katz 1988).
The problems inherent in dealing with information that is tacit and em-
bodied rather than explicit and intellectualized should be obvious. How
12 Chapter 1

do we incorporate tacit knowledge in our analysis and writing? How do

we make the insights it affords explicit enough to approach it analytically?
How do we convey to others the type of insight we have (without sound-
ing like we have "gone native")? We will address this question in greater
detail in the discussion of analysis, interpretation, and writing in chapter 8.
The first step, however, is clearly to be aware at the start of fieldwork that
tacit knowledge is important to the process and to continually try to make
the tacit explicit in field notes and analytic notes. Desjarlais's apprentice-
ship provides a model, although we do not know if he anticipated this
before beginning his fieldwork, or discovered it during analysis. When the
experience is a formal apprenticeship, this may be an easier tact. However,
few of us see our fieldwork as a formal apprenticeship, even though part
of the fieldwork experience is enculturation-that is, an apprenticeship in
the "culture" and social life of the communities in which we are working.
We should also note that participant observation may, in some cases, be
the only viable approach to research. Researchers who have worked in "de-
viant subcultures" with such groups as drug dealers (Adler 1985; Bourgois
1995), bank robbers and gangsters (Katz 1988), gangs (Brymer 1998), and
poachers (Brymer 1991) have often argued that long-term participation in
the setting was the only possible way to gain enough of the trust of partici-
pants to carry out research. Furthermore, the use of more formal methods
might have "put off" informants.
Patricia Adler {1985) recounts the events that led to her research among
drug smugglers and dealers in a community in the Southwestern United
States. She and her husband, Peter Adler, were drawn into the social life of
drug smugglers and dealers by serendipity. They were simply being neigh-
borly. After a time, the economic basis of their new friends' and acquain-
tances' life styles became clear and the Adlers began an ethnographic study
of drug trafficking that lasted for a number of years. Adler discovered that
this was not a world populated by "criminal syndicates" but by "individu-
als and a small set of wheeler-dealers" she called "disorganized crime." It
was a social and economic scene into which the average person, or drug
researcher, would rarely or ever gain entrance. Adler argues that she would
have been unable to gain any information concerning this illicit subculture
if she had not gained the trust of her informants. In fact, as we will discuss
later when we discuss participant roles, Adler argues that she and her hus-
band could not have carried out the research without actively participating
in the consumption, if not the marketing, of the drugs involved.
In a similar vein, Philippe Bourgois {1995:1) writes: "I was forced into
crack against my will." By this he means that, like the Adlers, the choice of
a place to live placed him in a setting in which he had, in some measure,
to take part in the culture-if not the behaviors-of crack dealing and use.
The view of the barrio and the structure of crack dealing within it that
 What Is Participant Observation? 13

Bourgois presents could only have been made by someone who dedicated
a long-term commitment to the research and the community. Unlike the
Adlers, who conducted much of their study covertly, Bourgois made it very
clear he was carrying out research. He often openly audiotaped events and
conversations, and taped semistructured interviews. Even with the research
intent explicit, however, he was able to gain the trust and confidence of
participants in a highly illegal activity.
Brymer (1998) was able to use "long-term field research" and "long-term
personal relationships" (which, in his description, fit the definition of
participant observation) to gain insight into two very distinct subcultures
known for their wariness of outsiders. These were Mexican American gangs
in the Southwest, and hunters and poachers in North America. Brymer is
convinced that he has a much more nuanced view and insight into gangs
and gang members than other people have. This was possible because of
his knowledge of a particular dialect of Spanish called pachuco, which he
acquired growing up with Mexican cowboys working without documenta-
tion in the Southwestern United States; seven years of working in several
cities studying Mexican-American gangs; "hanging out" with gang mem-
bers; hauling them around in his 15-year-old station wagon; and his use
of informal interviewing techniques. Conventional wisdom saw the gangs
as large and territorially organized but Brymer writes "after two years in
the field, however, I had never seen a gang" (1998:146). In fact he found
that, in general, the young men with whom he was working were most
frequently part of small social groupings (palomillos) that were not particu-
larly violent and, on the street, were not considered gangs. After two years,
beginning to doubt his worth as a researcher, he happened upon an event
that revealed the potential violence of the larger "gang" grouping of which
the smaller units were a part. This event changed his entire view of gang
formation, activity, and its place in the neighborhood. Brymer argues that
only long-term field work and the confidence of the palomillo would have
given him the opportunity to observe the coalescing of the "gang" from
smaller groups under particular circumstances. The work with gangs points
out not only the importance of gaining trust, or rapport, under the circum-
stance of long-term participant observation and speaking the language, but
also the need for long-term field work to reveal the nature of rare events, in
this case preparation for an all-out intergang fight, which fortunately never
actually took place.
In his work with poachers, Brymer (1998, 1991) makes the point that,
in the absence of field research, much of our information concerning il-
licit behaviors and the social systems that surround them comes from the
"failed deviants" -the individuals who are apprehended and appear in
crime statistics, or, for example, in drug rehab and narcotics prisons. It was
only through long-term participant observation that Brymer was able to
14 Chapter 1

show that the most common form of poaching was small-scale local hunt-
ing, often to provide food. The "good 'ole boys" engaged in this activity
were much less likely to be apprehended than the clueless tourist hunters,
trophy hunters, or even commercial hunters.
Like Adler and Bourgois, Brymer's study of poaching was the result of
stumbling onto this activity after buying a piece of land frequently poached
by local groups. He notes that it took two years of "testing" him before
the locals incorporated him into the group (which, remember, was poach-
ing on his land). The serendipitous and opportunistic flavor of the initial
period of these interesting field research experiences suggests that perhaps
once pulled into the experience of participant observation, the researcher
is never again fully a participant in any setting, but always part observer on
the lookout for a new project.
Tobias Hecht's (1998) study of street children in a city in Northeast
Brazil would not have had the insight and depth that it does if Hecht had
not spent 16 months hanging out with children on the streets of Olinda.
During his research time, he also worked for one of the organizations that
served the needs of street children in Olinda. He visited the shantytowns
from which the children had come. Hecht also used taped interviewing
extensively in his research. However, in the end he says that the best data
were obtained when he gave in to the kids and turned the tape recorder over
to them to interview each other.
Brymer's two examples noted above also point to the importance oflong-
term field work in understanding rare events. While a good deal of ethnog-
raphy is based on descriptions of rare events collected through systematic
interviews, 10 the insight gained from direct observation has often provided
a paradigm twisting experience for the researcher. In part, the observation
of rare events is a function of the length of time in field research. How-
ever, some events, like preparation for gang war, are rarer because special
knowledge is required to even know they exist or to identify the venue in
which they take place. Studies of secret societies are an obvious example.
However, access to even more mundane and common events, activity, and
knowledge may rest in large part on the development of trust from par-
ticipant observation. While not as dramatic as the examples noted above,
ethnographers have long recognized that information about such activities
as sorcery, witchcraft, and shamanism is only gained after long-term par-
ticipation in a setting.
Hine (2000) and Constable (2003) both discuss how participation in
the on-line communities, not only as lurkers, 11 but also as participants in
list serves, news groups, chat rooms, etc., allowed them to appreciate the
participant's point of view even as they pioneered CMC mediated research.
Researchers have been entering virtual worlds as cultural settings since the
 What Is Participant Observation? 15

1990s. MMORPGs such as Second Life have become the sites of studies of
everything from virtual culture to virtual economics (e.g., Boellstorff 2010).

FORMUlATING NEW RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Grounded theory approaches (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin
1990, 1998) have long stressed the role of qualitative research in the de-
velopment of hypotheses and theory. However, even if a researcher does
not take a grounded theory approach, qualitative research in general, and
participant observation in particular, encourages the continual reassess-
ment of initial research questions and hypotheses, and facilitates the devel-
opment of new hypotheses and questions as new insights occur as a result
of increasing familiarity with the context. In chapter 8 we will discuss the
nature of analysis of materials from participant observation in more detail.
However, it is important to note that the process of analysis is inherently
iterative. The active, insightful investigator should continually be reviewing
field notes and transcripts and continually tossing out old ideas and posing
new questions for study during the fieldwork and post-fieldwork phases of
research. "Being there" in the fullest sense means that our ideas and notions
are continually challenged and "resisted" by the actions and words of those
within the setting (paraphrasing Becker 1970; Grills 1998:4).
As we will discuss later, participant observation provides many mo-
ments in which the "scales fall from our eyes" and a new understanding
or hypothesis presents itself. To come full circle in our discussion here,
the tacit understandings gained during participant observation facilitate
the intuitive moments when a selection of notes about events, people,
and conversations comes together to provide us with a deeper insight and
understanding of behavior. Living and participating in the research context
forces us to place our particular focus of study within the wider context. As
Picchi writes: "participant observation disallows selective learning about a
people. Adjusting to a new culture provides on a daily basis many different
types of experiences that prevent anthropologists from concentrating too
assiduously on any one aspect of people's traditions" ( 1992: 144). As Becker
(1970) notes, "being there" forces our ideas and assumptions to be resisted
and tested by the actions and words of those in the setting.
In this chapter, we have provided a general definition and discussion of
the concept and method of participant observation. Although participant
observation is the main method that all humans use to learn their own cul-
ture, anthropologists and other social scientists have sought to more clearly
define and formalize the method as a means for doing social research. As
we have seen, although the method had been used earlier in social research,
16 Chapter 1

Malinowski, Mead, Lindeman, and others began to more systematically

write about doing participant observation.
For some kinds of research, participant observation has been the sole or
main method used by social scientists. For some kinds of research, it may
be the only practical method to use. It is important to emphasize, how-
ever, that participant observation is only one of many kinds of qualitative
and quantitative social science methods that can be used in studying hu-
man behavior. Participant observation is the foundation of ethnographic
research design; it supports and complements the other types of data col-
lection commonly used in most ethnographic studies. As we have shown,
participant observation can enhance the quality of data obtained during
field research, it can enhance the quality of interpretation of data, and it
is especially useful in assisting us to formulate new research questions and
hypotheses.
Like any other method, skills in participant observation can be taught,
learned, improved, and enhanced. In the following chapters of this book,
we will discuss how someone can learn to be a participant observer, the
choices that are sometimes necessary to be made in terms of how much par-
ticipation and observation is done, what anthropologists and other social
researchers have learned in enhancing our utilization of participant obser-
vation, how participant observation can be most usefully incorporated into
research design, and the ethical issues concerned with using the method.

NOTES

1. Marcus and Fischer (1986:18) define ethnography as "a research process in

which the anthropologist closely observes, records, and engages in the daily life of
another culture-an experience labeled as the fieldwork method-and then writes
accounts of this culture, emphasizing descriptive detail. •
2. We may find it difficult to articulate what it is that makes us feel uncomfor-
table because these aspects of cultural knowledge remain outside of our general
consciousness. It is participation in the context around us that allows us to gain
insight into the tacit.
3. For Agar, the interview is more important than the participation, and observa-
tion serves as the source of questions about which to interview. However, he sees
participant observation as providing the context for the rest of the enterprise.
4. Malinowski goes on to insist on the need to live in the community and cau-
tions against living in compounds apart from the people under investigation like
other "white men" (sic) do.
5. His virtual fieldwork in Second Life was interspersed and overlapped with his
actual field research on sexuality and HN/AIDS in Indonesia.
6. Enculturation is "the social process by which culture is learned and transmit-
ted across generations" (Kottak 1994:16).
 What Is Participant Observation? 17

7. We have preserved Stocking's use of the term interrogation despite the negative
connotations of the term. We would prefer the term •questioning" or interviewing.
8. The terms ernie and etic have been adopted in anthropology as the means for
referring to, respectively, the perspective of the native informant and the observer.
Following Harris, "Ernie operations have as their hallmark the elevation of the
native informant to the status of ultimate judge of the adequacy of the observer's
description and analysis"; "Etic operations have as their hallmark the elevation of
observers to the status of ultimate judges of the categories and concepts used in
descriptions and analyses" (1979:32).
9. Lindeman's participant-observer is closer to what we now generally refer to as
a key informant. The role of the participant-observer is to provide insight into the
thinking of a group and the individuals that make it up. The role of the participant-
observer is distinct from the role of the •outside observer," who is the researcher. In
a later volume, Hader and Lindeman (1933) elaborate on the role of participant-
observer, as compared with direct observation, carried out by an "outside observer,"
suggesting ways to identify and train participant-observers.
10. To take one well-known example, Roy Rappaport never actually observed the
full 12-year cycle of warfare, truce, and pig feasting described in his book Pigs for
the Ancestors (1984). He was able to construct his account through interviews with
informants.
11. Hine (2000) defines a lurker as •someone who reads messages posted to a
public forum such as a newsgroup, but does not respond to the group" (160).
 Learning To Be a
Participant Observer
Theoretical Issues

When we began graduate school in anthropology in the early 1970s, there

was very little in the way of books or courses on anthropological methods.
The unfortunate attitude, expressed explicitly by many anthropologists we
knew, was that people were either good field researchers or they were not.
Generations of graduate students were sent to the field by their advisors
with the expectation that they would either sink or swim. Those who were
destined to become anthropologists would prove their mettle by not only
surviving fieldwork but also coming back with information they could ana-
lyze in theoretical terms.
We were fortunate that we began our graduate studies with two individu-
als who were among the pioneers of writing about and training students
in anthropological methods. In addition to publishing one of the first texts
on anthropological methods, Pertti and Gretel Pelto (Pelto 1970; Pelto and
Pelto 1978) also believed in incorporating students into their research proj-
ects. Much of what we learned about participant observation and anthro-
pological field research began during our apprenticeship with the Peltos.
The point is that there are skills that are necessary to be a participant ob-
server and that these skills can be learned. The beginner must realize that
every ethnographer makes mistakes, and these are rarely fatal either to the
individual or to the research. We also believe, however, that the processes
of learning how to be an effective participant observer can be enhanced by
an introduction to experience and thinking of more experienced research-
ers. There are a number of basic principles that can be distilled from the
experiences and mistakes of others. Further, a number of researchers have
reflected carefully on their experiences and that thinking can be helpful
to both new and experienced investigators. In the following pages, we use

19
20 Chapter 2

recent theoretical work in anthropology to examine the nature of, and some
of the inherent contradictions of, participant observation. Chapters 3 and 4
focus on the practical skills of being a better participant and being a better
observer. There we will review key skills, summarize approaches to develop-
ing them that have been successful, and provide insights from the work of
ethnographers who have grappled with learning and perfecting these skills.

LEARNING TO BE A PARTICIPANT OBSERVER

In writing about participant observation as a method, we are immediately

confronted with a problem that is also an issue in the analysis of data col-
lected through the method. A good part of what makes up the method,
both the collection of information and analysis of it, is difficult to put into
words. In part, this is because this is a method in which the research is less
in control of the research situation than when using other methods, even
other qualitative methods. The investigator is reacting to and interacting
with others in the events and situations that unfold before him or her.
Any discussion of "how to do it" must necessarily be abstract. There is no
way to anticipate more than a small proportion of the situations in which
investigators will find themselves.
In addition, the experience of fieldwork is often discussed as intensely
personal-again, difficult to put into words. In an essay in which he at-
tempted to explore this personal experience in beginning study of the Se-
mai of Malaya, Dentan articulates the dilemma well:

Many cultural anthropologists tend to romanticize fieldwork to the point of

making a fetish out of it, claiming that their field experience gives them in-
sights into the nature of human society that no other discipline can provide.
This insight, they contend, stems from the fact that anthropological fieldwork
is an intensely personal experience. The difficulty they have in communicating
the nature of this experience makes their colleagues in other fields rather suspi-
cious of anthropology's claim to superior insight. I am suspicious of it myself.
Nevertheless, I want to stress how intensely personal the fieldwork was for me
and Ruth. (1970:87)1

Just as learning about a new social or cultural context is experiential, and

to an extent, tacit, so is learning to use participant observation effectively. The
method draws heavily on behavioral skills and already established social skills
wedded to a flexible approach to new social situations. Learning to participate
in a new context means acquiring a set of understandings and reactions, that
in fact we may not fully appreciate until we begin analysis. The beginning
researcher is urged to practice at every opportunity the specific skills that are
important in participant observation. Those skills include both learning to
 Learning To Be a Participant Observer 21

be an observer and learning to be a participant. Among them are: fitting in,

"active seeing," short-term memory, informal interviewing, recording detailed
field notes, and, perhaps most importantly, patience. Margaret Mead {1970a)
suggests that before the new fieldworker goes to the field he or she should
make an inventory of his or her own talents and skills, strengths and weak-
nesses. Mead suggests that those skills that may be important might include:

memory for faces, ability to reproduce nonsense material from memory, abil-
ity to reproduce sensible material from memory, relative memory for things
seen and things heard, ability to write and observe simultaneously, width of
vision, ability to predict what will happen behind one by the expression on
the faces of those in front, tolerance for continuous observation of the same
type-e.g., kneeling with smoke in one's eyes for four hours recording trance
behavior ... attention span inside which attention is of the same quality, abil-
ity to attend to an unpleasant situation, susceptibility to disqualifying disgust
reactions, ability to resist the impulse to interrupt an unpleasant or disturbing
sequence of behavior, tendency to identify in a partisan fashion with preferred
individuals, etc. ( 1970a:249)

All of these skills are fundamental to the method of participant observa-

tion. However, Mead does not suggest that a particular strength or deficit
in these skills and abilities qualifies or disqualifies the researcher as an ef-
fective participant observer, but that an honest accounting can be a guide
in the selection of the most effective questions, venues, and recording
techniques for any particular fieldworker. While some ethnographers come
to participant observation with a better grounding in some of these skills
compared with others, almost everyone can learn them or improve on
existing skills. Before discussing these skills, it is useful to more carefully
examine participant observation.

OBSERVATION AND PARTICIPATION

It is important to recognize that participant observation is a method that

combines two somewhat different processes. Bernard {2006) has made the
important point that participant observation should be distinguished from
both pure observation and pure participation. Pure observation, as used
by some sociologists and psychologists (see Adler and Adler 1994; Tonkin
1984), seeks, to the maximum extent possible, to remove the researcher
from the actions and behaviors so that they are unable to influence them.
There are many examples of the use of pure observation in social science
research. These include cases in which researchers tape everyday interac-
tions or behavior for later analysis, or where researchers observe some type
of behavior from behind a one-way mirror.
22 Chapter 2

Pure participation has been described as "going native" and "becoming

the phenomena" (see Jorgensen 1989). "Going native," when a researcher
sheds the identity of investigator and adopts the identity of a full partici-
pant in the culture, is generally associated with a loss of analytic interest
and often results in the inability of the researcher to publish his/her ma-
terials. In the previous chapter, we discussed the example of Cushing who
worked with the Zuni in the 1880s. He is often used as an example of an
anthropologist who had "gone native," although we question the extent
to which this is true. However, he published much less than his successor
with the Zuni project, Jesse Fewkes, even though Fewkes was criticized for
never having achieved the holistic view of Zuni society that Cushing had
(Hinsley 1983). Later in the book, we will talk about Kenneth Good (Good
1991) who lived with and increasingly identified with the Yanomama,
eventually marrying a Yanomama woman. With a coauthor, he was able
to write a moving personal narrative of this time. However, he is careful to
note that it is not ethnography and he has not and does not wish to pub-
lish his ethnographic materials. On the other hand, Curt Nimuendau (Paul
1953) who lived for decades with indigenous groups in the Brazilian state
of Para, took a native name and eventually died there. He, however, wrote
in-depth ethnography and came to be known as the leading expert on the
area (Nimuendau 1983, 1987, 1993).
Within these two extremes, however, a review of the work of research-
ers using participant observation from Webb and Cushing, to Malinowski
and Mead, and through contemporary researchers such as Adler, Desjarlais,
Bourgois, Hecht, and Johnson shows that successful researchers have em-
ployed a wide variety of strategies that range between pure observation and
full participation in a culture. Spradley developed a typology to describe a
continuum in the degree of participation" of researchers (1980:58-62).
11

From our perspective, Spradley's categories seem to confound the degree

of participation with the degree to which an ethnographer becomes emo-
tionally involved with a community. While these are related, we believe
that these can and should be separated. In the discussion below, we have
modified Spradley's categories to focus only on the aspect of participation.
For Spradley, nonparticipation occurs when cultural knowledge is acquired
by observing phenomena from outside the research setting, for example by
watching television, reading newspapers, or reading diaries, documents, or
fiction. A good deal of information can be acquired in this way even though
no active interaction with people is required or takes place. 2 The study of
texts, for example, has always been part of research in social science. In recent
decades the analysis and interpretation of texts and other media has been
incorporated more centrally into the theoretical approach of some social sci-
entists. As important as this approach is to social and cultural analysis, it does
not employ the method of participant observation. Some of those texts" 11
 Learning To Be a Participant Observer 23

may be conversations and chats on Internet sites. There is a growing number

of researchers who participate in blogs and chats as part of their research ap-
proach. While lurking on website suggests some important ethical questions
about research (see chapter 11), some researchers act as lurkers, covertly
observing interaction on websites and blogs without directly participating
and without revealing that they are researchers, in the virtual equivalent of
nonparticipation. Others, however, have lurked more openly, making it clear
that they might incorporate material from chats and list serves into their
research. Still others (e.g., Constable 2003) have become fuller participants,
chatting openly with the subjects of online research. We place these styles in
categories more fully associated with participant observation.
Passive participation exists when the researcher is on the spot, but acts as
a pure observer. That is, the researcher does not interact with people. It
is as though the researcher uses the site as an observation post. If there is
any role in the setting, it is that of "spectator" or "bystander." In general,
at this level of participation, those being observed may not even know that
they are under observation. Spradley notes that he acted as a spectator in
the Seattle Criminal Court System by merely observing court proceedings.
Eventually other people in the courtroom setting began to recognize him
and to engage him in conversation by asking "What are you doing here?"
and his role began to change from that of a passive participant. He eventu-
ally took a more active role, interviewing other regulars in the courtroom
setting (Spradley 1970). A great deal of information about a setting can be
obtained by taking only a spectator's role.
Moderate participation occurs when the ethnographer is present at the
scene of the action, is identifiable as a researcher, but does not actively
participate or only occasionally interacts with people in it. This level of ob-
servation could include structured observation as well as very limited par-
ticipation. For example, some educational researchers observe classrooms.
They are in the classroom, but principally as observers, not as participants.
The use of ethnographic techniques in health-related research has included
household observations of health practices or food intake (e.g., Gittelsohn
et al. 1997). In these cases, the researcher is in the scene but acting as an
observer, often with a very structured observational framework. However, it
can also include a somewhat higher level of participation. Many anthropol-
ogists, for example, will live in their own house among a group of people,
or perhaps even in a larger community near the place being studied. They
essentially "commute" to the field to question informants or to participate
in only certain of the everyday activities of the community. 3 Many of us in
new research settings in which we are not fluent in the language begin at the
level of moderate participation until a more active role is possible.
Active participation is when the ethnographer engages in almost every-
thing that other people are doing as a means of trying to learn the cultural
24 Chapter 2

rules for behavior. Good, for example, talks about his decision to move
into the shapono (large, circular communal houses) of the Yanomama as
an important step in learning about them. He reports: "Yanomama nights
were an event, that first night and every night afterward. It wasn't as if the
community just went to sleep, then woke up the next morning. No, a Ya-
nomama night was like another day. All sorts of things went on" (Good
1991:67). In a house in which 75 people were sleeping together, babies
cried, men laid plans for a hunt, shamans took drugs and chanted, big
men made speeches, all without regard to the others who were sleeping. At
first, this was difficult for Good: "When something got me up, I was up. I'd
lie in the hammock for an hour trying to get back to sleep among all the
nighttime noises of the shapono. Eventually I got used to this, too. Like the
Yanomama, I'd spend eleven hours in my hammock at night to get seven
or eight hours of actual sleep" (Good 1991:68-69).4 Good has no doubt
that the insight derived from living in the shapono was superior to what he
would have learned if he maintained his own dwelling.
Finally, in complete participation, the ethnographer is or becomes a mem-
ber of the group that is being studied. Examples of this include ethnogra-
phers who are and study jazz musicians, or researchers who become hobos
or cab drivers for a time (see Riemer 1977). It is important to note that
Spradley's category of complete participation is not the same as "going na-
tive." Spradley is referring to a temporary event in which the researcher sus-
pends other roles, in order to more fully integrate with the phenomenon,
but continues to record observations in field notes and adopts an analytical
stance at least partially during the research period and more completely
after the period of participation.
Adler and Adler (1987) developed a somewhat different categorization
scheme that is related to the amount of participation. Writing from the
point of view of American sociologists working in North American settings,
their scheme focuses on the types of roles for those who seek to become
members (participants) in the groups they are studying. The three catego-
ries they use are peripheral membership, active membership, and full mem-
bership. Table 2.1 shows the relationship between Spradley's continuum
with Adler and Adler's categorization. As the table indicates, when there is
nonparticipation or passive participation, there is generally no membership
role for the researcher.
The lowest level of involvement is the role of peripheral member. For
Adler and Adler, this role applies to individuals who hold back from central
members in the groups with whom they are working. Peripheral-member
researchers become part of the scene, or of one group within it, but keep
themselves from being drawn completely into it. They interact frequently
and intensively enough to be recognized by members as insiders and to
acquire first-hand information and insight.
 Learning To Be a Participant Observer 25

Table 2.1. Correspondence of Spradley's Continuum of Participation with Adler and

Adler's Membership Roles
Continuum of Participation Membership Roles

Non participation No membership role

Passive participation No membership role
Moderate participation Peripheral membership
Active participation Active membership
Complete participation Full membership

In active membership, the researcher takes on some or all of the roles

of core members. Hecht {1998), for example, began to work for one of
the agencies that served the need of the street children he was studying in
Northeast Brazil. Jeffrey Johnson (Johnson 1983, 1998; Johnson, Avenar-
ius, and Weatherford 2006) took a job as a boat carpenter in a fish camp
in Alaska when carrying out participant observation of the Alaskan fishery.
Cushing was initiated into the Bow priesthood while working with the
Zuni. In full membership the researcher becomes immersed in the group,
and takes on an identity of the group. In both the roles of active and full
membership, the researcher takes on some or all of the core membership
responsibilities and duties. These roles most closely resemble the role of the
classic participant observer.
Johnson, Avenarius, and Weatherford {2006) discuss the advantages of
what they term "active participation" in research, which is close to Sprad-
ley's notion of "complete participation" and Adler and Adler's category of
"active membership." In a study of migratory commercial fishermen on
the west coast of the United States, Johnson, took jobs as a boat carpenter,
tender worker, bookkeeper, and commercial crewman over several seasons
to better understand commercial fishing. Weatherford {1986) took a job as
a night clerk in a pornography store during a study of the red light district
of Washington DC. As part oflarger study on how Chinese and Taiwanese
migrants maintain social networks in California, Avenarius took a job as a
part-time worker in a Chinese-owned optometry store. She also became a
member of several ethnic community organizations including a choir, sev-
eral dance groups, and church organizations. The three authors review the
ways in which taking on an active role in research allowed each of them to
develop relationships with research participants in which the participants
treated them as insiders, and shared their own reactions with other re-
searchers they did not accept as insiders.
For Johnson, Avenarius, and Weatherford, being treated as insiders
opened up new levels of understanding for them. Indeed, the people of the
26 Chapter 2

communities in which they worked joked with them about the ineptness
of other researchers who did not take active participation roles and were
seen always as outsiders. However, they also note several problems with an
active participation approach. It may become more difficult to disengage
from the field and withdraw. An active participation role may also affect the
ability of the researchers to approach her/his analysis reflexively. More im-
portantly, this type of participation raises thorny ethical issues depending
on the extent to which the active participant is overtly a researcher. Several
of the projects described were conducted in the 1970s and the researchers
did not explicitly make it clear that they were conducting research. This
would not be considered ethical in current practice. However, they point
out, and we agree, that if they had made their observer roles more explicit, it
would probably have had little impact on the data they were able to collect.
Hine (2000) in her ethnographic investigation into the trial of Louise
Woodward, based entirely on computer mediated communication (CMC),
reflects on the different levels of participation in internet-based participant
observation. She notes that with the archiving of chats and newsgroups the
ethnographer and the participants "no longer need to share the same time
frame" (23). However, she goes on to argue that this "collapsing• time
frame limits the data and the understanding of the researcher. She strongly
advocates for a true presence of participation in CMC-based research focus-
ing on the critical importance of experiencing what the other participants
in CMC experience:
A more active form of ethnographic engagement in the field also requires the
ethnographer, rather than lurking or downloading archives, to engage with
participants. Making this shift from an analysis of passive discourse to being
an active participant in its creation allows for a deeper sense of understanding
of meaning creation. Instead of being a detached and invisible analyst, the eth-
nographer becomes visible and active with in the field setting. (Hine 2000:23)

Determining the degree of participation and level of membership is some-

times done by the researcher and sometimes done by the community.
We are personally acquainted with several examples that illustrate how
researchers have adopted and adjusted their fieldwork in relation to these
categories.
Phyllis Kelly and Eleanor Swanson, colleagues working in two neighbor-
ing barrios of the town ofTemascalcingo, Mexico, in the early 1970s were
independently asked to join women's dance groups. Men's and women's
dance groups perform at both secular and religious holidays in those com-
munities. Participation in dance groups is one of the beginning steps of the
civil religious hierarchy (cargo system) common in these communities. At
the lower steps of these systems, dancers not only have the obligation to
 Learning To Be a Participant Observer 27

dance at events, but must also contribute to the costs of festivals, including
providing a meal for those occupying positions further up the hierarchy. A
commitment to a dance group usually lasts three to five years. When in the
communities, both Kelly and Swanson danced and contributed by taking
on an active membership role and participating fully in the groups. Like
most ethnographers, however, they eventually left the community and re-
turned home. Both were able to schedule short field trips in order to partici-
pate in dances on some occasions. When they were unable to participate,
they adopted the strategy used by many community members who had
begun migrating to the United States to work. Like other absent members
of the community, both Kelly and Swanson took the available alternative of
an increased monetary contribution, essentially paying someone to dance
for them in those years in which they could not be in the community. By
opting for full membership and active participation, however, both Kelly
and Swanson gained an insight into the workings of these communities
they would not otherwise have had. In addition, almost 40 years later (in
a visit to Temascalcingo by Kathleen in 2010), both Swanson and Kelly are
remembered as dancers and friends by members of the communities in
which they carried out research.
Some researchers are forced to take a greater degree of participation than
they anticipate. Sociologist of religion David Martin (2000) was directing
a survey of religious participation in South America and expected to be
a passive participant and not opt for any membership role. He was sur-
prised to be asked to give a sermon during a church service. While Martin
was concerned that his increased participation in the life of church might
somehow taint the data, he also saw that he had some obligation to give as
well as take in the research setting. So, just as he was asking the members
of the church to tell their stories, he took the opportunity to tell his story
in a sermon.
Anthropologist John van Willigen (1989) working in Ridge County, a
rural community in Kentucky, relied heavily on participant observation as
a research method. His use of participant observation involved moderate
participation and peripheral membership and, as part of his research on ag-
ing in these communities, he was attending church services in the county as
well as other church related events. He too was surprised when the minister
and congregation of one of the churches asked him to preach at a service.
He did so, but was even more surprised when they presented him with the
collection (somewhat over $4.00) at the end ofthe service!
It should be emphasized that while both Spradley and Adler and Adler
identify types or categories, the balance between observation and par-
ticipation achieved by an individual researcher can fall anywhere along
the continuum. The key point is that researchers should be aware of the
28 Chapter 2

compromises in access, objectivity, and community expectations that are

being made at any particular place along the continuum. Further, in the
writing of ethnography, the particular place of the researcher on this con-
tinuum should be made clear. Methodological notes, field notes, and diary
entries (chapter 9) should report the level of involvement of the researcher
in the community or group being studied, and the degree to which the re-
searcher comes to identify with the community.

PARTICIPATION AND OBSERVATION:

AN OXYMORON IN ACTION?

Over the years since Malinowski and Mead described the method that has
come to be known as participant observation, a number of writers have
commented on the oxymoronic nature of the term and the almost impos-
sible methodological and personal tension that participant observation
implies. Benjamin Paul anticipated some of the current debates when he
noted that "Participation implies emotional involvement; observation re-
quires detachment. It is a strain to try to sympathize with others and at the
same time strive for scientific objectivity" (1953:69).
Barbara Tedlock has argued that exploring the dynamic tension between
participation and observation is critically important. She noted that, in
the past, when ethnographers wrote personalistic accounts of their field
research, they did so using pseudonyms. This was done in order to main-
tain their reputations as professional ethnographers. From her perspective,
however, these more personalistic accounts should be part of the data of
anthropology. She argues that we should engage in the "observation of
participation," an approach that she terms narrative ethnography. Narrative
ethnography combines the approaches of writing a standard monograph
about the people being studied (the Other) with an ethnographic memoir
centering on the anthropologist (the Self) (Tedlock 1991:69). What is most
valuable in the kinds of accounts that she is advocating is that they go a
long way toward demystifying the process of doing ethnography. That is,
by examining how other anthropologists have dealt with the "degree of
participation" and with their emotional involvement, students can better
appreciate the circumstances, emotions, and reactions they are likely to
experience when they begin their own field research.
Behar (1996) also believes that participant observation is an oxymoron
or a paradox. Participant observation is a paradox because the ethnographer
seeks to understand the native's viewpoint, but NOT "go native. "5 When the
grant runs out we go back to our desks. But, as Behar argues, the ethnog-
rapher as researcher and writer must be a "vulnerable observer," ready to
include all of his or her pain and wounds in research and writing, because
 Learning To Be a Participant Observer 29

it is part of what he or she brings to the relationship. While the focus on a

term that is, at its root, paradoxical can be seen as adding to the mystifica-
tion of the work of ethnography, it also highlights what we believe to be
the creative tension between the goal of documented observation and the
critical goal of understanding the situated observer. Bernard (2006) puts it
this way:

Participant observation involves immersing yourself in a culture and learning

to remove yourself every day from that immersion so you can intellectualize
what you've seen and heard, put it into perspective, and write about it convinc-
ingly. When it's done right, participant observation turns fieldworkers into
instruments of data collection and data analysis. (344)

Finnstrom (2008) draws on the work of Swedish anthropologist Kaj

Arhem (1994), who describes the data collection of anthropologist as "par-
ticipant reflection" rather than "participant observation." Speaking of the
tension between participation and analysis Finnstrom writes:

As anthropologists, we do our best to participate in the works, questions, joys,

and sorrows of our informants' everyday life. Then we take a few steps back,
to be able to reflect on what we have learnt and experienced, again to step
forward and participate. This we do daily in the field work encounter. (27)

We see a positive trend in anthropological research as writers increasingly

are making explicit the role, degree of participation, and point of view they
have adopted in research and write-up (see Scheper-Hughes 1992, 1996).6
Some researchers have combined this with an explicit discussion of their
own emotional involvement in participant observation. Geertz (1995)
commented about the process of learning through participant observation
in this way: "You don't exactly penetrate another culture, as the masculinist
image would have it. You put yourself in its way and it bodies forth and
enmeshes you." Behar drew on this metaphor to ask: "Yes indeed. But just
how far do you let that other culture enmesh you?" (1996:5). The degree of
participation, the membership role, and the amount of emotional involve-
ment that ethnographers bring to the field will have an important impact
on the kinds of data collected and the sort of analysis that is possible.
While not all of us are ready to adopt the path of vulnerable observation,
participating allows the ethnographer to "know" in a unique way because
the observer becomes a participant in what is observed. At the same time,
however, our attempt to remain observers of actions and behaviors main-
tains a certain distance between the people we want to "know" and us.
Unlike autoethnography or native ethnography (Reed-Danahay 1997), the
investigator is an outsider, a person who spends "the summer on rope cots
at the edges of other peoples' lives, observing them" (Narayan 1995:47).
30 Chapter 2

WHAT DETERMINES THE ROLE

A RESEARCHER WILL ADOYI'?

The balance between observation and participation, the specific kind of

membership role a particular researcher will adopt (or fall into), and the
emotional involvement of the researcher can be influenced by a number
of factors. Personal characteristics of the researcher may influence the level
of participation that an individual may choose or be forced to adopt. We
believe that most researchers who wish to use the method of participant ob-
servation can train themselves to do so effectively. However, some people
feel so uncomfortable in the role of participant that they will be more ef-
fective researchers by primarily relying on other methods.
We have often heard both neophytes and seasoned researchers who have
not used participant observation express fear that no one will accept them,
no one will talk with them, they will be ignored, etc. In our experience, for
most researchers, this is not true. After an initial period of adjustment for
both the researcher and the group or community, most researchers using
participant observation find that they are integrated at least to some extent
into the scene. However, the concern for whether one will be accepted is
often a mask for a concern that the researcher does not have the personality
to accept the role of participant in a particular setting. And, frankly, some
people do not. Briggs (1986) is quite honest about how hard she found it
to accept the participant role allowed her by the Inuit group with whom
she worked. She was never able to adopt the role of Kapluna daughter
and her personality made it difficult to interact intimately with the other
members of the community. Many researchers like Briggs, however, with
an unsatisfying experience with participant observation in one setting find
that in a different cultural setting they can get along quite well. Following
Mead's advice cited above, the researcher needs to conduct an honest as-
sessment of his/her skills and temperament. For some, it may be that in
some settings other methods and forms of fieldwork will be more effective.
For some researchers it may be just a matter of getting beyond culture shock
(chapter 4 ).
Other personal characteristics may make it difficult or even impossible
for particular researchers to participate as fully as they would like. Gender,
age, class, and ethnicity may pose barriers to participation in some arenas
important to research. For example, studies of adolescents conducted by
more mature researchers may be limited to observation and interview.
Participation of older people in youth culture can be uncomfortable if not
impossible. Hecht was able to participate in the lives of street children in
Brazil primarily as a volunteer in an organization that served street children
and as the "producer" for the taped "radio interviews" carried out by other
street children. In Hecht's case, because participation as a street child was
 Learning To Be a Participant Observer 31

not feasible, he recruited participant observers in the sense meant by Linde-

man. That is, he was able to work through street children who took tape
recorders and interviewed other children.
In research with Chicano youth in Chicago in the early 1970s, sociologist
Ruth Horowitz (1996) spent a good deal oftime on the streets with mem-
bers of fighting gangs. She writes:
Readers may wonder how a woman could possibly have spent time with gang
members as they loitered on street comers and around park benches, and de-
veloped relationships that allowed her to gather sufficient and reliable data. I
never tried to become a member of the community. The research role I devel-
oped through interaction with the youth varied from each group to another
and was significantly influenced by some of my personal characteristics; I am
Jewish, educated, small, fairly dark, a woman, dressed slightly sloppily but not
too sloppily, and only a few years older than most of those whom I observed.
These attributes did make a difference in how people appraised and evaluated
me and my actions, and in the activities and thoughts to which I was privy.
Careful observations of what kind of information was available to me and
how different groups perceived and evaluated me allowed me to see not only
what categories were important to each of the local groups and what someone
in that role was permitted to see, do, and hear, but also how I should try to
negotiate my identity in the field. (43)

One of the key points Horowitz makes in this passage and later in her
article is that her role as participant/observer was negotiated with the youth
gangs over time. She became a "lady" to some (not available sexually);
someone who could go with them to buy guns, but not participate in fights
or looking for fights with other gangs.
We will discuss the impact of gender more fully in chapter 6, but the
participation of men or women in the activities and lives of members of the
opposite sex may be impossible in many (but not necessarily all) cultural
settings. Lutz (1988), for example, found that in research on a Micronesian
atoll she did not have the access to the activities of men she had hoped to
have. More commonly men are unable to participate in the activities gener-
ally assigned to women.
Lincoln Kaiser became very close to the members of the Vice Lords gang
with which he worked, but he was always a "white guy." William Foote
Whyte became well integrated into the lives of people in Cornerville, liv-
ing in the community, attending meetings and hanging out. However, he
several times stepped over the limits of the role that the community was
willing to allow him. He was chided by informants and friends for engag-
ing in behavior unbecoming to a "college guy" when he (like others of
Cornerville) illegally voted several times in an election, and again, when
he used vulgar language commonly used on the street corner. In both
cases, despite living in the community and his time spent on the street,
32 Chapter 2

his obvious class affiliation limited the extent to which he was allowed to
become a full participant (Whyte 1996b; Whyte and Whyte 1984).
For researchers working in settings very different culturally from their
own, such as anthropologists working in non-Western tribal settings, the
potential limitations should be obvious. The North American or European
researcher is immediately identifiable in most South American, African,
and Asian settings. While some researchers work quite diligently to achieve
fuller participation, they are always limited by being identifiably different.
We find it amazing that some researchers are able to participate as fully as
they do despite such obvious differences. For many of us, the role adopted
as learner or neophyte is the one most readily available to someone so
clearly different. However, participation as a cultural baby is participation
and may, in fact, provide a good excuse for the incessant and excessive ask-
ing of questions.
Participation in illegal activities can pose both legal and physical dan-
ger. Adler and Adler (Adler 1985) hung out with drug dealers (wheelers
and dealers) and even used drugs during the time they were carrying out
research in Southern California. They became close friends with some of
the dealers, socialized with them, bailed them out of jail, and reached a
point in which they were considered trustworthy. They admit to using
drugs (principally marijuana) as part of their participation, arguing that
they would not have been accepted in the group if they had not. They de-
clined to become involved in dealing themselves, however, although often
urged to do so by their informants. They argue that this reluctance to fully
participate placed them in the role of peripheral membership rather than
full members. Philippe Bourgois, who studied dealers of crack cocaine, was
also on the periphery in the sense that he did not participate in the drug
culture as a user or dealer.
Some researchers begin to limit their participation when they feel that
they are losing objectivity. A researcher might choose a more peripheral
role for several reasons. S/he might be concerned that more involvement
would result in difficulty in adopting an analytical stance during analysis
and interpretation. Or, further involvement might place the researcher in
either physical or legal danger. It is our belief that no research project is
important enough to place the researcher in physical danger.
Finally, some researchers choose to take a covert role in fieldwork. That
is, they do not make it clear that they are conducting research. Adler and
Adler (Adler 1985; Adler and Adler 1987) suggest that they would not have
gotten the amount of information about drug dealers if their role as re-
searchers was known by all oftheir informants. Bourgois (1995), however,
was completely open about his role as a researcher, overtly taping conver-
sations both in interview situations and on the street hanging out. We will
discuss the ethical issues in participant observation in chapter 11. For us,
 Learning To Be a Participant Observer 33

however, adopting a covert role is not an ethical approach to fieldwork.

Moreover, virtually all of our research now has to pass through an Institu-
tional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects. Covert research,
even of a purely observational nature, when identifiable individuals are
observed, is unlikely to be approved. As we will note below, the goal of
establishing true rapport requires honesty of the researcher.

LIMITS TO PARTICIPATION?

There are some dramatic cases of the need to establish "limits to participa-
tion" because engaging in these behaviors may be illegal, dangerous to the
personal health of the ethnographer, or both. Obvious examples include
situations in which ethnographers study shamanistic use of hallucinogens
or other drugs, drug cultures, prisons, or high-risk sexual practices. Philippe
Bourgois (1995, 1996), for example, became quite involved with the drug
dealers with whom he was working, although he abhorred the violence
and other activities in which they engaged. There are also many accounts
of ethnographers being confronted with whether to engage in romantic
and/or sexual involvement with members of communities they study (see
chapter 6).
On a less dramatic level, there are experiences like those of Bill in Temas-
calcingo. When we began research there, Bill decided the cantina in town
would be a good place to find out what was going on in the community. All
was going well until one of the inebriated patrons asked Bill what we were
doing in the community. Bill's explanation that we were there to study the
local culture led his new companion to pull a very large pistol out of his
belt and to state: "The Indians around here only understand one thing and
that's this. I'll help you find out about the culture of those fucking Indians.
Tomorrow we'll go up in the hills to talk to them." The next morning (not
very early), the man showed up at our house, pistol at the ready, to assume
the role of research assistant to the anthropologist. Bill faced a very difficult
situation in getting rid of his newfound friend without insulting him, pa-
tiently explaining that we were not there to study only "Indians" and that
we would feel much better about using our own methods for getting people
to talk with us. Bill ultimately decided that, in the future, there were prob-
ably better venues than the cantina in which he could participate to find
out what was going on in the community.
Deciding how much to participate or not to participate in the life of
the people being studied is not an easy decision for any ethnographer. In
addition, there are often occasions during which the ethnographer faces
a difficult decision about whether or not to intervene in a situation. Ken-
neth Good provides a particularly wrenching example of this. During his
34 Chapter 2

research with the Yanomama of South America, he came across a situation

in which a group of teenage boys and three older women were engaged in
a tug of war. A woman whom he had befriended earlier was in the middle.
Good ascertained that the teenagers were trying to drag the woman off to
rape her while the old women were trying to protect her. He described his
dilemma as the young boys succeeded in pulling the young woman off into
the bushes:

I stood there, my heart pounding. I had no doubt I could scare these kids
away. They were half-afraid of me anyway, and if I picked up a stick and gave
a good loud, threatening yell, they'd scatter like the wind. On the other hand,
I was an anthropologist, not a policeman. I wasn't supposed to take sides and
make value judgments and direct their behavior. This kind of thing went on. If
a woman left her village and showed up somewhere else unattached, chances
were she'd be raped. She knew it, they knew it. It was expected behavior. What
was I supposed to do, I thought, try to inject my own standards of morality? I
hadn't come down here to change these people or because I thought I'd love
everything they did; I'd come to study them. (Good 1991:102-3)

Good decided to do nothing but wrote that this was a turning point in his
integration into the community. A month later Good did intervene in a
similar situation.
Every ethnographer sooner or later faces dilemmas like these that become
difficult ethical issues (see Rynkiewich and Spradley 1976 for a useful com-
pilation). We may appeal to "cultural relativism" or to the role of "objec-
tive observer" to avoid intervention in situations like those faced by Good.
In cases in which we see the people with whom we are working being
exploited, subject to violence, or damaged in some other way, however, it
is increasingly difficult to justify not intervening. Nash came to the conclu-
sion that the world should not be seen as simply a laboratory in which we
carry out our observations but rather a community in which we are "copar-
ticipants with our informants" (1976:164). She used this as an argument
for working to try to help the tin miners she was studying in Bolivia fight
for their rights. Scheper-Hughes (1996) argues even more strongly that the
role of the ethnographer includes activism. She describes how she chose
to intervene in the punishment of several young boys caught stealing in a
South African village. She intervened to take an accused boy to the hospital
to save his life after his punishment at the hands of villagers, even though
her research was, in part, on the outcomes of popular justice.
Largely, the establishment of our own limits to participation depends
greatly on our own background and the circumstances of the people we
study. Our personal characteristics as individuals-our ethnic identity,
class, sex, religion, and family status-will determine how we interact with
and report on the people we are studying.
 Learning To Be a Participant Observer 35

BEYOND THE REFLEXM'IY FRONTIER

We noted in chapter 1 that the method of participant observation was de-

veloped by Malinowski simultaneously with his development of the theory
of functionalism. However, participant observation has been used for data
collection by researchers coming from a variety of theoretical perspectives.
Agar (1996) observes that contemporary ethnography, especially work car-
ried out at the end of the twentieth century, has drawn more heavily on par-
ticipant observation as a method than did the work in the previous several
decades, which incorporated a more linguistically based reliance on formal
elicitation, limited survey research, and analysis of texts. Contemporary
ethnography heavily critiques functionalist approaches to analysis in favor
of more interpretive approaches but the utility of participant observation
as a method of data collection in postmodem approaches suggests that the
method is much closer to the core of anthropology around which many
different theories are built. While born with functionalism, participant
observation is not tied to it. In fact, we believe that holding any theory up
to the everyday lives of people has been a major stimulus for theoretical
change and development in the social sciences.
Participant observation as a technique of fieldwork has been a hallmark
of anthropological research since the beginning of the twentieth century
and has been a distinguishing characteristic of anthropology compared
with other social sciences. It may be constitutive-that is, it may be es-
sential to anthropology. While tied to functionalist theoretical approaches
early in the century, the reliance on participant observation and the record-
ing of chronologically oriented, descriptive field notes, which also include
the incorporation of the ethnographer's thoughts and reactions, laid the
groundwork for much of the theoretical development autochthonous to
anthropology. That the descriptions of the research enterprise provided
by Malinowski in 1922 and Bourgois (among many others) in 1995 can
appear so similar, suggests that the method, while not atheoretical (no
method is), is so closely tied to a relatively unchanging theoretical core in
anthropology as to provide the basis for a wide range of theoretical devel-
opment around that core.
In his award-winning 2008 book, Living with Bad Surroundings, anthro-
pologist Sverker Finnstrom writes thoughtfully about his use of participant
observation, his presence in Uganda and the limits to participation as a
European researcher, and the way in which he, as a European viewed and
was viewed by the the Acholi people in war-torn Northern Uganda in the
early twenty-first century:

In essence, if there is such a thing, I am a European, non-Mrican, or rather a

foreigner, even a stranger, to Acholiland. Muno, as the Acholi say. Obviously,
36 Chapter 2

my looks resemble those of the expatriate relief and aid workers, development
volunteers on short-term or long-term assignments, or the journalists and
foreign ambassadors who briefly visit war-tom Acholiland. In practice, I did
my best to acknowledge the hospitality offered by my informants. I always
ate their food, drank their water, wine, and beers. Lawak, Acholi call persons
who do the opposite with a proud and bossy attitude. "Like a muno [foreigner]
who refuses to eat what is offered; who doesn't mingle with locals" as an old
man explained. I participated in my informants' reconciliation and cleansing
rituals, and I went to their baptisms and funerals. I constantly and eagerly
listened to my informants' stories. I especially remember one senior ex-rebel
who talked without a single break for more than five hours, as I was seated in
an uncomfortable chair doing my best to write down everything he was saying.
It was totally fascinating, but my buttocks and my back ached and my writing
arm was cramping when we finally decided to call it a day. (Finnstrom 2008:15)

Finnstrom goes on to describe his role as a participant observer, rather

than as an Acholi insider. Acknowledging that insider or "halfie" ethnogra-
phers (native or seminative ethnographers) often claim a methodological
superiority, he writes:

I remain, however, an outsider, a visitor, to Acholiland. I cannot claim any

essential connection to Uganda .... At the end of the day, regardless of our
respective backgrounds, it is ethnographic fieldwork that puts anthropologist
on firm empirical ground. (Finnstrom 2008: 16)

He also reflects on the role of participant observation (or participant reflec-

tion, following (Arhem 1994) as the sharing of experiences that also "works
as a tool of intersubjectivity in the endeavor to represent and demystify the
other, the unknown" (Finnstrom 2008:16).
Contemporary anthropology has seen an explosion in literature that is
produced by individuals who find it important to examine how their own
feelings, prejudices, and personal characteristics influence their interpreta-
tions of information. That is, ethnography becomes the interaction of the
people being studied (the Other) with the anthropologist (the Self). These
approaches have become known by a variety of terms including postmod-
em, interpretive, critical, or reflexive anthropology. This movement toward
more reflexive ethnographic writing has resulted in a quantum increase in
the number of accounts of the fieldwork "experience" particularly by indi-
viduals who rely mainly on the method of participant observation. The re-
sult, we believe, is a continuing demystification of the process of fieldwork
and ethnographic writing. Making explicit the process of participant obser-
vation allows the reader to better understand the information presented
by the ethnographer. Narrative ethnography (Tedlock 1991) and personal
accounts of field experience also provide the opportunity for new research-
ers to begin to anticipate problems, identify alternative strategies, and begin
 Learning To Be a Participant Observer 37

to craft their personal approaches to participant observation early in the

fieldwork experience. The approach to training in ethnography common a
generation ago, and still extant, in which each new ethnographer is told to
go out and reinvent anthropology methodologically and sink or swim on
their own ability to do so, constitutes the worst form of intellectual elitism.
Fortunately, we have gone beyond that time.
While approaches that emphasize the "observation of participation" are
quite useful and important (especially for training budding anthropolo-
gists), we see these as complementary to the use of participant observation
as a means of collecting verifiable, reliable data concerning human behav-
ior. We accept that none of us can become completely objective measuring
devices. We can, however, use participant observation in conjunction with
other methods to serve anthropology as a scientific pursuit.
That is, we see reflexivity as a beginning point rather than as an end to
ethnography. We need to be aware of whom we are, understand our biases
as much as we can, and understand and interpret our interactions with
the people we study. Once we have done that, we can strive to determine
whether there are regularities in human behavior. From our perspective,
Hamilton captured the appropriate balance between reflexivity and social
scientific analysis. She wrote:
the truths and realities on which I must rely take shape in the spaces between
observer and observed, between subject and object, between writer and reader.
The ethnographic information I collected is a social construct; as an actor, as
well as an observer, I participated in the creation of that information. I have
placed myself in this book's narrative action and have described relationships
with informants and institutional affiliations that limit the field of action I was
able to encompass. (Hamilton 1998:33}

However, Hamilton goes on to note that she does "not think it useful to
focus" on herself as an actor in the book. Along with including many of
the words and actions of the people she studied, she also used considerable
quantitative data to elucidate gender relations in highland Ecuador.
There is no question that theory does affect the kind of accounts written
by anthropologists and others. From a personal point of view, however,
what is heartening to us is that much previous anthropological and other
social scientific research can be quite useful in building generalizations
irrespective of the theoretical perspective used. Our experience has thus
been that, despite differences in theoretical perspectives, gender, ethnicity,
and other personal factors, the broad-brush descriptive observations of in-
dividual researchers concerning human behavior are relatively consistent.
Certainly, if we look at the fine detail or if we look for consonance in theo-
retical conclusions, we will find many differences. Rather than using the
latter as justification for giving up on making participant observation and
38 Chapter 2

other anthropological methods more verifiable and reliable, we believe it

is more productive to focus on the generalizations that can be derived from
such data. The aim should then be to improve our methodological skills,
including learning to be better participant observers, to work toward build-
ing generalizations that are even stronger.

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION ON THE FAST TRACK

As qualitative research methods became more incorporated into the plan-

ning, implementation, and evaluation of development and health projects,
a series of approaches to rapid appraisal using forms of research that were
drawn from participant observation have been developed. Rapid Rural Ap-
praisal {Chambers 1980, 1983, 1992) approaches in agricultural research
and technology transfer programs became a key component of the "farm-
ing systems research" paradigm. In health-related research, Rapid Appraisal
Procedures {RAP) advocated by Scrimshaw and Hurtado {1987), Rapid
Ethnographic Assessment {REA) (Bentley, et al. 1988), and focused ethno-
graphic studies {FES){Pelto and Pelto 1997) share the a set of characteristics
in which researchers employ several qualitative methods, including aspects
of participant observation to collect information on tightly focused topics
to be able to incorporate local understandings for the planning and imple-
mentation of intervention programs. Coming from the perspective of quali-
tative research in sociology, Knoblauch {2005) outlines focused ethnogra-
phy as a form of ethnographic study that is contrasted with conventional
in that rather than attempting a comprehensive, holistic view of a cultural
setting, it focuses on a single topic, and is typically conducted in a shorter
time period than conventional ethnography. Knoblauch notes that focused
ethnography, like rapid appraisal procedures and focused ethnographic
studies, is more likely to be used in applied research.
It seems incongruous that researchers would talk about participant obser-
vation in relatively short-term, focused research approaches. Yet, all of these
writers cite examples of the use of unstructured observation and at least
limited participation as critical in the collection of information for program
planning and implementation. Clearly the role of the participant observer
is different than it would be in a more conventional qualitative research
project. As Knoblauch ( 2005) points out, the role of the researcher is closer
to the "observer" end of the continuum (Spradley's passive participation or
limited participation) than to the "complete participation" end. However,
it is also clear that some researchers have managed participation and in-
corporated it in a novel way into their research (Cemea 1992). The United
Nations University 16-country study of health using the RAP incorporated
participant observations both in selected households and in community
 Learning To Be a Participant Observer 39

and clinic settings (N. S. Scrimshaw and Gleason 1992). The use of partici-
pant observation in rapid or focused research not only suggests novel ways
of participating, but also different approaches to sampling activities and
people. We will discuss both the forms of participant observation and the
sampling issues related to its use in rapid appraisal or focused ethnography
approaches in health and rural development in later chapters.
This chapter has focused on the important theoretical work that has
been done in recent years on participant observation. We began by indi-
cating that skills for participant observation can be learned and included
a preliminary discussion of some of the important dimensions to doing
participant observation.
We then indicated the importance of understanding that participation
and observation are two different processes that, in some sense, are con-
tradictory. Pure observation seeks to remove the researcher from the scene
of actions and behaviors, while pure participation immerses the researcher
in the scene of actions and behaviors. For this reason, researchers must be
aware of the degree of their participation. We used typologies developed by
Spradley and Adler and Adler to indicate the spectrum of investigators' par-
ticipation or membership in cultural situations. The investigator has some
degree of control over the degree of their participation and membership,
but we also discussed how the researcher's ethnic, gender, class, and other
characteristics can limit participation and membership.
Contemporary anthropology has led to much more reflexive accounts
based in most cases on participant observation. These accounts emphasize
the interaction between the participant and what he or she is observing.
Although they have led to much useful introspection concerning the field-
work process and the nature of participant observation, we closed with a
plea for getting beyond the introspection. From our perspective, a social
science is possible and this requires us to engage in comparative research.
This means that we need to improve our skills so that we can better use the
method of participant observation (as well as other methods) in building
social science theory. It is to improving these skills that we tum in the next
two chapters.

NOTES

1. Interestingly, this statement is strategically placed over a photograph whose

caption reads: "Robert Dentan burning the fur off a monkey. •
2. Many contemporary anthropologists and researchers using a cultural studies
approach base their analyses on "texts" that can be written or spoken materials. In
the former case, face to fa~e interaction with informants may not be required (see
Murray 1991).
40 Chapter 2

3. We have carried out fieldwork in an essentially commuting situation and as

residents of communities. There is no doubt for us either that greater understanding
comes from living in the community.
4. Good reports that it was this experience that contributed to his increasing di-
vergence from his then-advisor's portrayal of the Yanomama as "the fierce people"
(Chagnon 1983). Although Good saw the violence in their culture, he also saw a
substantial amount of harmony and group cohesion.
5. Tedlock discusses a number of cases of anthropologists who are candidates
for having "gone native." As she points out, however, in each case the individual
continued to publish ethnographic accounts (1991:70).
6. Sanjek (1990d) argues that this is an important part of establishing validity
in ethnographic reporting.
 Doing Participant Observation
Becoming a Participant

In the previous chapter, we discussed the tension between the roles of

observer and participant inherent in the role of participant observer. They
appear to (and do) require different sets of skills. In this chapter, we will
discuss the strategies and skills necessary to successfully adopt the role of
participant. The following chapter will focus on the skills necessary to be a
good observer.
Becoming a successful participant in another cultural setting involves a
series of practical, logistical, and emotional processes. Some aspects of these
processes have been the subject of much anthropological literature, while
other dimensions are still part of the "mystery" of doing field research. This
chapter will begin with a discussion of how you should approach a new
field situation, particularly emphasizing the importance of getting formal
and informal clearance to do research. We then discuss the importance of
building rapport, establishing close, trusting relationships with people in
another cultural setting. Building rapport does not often go smoothly, so
we also discuss making mistakes and how a beginning field researcher can
successfully recover from errors they will inevitably commit.

ENTERING THE FIELD

Gaining entry to a field site and beginning the process of building rapport
can be a daunting experience for new researchers and experienced research-
ers in new settings. Entree can be either overt or covert. In covert entree
the researcher does not make explicit that s/he is engaged in a research
project. Covert entree may be a reasonable choice in research that involves

41
42 Chapter 3

nonparticipation or passive participation of the most limited kind, and it is

defended by some as necessary under some circumstances (Lugosi 2006).
As we express in chapter 11 we believe that taking a covert participatory role
is not ethical. In research that includes participant observation, we believe
that it is imperative to make the research nature of the relationship clear.
In general, the initial approaches to gaining entrance to a research set-
ting are similar for many different kinds of fieldwork, including fieldwork
that will employ participant observation as a method and fieldwork in
virtual settings and employing computer mediated communication. First,
in research outside the researcher's home country either a special visa for
research or a formal research permit may be required. It is important to be-
gin the process of obtaining them well in advance of fieldwork. Even when
a special visa or permit is not necessary, it is common courtesy to check in
with members of the local community of scholars and researchers. New
researchers in a particular setting may want to carry letters of introduction
from colleagues with experience in that setting. 1 In recent years the Insti-
tutional Review Boards for the Protection of Human Subjects in Research
(IRBs) for most U.S. universities and colleges are requiring the research con-
ducted abroad also to be reviewed and approved for the protection of hu-
man subjects in the country in which the research will take place. While the
method of participant observation is almost always "exempt" in IRB terms,
the researcher will need to identify an appropriate institution to review it,
and secure a written confirmation that it has been reviewed and approved.
In our experience this can take a good deal of time in some countries.
After taking care of issues at the national level, the next step is to identify
local leaders and organizations who represent the community in which
the research will take place, or who have access to the setting in which the
research will take place. That is, the local gatekeepers. While some field
situations do not have gatekeepers, this is uncommon (Schensul, Schensul,
and LeCompte 1999). Contacting gatekeepers may mean contacting local
officials, such as mayors, county executives, presidents of key local com-
munity committees, etc. In studies of older adults in communities in Ken-
tucky, Kathleen and her research team made first contacts with the County
Judge Executive of each county, and then with the county extension agents,
representatives of community development organizations, and leaders of
community organizations such as homemakers' clubs, retired teachers' or-
ganizations, and the directors of the Senior Citizens' Centers. For a project
in a Pittsburgh community that would draw heavily on community partici-
pation in the research process (community-based participatory research2 )
anthropologist Kimberly Rak worked to identify leaders in a housing proj-
ect community and secured their support of the project before approaching
other community members. Leaders of the housing project community
then became key collaborators on the project. Leith Mullings (Mullings
 Doing Participant Observation 43

2000; Mullings and Wali 2001; Mullings et al. 2001) and her colleagues
discuss the steps that they followed in order to carry out the Harlem Birth
Right Project, a research project examining stress and reproduction that
included participant observation with African American women in Central
Harlem. In order to gain entree into a community that was very suspicious
of research, Mullings and her colleagues formed alliances with organiza-
tions such as the New York Urban League and set up an effective working
community advisory board to introduce the research to the community and
to guide the specific questions and approaches to the research.
In research in Latin America, we have always identified the organizations
that promote the most inclusive meetings of community members. Some-
times this has been regularly organized community political meetings. In
&uador, for example, the most inclusive meetings were those of the Rural
Health Insurance System. In Mexico, we attended meetings of the members
of the agrarian reform organization (ejido). At community meetings we
asked for time on the agenda to present the overall goals of the project, the
kinds of methods (in general terms) that we would be using, and to ask
permission to work in the community. In each case, we have spoken with
leaders before presenting the project at community meetings.
While it has sometimes taken several meetings to secure permission, to
date we have never been denied permission to work in a community. How-
ever, this does happen. When it does, it may be possible to discover the
reasons why the community or community leaders were reluctant to agree
and those concerns can be explicitly addressed and the decision changed.
In some instances, an alternative research site must be chosen. In still oth-
ers, it may be that the specific goals of the research need to be examined
to understand why a community might be reluctant to allow a particular
project to go forward.
Nicole Constable (2003) when using CMC as a critical component to her
study of global romance and "mail order" marriages was encouraged by the
moderator of an online group to become a member of the group as part of
her research. He suggested that she lurk for a few days, and then make her
presence as a researcher known to the wider membership. When this was
done she received a number of hostile messages-she was "flamed. "3 She
finally decided to discontinue her participation in that group. When she
withdrew from the group she received a larger number of responses sup-
porting her participation and encouraging her to stay. In Constable's case
the "gatekeeper" was supportive, but a number of participants were not,
resulting in her withdrawal. However, the supportive moderator initiated
an offshoot group of about 40 members who were comfortable with the
research and who welcomed her as a participant.
In studies of institutions such as schools, clinic, hospitals, religious
groups, or voluntary organizations, gaining entree begins with the hierarchy
44 Chapter 3

of the institutions. For example, this would be principals and superinten-

dents in educational research; hospital officials and chiefs of setvice in
hospital based research. It is our experience that in larger cities some fre-
quently used research sites, such as schools and hospitals, have research
review boards that review proposals before permission to carry out research
is granted.
No matter the setting, it is important for the researcher to carefully ex-
plain the purposes of the research project in terms that are comprehensible
to the people who will be included as participants.

Entree and rapport are facilitated if the community understands and accepts
the purposes of the research. Full disclosure of research purposes is an im-
portant ethical principle as well as a key to entree and rapport. By having a
socially recognized purpose, the researcher assumes a less ambiguous role
within the group studied. Fieldworkers often find that if they do not actively
present themselves in an appropriate role, the community may assign them to
an inappropriate one. (van Willigen and DeWalt 1985:20)

Gaining permission is the first step for carrying out research. Gaining access
to specific institutions, places, and events may take more time. Often the
researcher will find that this is facilitated by particular individuals who es-
sentially take the ethnographer under their wing and help to introduce him
or her to their society or group.

FIRST CONTACT

A number of ethnographers have noted that some people in any research

setting are much more likely to be open and curious, and to even approach
the ethnographer early in fieldwork (Agar 1996; Pelto and Pelto 1978).
As a stranger, it is very easy to accept the hospitality and assistance of the
first welcoming person or group that appears, but the ethnographer has to
be cautious because they may then find it difficult to interact with other
groups and individuals. Agar has written that the first people to approach
the fieldworker are often either "professional stranger-handlers" or "devi-
ants" (Agar 1996).
Professional stranger-handlers are individuals who are delegated (or del-
egate themselves) to check out the new person in their midst and limit his/
her access to information and situations that might prove uncomfortable
to the group. "They can find out what the outsider is after and quickly im-
provise some information that satisfies him without representing anything
potentially harmful to the group" (Agar 1996:135).
Agar described his experience with professional stranger handlers in two
research settings. When he began working in Lombardi he was quickly
 Doing Participant Obseroation 45

approached by an older man named Sakrya. Sakrya was the first person to
approach him, and he materialized any time Agar was doing something
"bizarre in the early days of fieldwork, like drawing a map or measuring
the size of tanda huts" (1996:135). Sakrya also informed Agar that there
was no room in the tanda for him to live. Several months later, when he
had determined that Agar was trustworthy, Sakrya was also the person who
introduced him to members of the community and arranged for people
from his kin group to act as paid assistants.
The other example Agar gives is from his research in a federal narcot-
ics hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. One of the inmates named Jack first
approached Agar and posed the question on everyone's mind: "How do I
know that you're not a fed?" When Agar replied, "Try me," Jack took the
challenge and began to act as his guide around the unit. He made sure that
Agar would not see anything they didn't want him to and fed him with mis-
information, until Agar proved that he could be trusted. Later Jack became
an important key informant and friend. Agar reported that both Sakrya and
Jack were individuals who were respected insiders, "natural public relations
experts," and held the trust of the members of the community.
The "deviants" who may approach the fieldworker early in research are
different. They are individuals who are, for one reason or another, alienated
from or marginal to the community or group. Agar defines them as "mem-
bers who are on the boundaries of the group in some low-status position"
(1996:136). Dentan (1970) described spending some time in the company
of a man who approached him early in his fieldwork, who turned out to be
the Semai equivalent of the "village idiot."
In our experience, some of the first contacts are often made by people
who are "opportunists." They are adept at discovering what resources the
researcher might have and how those resources can be diverted to them-
selves and their families. We have found that these individuals are often
from the mid range of the socioeconomic system, neither the most affluent
nor the poorest. For example, in our early work in Mexico, after making
contact with the president of the ejido (the agrarian reform community), we
were steered by him to a "research assistant"/guide from his own faction.
This individual was younger and a bit more educated than the other farm-
ers, and he was not shy about asking for loans, for help in buying a tractor,
and for other resources. After a time, we were able to firmly establish the
"economic rules" of our relationship and Pedro became a helpful and savvy
collaborator in our research.
Having acknowledged the potential pitfalls and the potential benefits of
dealing with those who contact us first, it is important to emphasize that
in a number of cases the first contacts can tum out to be outstanding infor-
mants and knowledgeable insiders. Finding a sponsor who can introduce
and vouch for you can be a key to gaining entrance as a participant. The
46 Chapter 3

experience recounted by Whyte (1996a, 199Gb; Whyte and Whyte 1984)

in his research on a street corner society shows the importance of having
a sponsor. Whyte was introduced to his sponsor, Doc, by a social worker.
"Somehow in spite of the vagueness of my own explanations the head of
girl's work in the Norton Street House understood what I needed. She be-
gan describing Doc to me" (Whyte 1996b:75). She made an appointment
for them to meet and left them alone. Whyte went into a long explanation
of what he wanted to do. "Doc heard me out without a change of expres-
sion, so that I had no way of predicting his reaction. When I finished, he
asked: "Do you want to see the high life or the low life." Whyte replied:
"I want to see all I can." And Doc answered: "Well, any night you want to
see anything, I'll take you around. I can take you to the joints-gambling
joints-! can take you around to the street corners. Just remember that
you're my friend. That's all they need to know" (76). Thus was forged one
of the most effective relationships in participant observation research. Doc
was not only an intelligent, interested person, but he was personally pow-
erful in the world of Cornerville. Constable (2003) found that recruiting a
sponsor from among the online community she was interested in resulted
in the creation of a productive online space for her research.
Finding and recruiting a sponsor can be an effective way to enter a com-
munity, meet people, and learn the culture. The trick is finding the right
kind of sponsor. We suggest that the right kind of sponsor is someone who
is in a respected but relatively neutral position in the community, and with
whom a relationship of mutual trust can be developed. Agar expressed the
response of many of us to William Foote Whyte's relationship with Doc:
"We should all be so lucky" (1996:137). Constable's discussion-group-
moderator-sponsor was able to identify a subgroup of group members who
were comfortable with her research.
Guimaraes (2005), in participant observation in a Brazilian internet
multimedia online sociability platform called Palace, early on met (through
his avatar) a key member of the community who was organizing an online
motorbike tour of Palace. His sponsor then introduced him to other mem-
bers as "an anthropologist researching Palace" and also assured the other
members that Guimaraes was "a nice guy" (149). Guimaraes said:

while talking about the organization and the pleasures of motorbike riding
and traveling (either online or offline), it was possible to introduce myself as
and ethnographer and establish rapport with some key members of the group
as many of the organizers were Gods or Wizards. 4 (149)

The members of Palace came to accept Guimaraes as a participant and

researcher.
Agar (1996) noted that in his fieldwork among the Lombardi and in the
narcotics hospital, his first contacts eventually became keys to his being
 Doing Participant Observation 47

accepted into those settings after he had proved his trustworthiness. In our
case, Pedro provided a particular perspective on the community and provided
us with an entree into the community. When we recognized that he was al-
lied with one faction, we were soon able to cultivate contacts in the other
organized faction and with the nonaligned group. In chapter 5, we return to
this theme when we discuss the issue of sampling in participant observation.
Langness (Cohen et al. 1970), however, suggests that in some settings
it may never be possible to avoid or overcome being identified with one
faction or another. His warning reinforces the need to be clear at the outset
about which questions are the most important in the research, and which
groups are most important for getting at that information. While relation-
ships with informants present themselves and develop in their own time
and in their own pattern, beginning fieldwork with some idea about the
types and range of people who will be included among first contacts helps
the researcher to move beyond the limitations they might impose. Eventu-
ally, it will be important to establish a working relationship, a rapport, with
a much larger number of people within the society or group.

ESTABLISHING RAPPORT

The establishment of "rapport " is often talked about as both an essential

element in using participant observation as a tool as well as the goal of
participant observation. As Villa Rojas (1979) has written about his and
his collaborators' field research in the Mayan region of Mexico, "Our close
contact with local people has always led to excellent rapport, the only basis
on which really reliable information can be obtained" (59). The definition
of what constitutes rapport, however, is an elusive one. Merriam Web-
ster's Online Dictionary defines rapport as "relation marked by harmony,
conformity, accord or affinity." In our own thinking, we have often used
a definition for which we can no longer find the citation. In this formula-
tion, rapport is a state of interaction achieved when the participants come
to share the same goals, at least to some extent-that is, when both the
"informant" and the researcher come to the point when each is committed
to help the other achieve his or her goal, when informants participate in
providing information for "the book" or the study, and when the researcher
approaches the interaction in a respectful and thoughtful way that allows
the informant to tell his or her story.
Nader (1986) suggested a more one-sided view. She wrote, "Rapport,
pure and simple, consists of establishing lines of communication between
the anthropologist and his (sic) informants in order for the former to col-
lect data that then allows him (sic) to understand the culture under study"
(113).
48 Chapter 3

Jorgenson (1989) focuses on the need to develop a situation of"trust and

cooperation" between the researcher and the people in a research setting.
As Jorgenson notes, the degree to which trust and cooperation (rapport)
are established influences to large extent the degree to which information
gathered in participant observation is accurate and dependable. Jorgenson
suggests that the researcher periodically assess the extent to which sfhe feels
that a situation of trust and cooperation exists between the researcher and
the people with whom sfhe is working. Schensul et al. (1999) note that the
development of trust, which can be mobilized throughout the fieldwork
process, is one of the key benefits of participant observation.
How does one establish rapport? To large extent, rapport is built in much
the same way as any other personal relationship. It is built over time. It
requires that the researcher put effort into learning appropriate behavior in
a setting; showing respect for people in a setting; being a good and careful
listener; and being ready to reciprocate in appropriate ways. It means that
if the researcher expects informants to tell the truth, at least as they see it,
the researcher must also be prepared to tell the truth.
Guimaraes (Guimaraes 2005) argues that the establishment of rapport in
online, virtual settings is very similar to offline settings. He notes that the
same skills "of knowing how to listen to an informant, learning the proper
way to behave and so on are as valuable online as offline" (151). He exer-
cised these strategies in gaining acceptance in Palace.
Reciprocity is a critical component of establishing rapport. Clearly, there
is a range of level of reciprocity. It certainly includes telling the truth when
the researcher is asked about the research, his/her goals in research, or his/
her life stories. Telling the truth can pose problems for the researcher but it
is our feeling that if the researcher cannot tell the truth about the goals of
the research project, it probably should not be carried out. However, decid-
ing how much beyond the general research question and objective to share
can be problematical. We should worry about excessively influencing the
outcome of the research. In general, it is not necessary to share specific hy-
potheses, or to attempt a short course on social science research and theory.
Answering personal questions can also be a problem. There are times and
situations in which women researchers, for example, may want to leave the
impression that they are married or at least in a relationship "back home"
to deflect some of the almost inevitable sexual solicitation. We feel that
it is acceptable to leave this impression, even when it is not entirely true.
(Although, to be frank, if the spouse or boyfriend isn't right on the scene, a
fictitious one isn't much help with this aspect of living in the field.) Apart
from this, we feel it important to answer questions about religious beliefs
and practices, values, opinions, and so forth truthfully. If you feel that you
have to lie, how can you expect informants to be frank and open with you?
However, the researcher can put their opinions and personal information
 Doing Participant Observation 49

in the most neutral way possible. For example, when asked about what we
think of politicians either of the country in which we are working or our
own, we have learned to say: "I agree/disagree with his/her policies" rather
than "S/he is a great/horrible leader/crook." When the researcher truly re-
spects the point of view of the informant, it is quite easy to answer religious
and other belief questions by saying, "I don't believe that, but I certainly
understand why you do."
In many cultural settings, we have found that it is entirely appropriate to
ask how much money a person earns. In fact, it makes gathering income
information in Mexico a bit easier. The answers may not be truthful, or at
least not accurate, but the informants are usually not offended by the ques-
tion. However, the question often is turned around. In the kinds of research
setting in which we have worked, our income, even as graduate students,
was incomprehensibly large for a rural, resource-poor farmer to deal with.
Over the years, we developed a strategy of not giving a dollar (or peso, or
sucre) amount, but to say something like, "I must be frank with you, I am
well paid for my work with the university. We are very comfortable." This
has seemed to work in most settings.
Another common question is "What's in this for you?" In other words,
people want to know what you will gain from this project. Again, honesty
is the only viable approach. (And since most of us will not experience large
direct economic gain from any project, the researcher can almost always
reply that there is no real money involved. 5) We generally put the answer to
this in terms that are understandable in the local setting. For example: "We
will write a book that will tell our colleagues what life is like here. This will
help us finish our degree," or "get a job," or "keep our job," etc. Sometimes
the answer is, truthfully, that we will be able to use the information to help
find support for community projects or the development of better policies.
Being truthful with informants does not extend to questions about others
in the community. The protection of confidentiality always comes before
any other consideration in fieldwork. Researchers must be assiduous in
not sharing with other community members' personal information that
may have been learned in doing fieldwork. Betraying confidentiality, even
inadvertently, is not only unethical, but it ALWAYS comes back to bite you.
It can mean, at minimum, the loss of an informant, but can also end a re-
search project, and even affect a career long term.
Engaging in reciprocity may mean sharing personal goods and provid-
ing services (e.g., transportation) as they are appropriate in the setting.
Responding to numerous requests to share goods or provide services can be
very irritating, especially when the requests are beyond the level appropri-
ate in the researcher's home setting. Sometimes an accommodation needs
to be made. For example, Rabinow found it easier not to have a car during
fieldwork than to respond to constant requests for rides. In Temascalcingo,
50 Chapter 3

we also found ourselves serving as the local taxi service but this never be-
came especially problematical.
Reciprocity may mean arranging for material returns to individuals or
communities. Malinowski distributed tobacco to informants. In research in
1976 in the Brazilian Amazon, Kathleen and her colleagues brought glass
trade beads to distribute to members of the community, and before leaving
gave away many personal goods such as soap, flip-flops, and batteries. Gui-
maraes helped to build and (virtually) decorate Palace servers and rooms.
We have always tried to avoid directly paying informants (it seems an-
tithetical to the notion of participant observation) but we have given re-
sources to communities in other ways. In Honduras, people asked whether
we could provide the community with a calculator and we were happy to
oblige. In the Andean region of Ecuador, our research project sponsored a
soccer tournament among the research communities and provided food
during the games and a trophy for the winner. We also employed com-
munity nutritionists in each region to work with community members,
provide community education, and train local health workers. We then
supported modest salaries of those health workers. In another project, we
provided money to start a rotating credit fund for each community in the
project. We routinely employ local assistants and guides. The cost of these
kinds of activities is often low for the researcher, but significant for the
community and individuals.
Collings (2009) discusses this issue in a report on a recent phase on on-
going research with Canadian Inuit. As part of a staged approach to gaining
official, community, and individual agreement to carry out the research he
attended a community meeting to present his proposed project:
I began by explaining the project's aims, methods, and expected results. Not
three minutes went by before a hand was in the air. What kinds of benefits will
we see from this research? What good will your research be to us?
Ooooh! I was excited on hearing a question I expected, even hoped, to
hear. Trying not to sound too smug, I launched into my prepared answer: A
database on subsistence production and food networks would be invaluable
for community-based decisions on wildlife management and hunter support
programs. I had hardly started in on my explanation when I noticed a woman
tap the questioner on the shoulder. She whispered but loudly enough that
everyone in the room could hear her. •It says on page 3 he is going to give us
lots of money." The questioner turned back to me. ·oK, it's good then. • There
were no more questions. The letters of support were ready the next day. (138}

Collings goes on to note:

In retrospect, I should not have been surprised that money would be the de-
ciding factor in obtaining a permit, although money as an issue did not occur
to me until I began filling out ARI's licensing paperwork some time later. The
 Doing Participant Observation 51

first section on the application form asks for the investigator's address and
affiliations. The first question in the second section? How much money from
the research will contribute to economic development? That is, how much
money is the investigator going to spend in the community? Only later on the
application form were applicants required to explain and justify the research
project. To me, the message was quite clear: From ARI's perspective, the most
important issue in community-based or collaborative research, at least in the
western Canadian Arctic, is financial. (Collings 2009:20)

Even though, as he further notes, collaborative/participatory research is

becoming increasing common.
Probably the most common things field researchers provide to infor-
mants are photographs. We have made it a practice to provide families
with copies of pictures taken of them. When it is possible, we will respond
positively to requests to take "family portraits." We have found that sharing
photographs makes it less awkward for us when we are taking other photo-
graphs to document life in communities.
Finally, reciprocity often includes sharing research results with the com-
munity. This is especially important if the community can make good use
of the information. In the project in which we employed community nu-
tritionists, we incorporated the results of our study into community educa-
tion. In other studies, we have been able to assist community members in
writing proposals for support, using. in part, information from the studies.
Several online researchers have contributed their expertise to building or
maintaining the online environments.
This discussion of the process of developing rapport and coming to be
accepted in a community begs the question of how long it takes to achieve.
In reality, a lot depends on the ability, characteristics, and experience of
the ethnographer, the circumstances and characteristics of the group being
studied, and the kinds of information that one wants to obtain.
Rapid research methods (RAP, FES) are also based on the establishment
of rapport, but under more constrained circumstances. When field work
is a matter of weeks rather than months, the definition of rapport is a bit
more narrow, but not qualitatively different. We have often, for example,
participated in rapid appraisals (Kumar 1993) in which the objective is to
obtain a quick impression of farming techniques, agricultural problems, or
significant kinds of illnesses in a community. In this situation the degree
to which either party understands or shares the goals of the others is, of
necessity, quite limited. In these situations, the ethnographer has to achieve
an "instant rapport" that is at least sufficient to put informants at ease to
answer the questions being asked. Rapport is still based on developing
good communication relationships that emphasize listening on the part
of researchers (Cemea 1992; Chambers 1992; Slim and Mitchell1992). At
the minimum, it requires that the researcher explain in simple format the
52 Chapter 3

goals of the study and treat the responses of respondents and informants
with respect and attention to the protection of their rights. The develop-
ment of rapport by being on the ground, listening, and participating can
take place even in emergency settings (Slim and Mitchell 1992). As rapid
assessment research has came to include participatory research methods in
both rural development and health research, rapport as the sharing of each
other's goals has come to include the development of shared goals for pro-
gramming planning and implementation developed through interaction
between the researchers and the participants in research (Chambers 1992;
Reason and Bradbury 2008).
For other kinds of topics, much more rapport is required before much
information can be gathered. During our fieldwork in Temascalcingo (B. R.
DeWalt 1979; K. M. DeWalt 1983) we were unable to get people to talk about
topics such as witchcraft or traditional curing practices until we had spent
over six months in the field. In other situations in which the people being
studied are for some reason very suspicious (e.g., harsh exploitation by out-
siders, situations of violence or deprivation, extreme isolation), it may never
be possible to achieve a substantial amount of rapport. It has become rela-
tively standard in ethnographic inquiries to think of a minimum of a year of
fieldwork as necessary to gain sufficient insight from participant observation,
but this is only a general guideline. Certainly, the longer that the investigator
is in the field, the higher the level of trust between community and investiga-
tor, and the better the quality of the information is likely to be.
To make the point again, rapport exists when both investigator and infor-
mants come to share common goals or move to develop joint goals for the
research. The participants in the setting or events under study must come
to agree to help the investigator, however they understand the project. This
means that it is the responsibility of the investigator to describe, at least in
general terms, what the project is and what he hopes the product will be
(e.g., book, report, or proposal). Clearly, this does not mean explaining the
nature of social research or anthropological theory. However, it does mean
explaining what one is about at the outset of research and every time any-
one asks. Near the end of the research, it may be appropriate to share find-
ings with people in the research through a presentation to the community.
Establishing rapport also means that the researcher must come to ac-
cept the goals of the community. At the most basic, this means telling the
story to others accurately and fairly, having and showing respect for the
participants, and engaging in reciprocity. It can include explicitly discuss-
ing goals with informants and finding ways in which the results of research
can be useful to the community. It may mean recruiting members of the
community to participate in formulating questions and even collecting
information. In recent research on the coast of Ecuador, in which we were
 Doing Participant Observation 53

investigating the impact of income-generating projects on women's social

power in rural communities, the questions in which we were interested
were, in part, a response to the issues identified by women in the study
communities. Members of the study communities were consulted before
the beginning of each research phase and community members were re-
cruited into the field teams to serve as guides and assistants.
For most investigators using participant observation, incorporating the
concerns and goals of the people with whom we work is not difficult. In fact,
the greatest strength of the method is that the researcher attempts to gain the
point of view of the participant. Part of the iterative nature of participant ob-
servation is that the questions continually evolve as new information is gath-
ered and new insights reached. The big caveat here is that individuals within
a research setting have many different goals. Understanding and sharing the
goals of the community and individuals within it does not mean laying aside
the analytical stance that is also inherent in the method. It does mean that the
reporting of research results should not place any individual in harm's way.
The Code of Ethics of the American Anthropological Association (American
Anthropological Association 2009:4) states:

Anthropological researchers have primary ethical obligations to the people,

species, and materials they study and to the people with whom they work.
These obligations can supersede the goal of seeking new knowledge, and can
lead to decisions not to undertake or to discontinue a research project when
the primary obligation conflicts with other responsibilities, such as those owed
to sponsors or clients. These ethical obligations include:
To avoid harm or wrong, understanding that the development of knowledge
can lead to change which may be positive or negative for the people or animals
worked with or studied;
To respect the well-being of humans and nonhuman primates;
To work for the long-term conservation of the archaeological, fossil, and
historical records;
To consult actively with the affected individuals or group(s), with the goal
of establishing a working relationship that can be beneficial to all parties
involved.

Sharing goals may also come to mean helping communities to achieve their
goals. Many researchers have made the information they obtained available
to communities and many have taken on activist roles. Wax writes of her ex-
periences in a Japanese relocation camp during World War II: "I, as a field-
worker, came to participate in this struggle and my behavior and attitudes
... came to resemble those of a fighter in a resistance movement" (Wax
1971:174). In participatory research programs, researchers and participant
develop at least some joint goals.
54 Chapter 3

BREAKING THROUGH

Many fieldworkers find that they can point to a single event or moment
in which the groundwork for the development of true rapport and partici-
pation in the setting was established (e.g., Nader 1986; Stack 1996; Sterk
1996; Whyte 1996a; Whyte and Whyte 1984). Clifford Geertz (1973) el-
egantly describes the event that allowed him and his wife to begin to gain
acceptance by the community and to establish true rapport in the Balinese
village in which they worked. The Geertzes had been in the village for about
a month, during which time the villagers treated them as though they were
not there. They were rarely greeted, people seemed to look right through
them; people would move away when they approached. It was truly an
anthropologist's nightmare.
Their breakthrough came as a result of a police raid on an illegal cock-
fight they were observing. Although the Geertzes could have stood their
ground and presented the police with their credentials and permissions,
they choose to run away with the rest of the villagers when the cockfight
was raided. In Geertz's words:

On the established anthropological principle, •When in Rome," my wife and

I decided, only slightly less instantaneously than everyone else, that the thing
to do was run too. We ran down the main village street, northward, away
from where we were living.... About halfway down another fugitive ducked
suddenly into a compound-his own it turned out-and we, seeing nothing
ahead of us but rice fields, open country and a very high volcano, followed
him. As the three of us came tumbling into the courtyard, his wife, who had
apparently been through this sort of thing before, whipped out a table, a
tablecloth, three chairs, and three cups of tea, and we all, without any explicit
communication whatsoever, sat down, commenced to sip tea and sought to
compose ourselves. {415)

When, moments later, the police arrived, the Geertzes' adopted host was
able to provide a lengthy and accurate description of who they were, what
they were doing in the village, and what permissions they had. In addition,
he noted, the Geertzes had been in this compound all afternoon sipping
tea and knew nothing about the cockfight. The bewildered police left. The
Geertzes found that after that point they were enthusiastically incorporated
into the community.
An even more dramatic account of a single event that lead to fuller par-
ticipation is provided by Kornblum (1996) who was called on to stand
with nhis" gypsy family when they were attacked by Serbians in their camp
outside Paris. In a moment of crisis, he became one of them.

As I found my way to the main road through the camp, my worst fears were
confirmed. It seemed there would be a pitched battle, for the Boyash men
 Doing Participant Observation 55

and women were grouped about 50 yards away from a much larger group
of Serbian men. Both groups were heavily armed. I saw Cortez flick open his
switchblade. Tony was holding a shotgun. The Boyash women kept up a steady
barrage of violent oaths and insults. As we slowly advanced toward the Serbi-
ans I attempted to find a place in the second ranks, but Persa was there again
to shove me to the front. (1-2)

He relates that participating in this (eventually nonviolent) encounter re-

sulted in a subtle change in his relationship with the Gypsies. "Persa and I
never discussed that incident ... but I could tell it had changed her opinion
of me from one of disdain to one of guarded respect" (2).
After spending some time studying prostitutes in Amsterdam, Sterk
(1996) studied prostitutes in New York in the mid-80s just as the mag-
nitude of the AIDS epidemic had become clearer. Sterk had spent several
days "on the stroll" in New York but none of the prostitutes would speak
with her. Finally, one challenged her; she explained that she was from
Amsterdam and wanted to know something about the prostitution in the
United States. Her knowledge of the life was challenged, and apparently
she answered appropriately, as she was befriended by the prostitute, Ann.
Later Sterk found that her already acquired knowledge of the street from her
previous experiences gave her credibility with prostitutes and pimps.
Robert Dentan (1970) describes the day he and Ruth Dentan arrived in the
first Semai village in which they would work in Malaysia. They had found an
isolated village with relatively little contact with "pale people." While people
seemed to view him as "a particularly bizarre museum specimen," they had
seen "pale" men before, but never a "pale" woman. However, when Ruth said
that she wanted to learn to live like a Semai woman, she was whisked away.
A swarm of giggling and chattering women immediately gathered around her,
swept her up the ladder into our house, stripped her naked, wrapped her in a
sarong, stuck flowers into her hair, painted her face, put a machete in her hand,
and took her off to collect firewood. (103)

While it appears that it took Robert Dentan a bit longer to be incorporated

into the village, Miss Housefly (the translation of "Ruth" as rendered in the
Semai language) was quickly incorporated.
Stack (1996) found her acceptance into the community in an African
American section of a Southern city happened more slowly but was fa-
cilitated by the breaking down of her car. When her car broke down Stack
decided not to fix it. Like Rabinow she has been using the car, in part, to
transport community members, giving herself a visible role. Without a car,
she was more like the people of the community in which she was work-
ing, was less visible and more a part of the community. Lack of mobility
resulted in her spending more time in people's homes and led, she writes,
to her eventual acceptance into the community.
56 Chapter 3

We found in our work in Temascalcingo that the quality of the informa-

tion we were receiving improved after our return from a three-week trip to
the United States to renew our visas and take a break from field work. Until
that point, people seemed to be unsure of our interest in them and their
lives. We had been able to carry out fieldwork, but did not feel that we had
made close contacts or were incorporated into the flow of daily activities.
The fact that we had visited our own culture and families, but had returned
to renew our stay in Mexico, demonstrated our commitment to the people
in this Mexican community. Everywhere we went, people expressed "Que
milagro" (what a miracle) and greeted us with greater warmth and affection
than they had previous to our break. Suddenly, our previous questions
about sensitive subjects like witchcraft were answered in detail rather than
tossed-off and evaded. The experience of improved acceptance after return-
ing from a trip away from the research setting is so common in the litera-
ture that we have come to think of it as one of the most important ways to
enhance acceptance.
To summarize, in a number of these cases, the breakthrough in accep-
tance was achieved when the researchers provided evidence that their rela-
tionship with the community was important and serious TO THEM; when
they demonstrated a more than passing commitment to a community. We
returned to the community of Temascalcingo against the expectations of
community members who had assumed we would not. Clifford and Hillary
Geertz acted like Balinese villagers when they could have acted like privi-
leged foreigners. Kornblum risked violence to stand with the people with
whom he was working. While these dramatic examples are more vivid, rap-
port generally is established slowly, simply by continuing to live with and
interact with a group of people and conducting oneself in a way that shows
the researcher's commitment to the community.

TALKING THE TALK

One of the hallmarks of participant observation since Malinowski de-

scribed it has been the use of local languages in the research setting. Earlier
ethnographers, focused on collecting texts, often worked with interpreters.
Participation, however, requires being able to communicate effectively in
the local setting; being able to follow informal conversations; being able
to understand and join in jokes, etc. Discussing how to learn a language,
especially an unwritten language, is well beyond the scope of this volume.
However, we would like to note that quite a few of the languages that were
unwritten and inaccessible before going to the field for researchers in previ-
ous generations are now available for study before fieldwork begins. As a
result of the work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL International
 Doing Participant Observation 57

2010) 6 and the Wycliffe Bible Translators (Wycliffe Bible Translators 2010),
grammars and vocabularies exist for a large number of languages. For ex-
ample, in 1976 Kathleen spent a few weeks with the Northern Kayapo in
Brazil. Only one woman in the community spoke any Portuguese. The only
way Kathleen was able to achieve any level of communication in that short
period of time was through using the notes of a Bible translator who was
working on the Kayapo language.
It is not only worth the time and effort to learn the local language, it is
imperative. Debra Picchi (1992) recounts how she relearned this important
lesson during fieldwork with the Bakairi Indians in Central Brazil. She went
to Brazil as an ecological anthropologist with interests in demography,
modes of production, and labor organization. After several weeks in the
community, she overheard a conversation held in Portuguese about her.

·she doesn't speak well," Cici, a young mother of two complained loudly to
her friends. •1 think she must be as stupid as those giant anteaters that wander
around the jungle."
Domingas, a frail old women, answered Cici softly, "You ask too much. She
has been with us only a few weeks. You cannot expect her to speak Bakairi as
well as we do. Be patient and she too will be a human being."
Maisa, another young mother spoke up, "I don't know. I'm worried. The
Alemao7 really is not learning very fast at all. Geraldina told me that she tried to
explain to her the story of how the jaguar copulated with a human to produce
our people. Geraldina said she didn't think that the girl understood two words
of what she told her." (146}

Picchi reflected that she had not been studying the Bakairi language dili-
gently, as the people with whom she had been working also spoke Portu-
guese, and she was, at that point, more interested in collecting demographic
and production data. However, she also realized that the conversation had
been staged for her benefit, and carried out in Portuguese to make sure she
understood. After further reflection, she realized they were telling her that
she would not be considered a true human being in their world until she
could communicate in their language; and, finally, "the women were trying
to tell her that a grasp of the language was a necessary precondition for an
effective study of their tradition" ( 148).
It is difficult for some people to become fluent enough in a new language
to carry out effective participant observation. It takes time and it takes
study. But it is sometimes also a problem to work in the researcher's first
language. In working within the United States we sometimes know that
we will be working in a dialect of English that is sufficiently different from
the one we learned as children as to cause some problems. There are times,
however, when we think we are communicating but are missing subtle re-
gional and local differences in language.
58 Chapter 3

In the study of nutritional strategies of older adults in rural Kentucky we

had been collecting recipes for several weeks before we came to realize that
the word "seasoning" meant something different to our informants than it
did to us. When we heard seasoning, we thought salt and pepper. It took a
bit obsetvation of cooking to realize that "seasoning" referred to some type
of fat. Traditionally, it was lard or bacon grease. In the 1990s, it was more
often solid vegetable shortening or vegetable oil. Not only did we need
to rewrite the recipes, we had to edit the program for calculating nutrient
content of dishes. Two tablespoons of lard in the green beans represent a
lot more calories than salt and pepper.
All communication in research settings should be approached as cross-
cultural communication in which one of the tasks of the researcher is to
understand the local language. The formal elicitation of local terms for
phenomena of interest is a common activity of fieldwork. In some types
of research it is a research end in itself. There are a number of approaches
to formal elicitation (e.g., Spradley 1970, 1980; Weller and Romney 1988;
Werner and Schoepfle 1987a, 1987b). However, even if the presentation
of data from formal elicitation is not a goal of the project, taking time to
elicit local terms or to follow-up on statements that are not understood is
an important aspect of learning to talk the talk.
How far should talking the talk go? Again, understanding local mean-
ings is critical to understanding what is going on. However, there are times
when using the language of the setting can come back to bite the researcher.
Depending on the role that the researcher comes to have within a commu-
nity it may or may not be appropriate to talk like the participants. Whyte
found that his informants did not like him using profanities, even though
they did all the time. For him to do so was not deemed appropriate. 8

WALKING THE WALK

The heart of adopting the method of participant obsetvation is to behave

appropriately enough to be accepted as a participant at some level and to
participate in the daily activities of people with whom the researcher is
working. By behaving appropriately, we mean learning what constitutes
good manners and practicing them to the best of your ability. It can include
proper, polite speech; appropriate reciprocity; table manners; appropriate
levels of eye contact: all the many niceties (as defined by each culture) that
make up day to day interaction. Fortunately, learning how to behave well
enough (never perfectly) is not so very hard. Most of us do learn to do it
without dire consequences, even when we make mistakes (see below), and
we do so at least partially unconsciously (tacit knowledge?). With enough
interaction most researchers begin to adopt some mannerisms and learn to
 Doing Participant Observation 59

be polite in the local context just by being open to the possibility of doing
so. Recall the quotation from Mead (1970b) in chapter 1. She writes that
she unconsciously picked up the manners and body language of the vari-
ous peoples with whom she worked. However, there are some key areas in
which problems seem to occur.
North American and European researchers working in another cultural
setting routinely have problems with dealing with lack of privacy. Appro-
priate behavior in many settings includes constantly being with others.
Like many others, Robert and Ruth Dentan (Dentan 1970) found they
had problems with privacy. As it happened, even defecating was a social
event for the Semai. While Robert found he could occasionally slip away
to defecate alone, it was an even more gregarious activity for women. Ruth
Dentan was not often able to "go it alone."
Ruth almost always had a few companions. As she once remarked, "We
squat there in a row in the water, with our sarongs up, like a bunch of
ducks." The day Ruth discovered the value of the gregariousness came when
she managed to slip off alone and found on her way back a tiger between
herself and the settlement. She ran upstream, tried to find another path to
the settlement, lost the path, and at last decided that if she had to die she
wanted to die in the water. On her return, fortunately, the tiger had gone,
leaving only a few paw marks in the sand. After that she preferred having
the women accompany her (105).
Intellectually, the Dentans understood that yearning for privacy was
partially "pale person's ethnocentrism," which, as good cultural relativists,
they were trying to leave behind in their fieldwork. Nonetheless, the Den-
tans still felt they needed some privacy to remain sane. They instituted a
"taboo day" once a month in which they told people that they needed to
be alone. The concept of Sabbath was understood by the Semai as a result
of contact with missionaries. The taboo day worked pretty well, although
even with this in place the Dentans rarely had a completely alone day; but
the monthly respite allowed them to manage in the field. Understanding
the rules of reciprocity are another arena in which researchers in cultural
contexts other than their own find they have problems. Again, as we will
note below, Dentan found it difficult to participate in the flow of reciproc-
ity expected in Semai society.
Eating local foods is another aspect of behaving appropriately. Our rule
of thumb is to attempt to eat everything we are served, unless we feel that
the threat to health is so great that it is worth insulting people. For us, not
liking it is not much of an excuse, although it is possible to avoid some
items that are particularly distasteful. Bill was able to avoid drinking pulque,
a mildly alcoholic beverage made from fermenting the sweet sap of the
century plant, common in rural Mexico at the time. It was made in homes
under somewhat less than fully sanitary conditions (in some homes we
60 Chapter 3

observed people shooing away a dog or a goat from the open terra cotta pul-
que barrel). Pulque has a flavor and consistency reminiscent of mild, thick
vinegar. While Kathleen came to rather like it, Bill never did. After a bout
of amoebas in his liver, he was able to avoid drinking pulque as everyone in
the countryside understood that one should not drink anything alcoholic
while treating liver disease. Bill's liver disease lasted for years, conveniently
being used as an excuse whenever he wanted to avoid drinking. Kathleen
can't stand the taste of coconut water, a refreshment that is commonly of-
fered in coastal Ecuador. She gets down enough to be polite.
In recent research with Kichwa-speaking people of the Ecuadorian Ama-
zon, Kathleen, two students, and a guide arrived, after a 45-minute climb,
in a village in the middle of a local "day of the mother" celebration. The
principle food of Napo Kichwa is a "manioc beer" -aswa. While a mild
aswa is consumed every day, it is allowed to ferment to a more alcoholic
state for celebrations. As we arrived the aswa began to be served. Aswa is
typically prepared and served by women. 9 In this case it was men serving
women as part of the celebration. The two students looked at Kathleen
quizzically. Judging that it was not one of those times when a potentially
hazardous food could be turned down, she made a mental note to look
for the antibiotics when the group returned to their lodgings. The aswa was
pretty good (as aswa goes), the interview with the Kichwa health promoter
was interesting; and two hours later the trip down the mountain went a bit
more rapidly with all slightly tipsy. Miraculously, no one had even the hint
of tummy upset the next day!
It is a good idea to try to check out local table manners early in the field
experience. Several of our acquaintances report being overfed in parts of
India, before they came to understand that their hostess would continue
to fill their plates until they left a bit of food uneaten. Like good North
Americans, they were "cleaning their plates," a signal in India that one was
still hungry. Saying "no" to another helping is thought to just show polite
coyness. In some cultures it is impolite to arrive in a home at a mealtime,
as it means that the guest will have to be fed whether or not the resources
will allow.
Wax (1971) reports that she realized that she had unknowingly been
insulting the Japanese American residents of the relocation camp, because
she was unfamiliar with social conventions. When she did become aware,
she was able to do well enough to establish many close relationships. We
do know people who seem never to be able to give in to local expectations
for behavior or who cannot at least in some cultural settings. Frankly, as
we noted in chapter 2, they should find another field site or use a different
methodological approach.
How do we learn enough to participate appropriately? The most im-
portant condition is to want to do so, that is, to be committed enough
 Doing Participant Observation 61

to using participant observation as a method that the researcher will try

to learn. Coupled with a nonjudgmental attitude toward expectations of
social life, being open to learning is almost enough for most researchers. A
second condition is a genuine respect for the community and the people
with whom the researcher will be working. The researcher has to approach
participating and observing any particular situation with an open mind
and a nonjudgmental attitude. That is, while the activities in which the eth-
nographer is taking part may be extraordinarily exotic or mundane, a good
field researcher must react to the goings-on with sensitivity and discretion.
The researcher cannot be too shy. In order to participate in activities, one
must go out and find activities in which to participate. We sometimes get
told "no," but unless the researcher asks to go to the event, work in field,
hang out on the street corner, gaining access will not happen very quickly.
Almost all people love to tell their story and to share their experiences with
those who take an interest in them. While we should be sensitive about in-
truding into situations where we are not wanted or welcome, if an ethnog-
rapher shows genuine interest in learning more about behaviors, thoughts,
and feelings, he or she will be a welcome guest at most activities. As Picchi's
example regarding the language of the Bakairi, the people with whom we
are working generally want us to fit in with them, to become part of the
community to the extent possible. They are usually ready to teach us how,
no matter how painful and humiliating it may be for us.
Which activities and events to choose to participate in is dependent on
the focus of the research project, primary research question, and the limits
to participation allowed by the community for each particular researcher.
The classic ethnographer tries to participate in as many different activities
as possible. However, most contemporary researchers have a more focused
agenda, and limited time.

MAKING MISTAKES

The book Nutritional Strategies and Agricultural Change in a Mexican Com-

munity begins with the following paragraphs:

It was May 3, 1973, the Feast of the Holy Cross-an important feast day for the
community of Puerto de las Piedras in the town ofTemascalcingo, Mexico. We
had been invited to the chapel for services after which an offering was to be
made to the Virgin of Guadalupe, followed by a ritual meal. The offering to the
Virgin consisted of a handmade basket filled with cigarettes, chocolate, candy,
breads, and fruit. The basket was to be thrown off the bridge which straddles
the Lerma River, below the chapel.
After the basket had been dropped into the muddy waters of the Lerma,
amidst a cloud of burning incense, the office holders in the lower levels of the
62 Chapter 3

religious hierarchy served a ritual meal to the men and women occupying the
highest levels of the hierarchy. Large bowls of rice, mountains of tortillas and
piece upon piece of turkey in a rich mole ... were heaped before each of the
five couples receiving the meal. Even the gringos were offered a few tacos of
turkey and mole. (K. M. DeWalt 1983:1)

Let's stop right there. What the writer does not tell the reader in this
passage is that the events that culminated in the description reproduced
above also included one of the biggest mistakes in participant observation
made by the ethnographers, who were a very young Kathleen and Billie
DeWalt. As noted in the written description, food was offered to the two
inexperienced ethnographers. However, clear in the field notes, but not
included in the published description, was the fact that the ethnographers
declined to eat the food offered to them. This event took place early in
our fieldwork. Both of us felt very intimidated and anxious about what
we were supposed to do on this occasion. It was clear to us that we had
witnessed an important event in the ritual life of the community and
we did not want to intrude on a ceremonial meal that was to be shared
among the community's authorities. Our interpretation was that people
were just being polite in inviting us to the feast; based on our norms from
the United States, we thought that the polite thing to do was to decline
and withdraw from the situation. It subsequently became clear to us that
our behavior had offended our hosts.
We heard about this faux pas for some time thereafter from a number of
people, beginning with one of our key informants who stopped by the very
next day to chide us for being so rude as to decline food at a ritual meal.
He noted that "the other anthropologist" (a colleague of ours working in a
community across the valley) always ate everything she was offered.
Looking back on these events, rereading 40-year-old field notes, we can-
not imagine how we could have made such a mistake. Eating all that is pre-
sented is probably a cardinal rule of anthropological fieldwork. In our de-
fense, however, we had only been carrying out fieldwork in the community
for a few months, our language ability was still rudimentary, and we had not
yet begun to pick up on the nuances of "expected behavior." We had been
invited by one of our key informants to attend the ceremony and meal, but
were unclear as to his role in this event. (As we will note later, he was not
only delegated by one of the faction leaders to be our 0 professional stranger
handler," but it was also clear that he expected to gain personally by his as-
sociation with the North Americans.) The event was clearly for cargo hold-
ers in the religious hierarchy. We were afraid he was trying to show off his
relationship to the gringos by arriving with us. Our field notes record how
much we felt, at that time, like interlopers out of place in these events, grin-
gos. We were afraid that we were taking food out of the mouths of people,
 Doing Participant Observation 63

who, compared with North Americans, including relatively poor graduate

students (as we were at the time), were living on the economic margins.
Our declining to eat a few tacos of turkey and mole, however, resulted in
the feeling among community members that we were disdainful of their
poor food, worried about contamination and illness, aloof. In fact we loved
the food, and were not particularly concerned about health. We were un-
comfortable and unsure of our participation in the life of the community.
We were feeling-out the experience of participant observation and finding
our role as ethnographers in the community. As time went on, we became
more comfortable with the role of participant observer, feeling less like
interlopers, joining, with enthusiasm in any community event or activity to
which we were invited.
Even semidisastrous, as it was, the experience of joining in the service, the
offering of gifts to the Virgin, and the observation of the meal and the roles
of the various cargo holders in the event gave us a much better understanding
of the role of the cargo system in the community, the structure of exchange
among community members, the role of key foods in both the offering to the
Virgin and the maintenance of the highest level of cargo holders. We could
never have gained this insight from interviewing alone. To merely talk about
the amount of food exchanged in the meal would not have captured the
nature of the presentation of truly vast amounts of food, the impact on the
families receiving food, the impact on their networks of relatives and compa-
dres who would receive leftovers from the feast the next day.
This story also illustrates another point that experience teaches. That is,
while this important breach of etiquette probably affected our development
of rapport with community members for a time, in the end, our refusal to
eat was not a fatal mistake. Over the ensuing months in the community,
we had the opportunity to apologize to various individuals involved in the
event. We were able to use the time honored (and accurate) excuse that we
didn't know what was appropriate; we were inexperienced young gringos
with good intentions, but poor manners who needed to be taught appro-
priate behavior. Our long-term relationship with the community was not
appreciably compromised by this event-and our initial faux pas resulted in
us learning quite a bit about expected behavior in the community.
Bourgois (1995) committed a far more serious breach when he offered
a newspaper article in which he was featured, to Ray, a man Bourgois
describes as "crucial not only to my continual access to crack scene, but
also my physical security" (19-20). Bourgois did not realize that Ray was
illiterate, and embarrassed him in front of the people from whom he ex-
pected respect. In essence, Bourgois disrespected one of his key links with
the world he was studying, a world that revolved around the concept of
respect. Bourgois describes how he was still feeling uncomfortable in a
situation in which he could be taken as a narcotics agent. He saw the article
64 Chapter 3

as reinforcing his identity as a "real professor" and researcher. It was a mo-

ment of camaraderie. It took a year to regain the relationship with Ray that
he had enjoyed earlier.
Dentan (1970) in talking about fieldwork in two different Semai com-
munities talks about the number of faux pas he and his wife made in their
early days with the Semai. He likens it to the kinds of mistakes that Semai
children make. However, he writes "Since from the Semai point of view we
were always rather inept, we could not help feeling very grateful and very
affectionate toward them when they came to accept us as people much
like other people." (88). Like our experience above, Robert Dentan ( 1970)
writes: "I do not think I would ever have understood the economics of re-
ciprocal food distribution among the Semai if we had not participated so
fully in the system that I twice got into hot water for breaking its usually
unspoken rules" (92). In one of these instances, after watching one of his
Semai friends loading himself down with food from his limited supplies,
Dentan asked the friend to wait a week or so before taking any more. The
error, as Dentan later realized, was that he had obviously made an overt
calculation of the amount of food his friend took. In the rules of reciproc-
ity and food exchange, no such calculation should be made. The friend did
not speak to Robert Dentan for several months, although he would come
to visit Ruth Dentan.
As Whyte has emphasized: "It is important to recognize that explorations
in the field are bound to confront one with confusing situations and con-
flicting pressures, so that some errors are almost inevitable, but few errors
are serious enough to abort a project" (Whyte and Whyte 1984:11). The
important thing is to learn from our mistakes.
Whyte describes his role in a local election in Cornerville, where like
many of his informants he managed to vote several times for the local can-
didate in an election. While his Cornerville friends were doing the same,
they felt it was inappropriate for Whyte to do so. In another instance, he
used rough language, common in Cornerville, but again, his friends let him
know that they might talk that way, but it was inappropriate for him.
In some settings, some mistakes can place the ethnographer in physical
danger. Philippe Bourgois may have placed himself in danger by disrespect-
ing Ray. Lincoln Kaiser (1970), in carrying out his study of the Vice Lords
of Chicago, misread a cue in the behavior of gang members on the streets
of Chicago and failed to leave the scene of a possible shooting. As it hap-
pened, no shooting took place, but Kaiser makes it clear that he several
times felt that not understanding what was going on around him may have
placed his life in danger.
Linda Kent (1992) found that a mistake barred her from a fieldwork set-
ting with Irish Travelers (tinkers) in Mississippi. In previous research she
had come to know Gypsies well and written a master's thesis on a Gypsy
 Doing Participant Observation 65

headman. For her doctoral dissertation, she decided to study the Traveling
People or Tinkers of Ireland and set out to do a preliminary study of Tinkers
in the United States. She settled in Memphis and identified a community
of Travelers across the border in Mississippi and began to gain access and
build rapport. However, when a local television station in Memphis asked
to interview for a human-interest story about Gypsies, she agreed. In the
interview she was identified as an expert on Gypsies who had come to
Memphis "to devote her life to the study of Gypsies." Two days after the
interview was aired, she received a call from the local priest telling her
that she was no longer welcome among the Travelers. Didn't she know,
he asked, that the Travelers and the Gypsies are sworn enemies? If she was
there to study Gypsies, why was she hanging around the Travelers? This
event effectively ended her study of the Travelers in the Memphis area.
Mistakes in fieldwork are probably unavoidable. We just don't learn local
expectations quickly enough to avoid them. As several of the cases above
illustrate, however, making mistakes is often a vehicle to a deeper under-
standing of behavior and meaning.
In our experience in training fieldworkers, we have noted that the great-
est fear of novice researchers is that people will not accept them or speak to
them, or that people will be offended by the fieldwork. The experience of the
majority of fieldworkers who use participant observation as a technique is
exactly the opposite. Personally, it has always amazed us the extent to which
people are interested in including us in events, telling us their stories, and
how quickly rapport can be established in many settings. We strongly believe
that most people underestimate the extent to which people value someone
else's interest in their lives and the extent to which people enjoy being "teach-
ers" to eager "students." Our admonition is that if you can overcome your
shyness or fear of knocking on that first door, the rest is easy.
As we have seen, however, becoming a participant places the researcher
in a unique research role, one where gaining rapport and partaking in a
local setting-immersing oneself in a new cultural context-put unusual
demands on the social skills and life of the investigator. The payoff is large,
a much more nuanced and in-depth understanding of a complex setting
than other methods of fieldwork alone can provide. But the cost may also
be high. It includes the cost in time of developing the kinds of relation-
ships that grow in trust and cooperation, reciprocity that is ongoing and
personal, making mistakes in trying to fit into a new cultural setting, and
the psychological costs of having to adjust to a new setting and then read-
just on the return to home. Each researcher must find his/her appropriate
balance and rhythm in participating in the life of another community, but
understanding what to expect and some of the methods that others have
used to find their way will help even the novice researcher to eventually
find their way.
66 Chapter 3

NOTES

1. The availability of qualified collaborators varies across countries of course,

but wherever possible we recommend recruiting local social scientists as research
partners. We now rarely engage in fieldwork in another country without the real
participation of local researchers as co-investigators. In several settings, we have
long-term collaborators with whom we design and carry out research projects on a
regular basis. Bill has even begun to insist on having local researchers as partners
when doing consulting research (e.g., DeWalt, et al. 2000; DeWalt, Olivera, and
Correa 2000).
2. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a "collaborative approach
to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recog-
nizes the unique strengths that each brings. CBPR begins with a research topic of
importance to the community, has the aim of combining knowledge with action
and achieving social change to improve health outcomes and eliminate health dis-
parities." W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Health Scholars Program (2010).
3. Wikipedia defines flaming as "hostile and insulting interaction between In-
ternet users."
4. In Palace, Gods and Wizards are highly regarded members of the online Palace
community.
5. In those cases in which substantial income can accrue from the study, the
researcher may wish to consider sharing royalties with the community in an ap-
propriate way. We know of writers who have funded scholarships for community
students, contributed to community development projects, construction of parks,
libraries, etc.
6. The sixteenth edition of Ethnologue: Languages of the World published by SIL
includes over 6,900 language descriptions.
7. The term Almao, literally "German," is used by the Bakairi to refer to all non-
Brazilian outsiders.
8. We have found that several different informants in several different settings
have found it amusing to teach us words that, unbeknownst to us, have multiple
meanings. The entertainment factor comes into play when we are prompted to use
them in an ambiguous setting. Researcher in role of clown!
9. To prepare aswa, cooked manioc is chewed and mashed. The mash is left to
ferment for up to seven days. The fermented mash is then mixed with water (from
uncertain sources) and drunk, solids and liquid both. This is another acquired taste,
and, furthermore, the water with which it is mixed is most often contaminated.
Moreover, since this was a nmothers' dayn celebration, the aswa had been prepared
by men rather than women (YIKES!).
 The Costs of Participation
Culture Shock

One of the hallmarks of using participant observation as a key technique in

an unfamiliar cultural context is the experience that has come to be known
as n culture shock" While classically referring to the culmination of unease
felt by the participant observer as a result of not being able to success-
fully operate in a new cultural setting, getting all the cues wrong, dealing
with not being able to anticipate proper behavior, dealing with behaviors
of others that are, to the home culture of the fieldworker, inappropriate,
shocking, dirty, immoral, or just plain different, but are perfectly acceptable
within the context of the community in which the fieldworker finds her-
set£ culture shock surely includes what we would call homesickness, and
in many cases, the loneliness of leaving all loved ones behind for a while.
But culture shock is more than homesickness and loneliness. The demands
of trying to operate successfully in a very different cultural context exact an
additional toll. For example, Goodenough (1992) describes the complex
learning he had to master just to defecate politely on Onotoa.
Anthropologists Cora DuBois (1951) and Kalervo Oberg (1954) are cred-
ited with coining and popularizing the term a culture shock" in the 1950s,
although, as we will see below, the syndrome they named has been a well-
described hallmark of ethnographic fieldwork since the beginning of the
enterprise. Although an anthropologist, DuBois introduced the term at a
conference dedicated to international education. Interestingly, much of the
recent research on culture shock as a syndrome has been conducted in edu-
cational and study abroad contexts (Ward, Bochner, and Furnham 2001).
Oberg discussed culture shock as nan occupational disease of people who
have been suddenly transplanted abroad. Like most ailments it has its own
etiology, symptoms, and cure" (1954:1). Oberg was prompted to discuss the

67
68 Chapter4

issue of culture shock with expatriate women in Rio de Janeiro after working
with a group of international volunteers on a health project, but was also
presumably drawing on his own experiences as a migrant and anthropolo-
gist outside his native British Columbia. Oberg attributes culture shock to
the anxiety that accompanies the loss of familiar signs and symbols (cues)
of social intercourse when individuals move into different cultural contexts.
Most of the cues of social intercourse are subtle and may be unconscious. The
0
SOjournern 1 is a nfish out of water" (Oberg 1954:1). He further argues that as
a result of frustration and anxiety the sojourner experiences the new culture
as culturally nbadn and the home culture is romanticized as ngood."
Following such researchers as Hall (1959, 1966), Ward et al. (2001)
identify a series of cultural differences in the way that people communicate
that appear to be related to the feeling of being a nfish out of water" for the
sojourner. These include differences in etiquette, such as the way in which
questions are phrased and requests are refused; ways of resolving conflict,
such as the differences in the ways in which people in collectivist and in-
dividualist cultures negotiate; nonverbal communication, such as mutual
gaze, the degree of bodily touching, and the appropriateness of gestures;
rules and conventions, such as punctuality and reciprocity; and forms of
address. All of which have been shown to vary across cultural settings and
to contribute to dis-ease in communications. Oberg suggests that the symp-
toms of culture shock include:

excessive washing of the hands; excessive concern over drinking water, food,
dishes, and bedding; fear of physical contact with attendants or servants; the
absentminded, far-away stare (sometimes called the tropical stare); a feeling
of helplessness and a desire for dependence on long-term residents of one's
own nationality; fits of anger over delays and other minor frustrations; delay
and outright refusal to learn the language of the host country; excessive fear of
being cheated, robbed, or injured; great concern over minor pains and erup-
tions of the skin; and finally, that terrible longing to be back home, to be able
to have a good cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie, to walk into that comer
drugstore, to visit one's relatives, and, in general, to talk to people who really
make sense. (Oberg 1954:2)

Oberg also posited four phases of culture shock that, for many researchers,
remain the basis for thinking about the way in which it unfolds. For Oberg,
the stages are analogous to an illness:

1. The honeymoon stage in which the sojourner is nfascinated by the

new";
2. The ncrisis" in which the sojourner becomes hostile and aggressive
toward the new context, and critical of the place and the people, often
moving to stereotyping;
 The Costs of Participation: Culture Shock 69

3. The "recovery" during which the sojourner begins to grasp the new
context, to "open a way" into it; gains experience in getting around
and communicating and jokes about previous hardships; and, finally,
4. The "adjustment," at which time, the sojourner becomes more com-
petent and moves from accepting foods, drinks, habits and customs
and begins to enjoy them.

Drawing on Oberg, a number of researchers studying culture shock

among different types of travelers posit aU-shaped curve for the process of
adjustment in which at the beginning the traveler is positive and euphoric,
followed by a period of much discomfort and distress, and then again re-
turning to a positive state. However, Ward et al. (2001 ), in a comprehensive
review of the literature on culture shock among several different kinds of
sojourners such as students studying abroad, missionaries, diplomats, and
business people find little support in the literature for a U-shaped curve.
For the most part, sojourners appear to be anxious and distressed early
in the process and become less so with time. Some longitudinal studies
even find that many sojourners experience an inverted U-shaped curve of
experience in which they return to a higher level of distress after a period of
improvement. However, it does appear that about 10 percent of sojourners
do conform to Oberg's U-shaped curve for culture shock
It appears that culture shock is common among all kinds of travelers,
even those traveling for only a short time (tourists), although tourists are
increasingly insulated from the conditions that foster culture shock through
carefully scripted guided tours. However, sojourners who are participant
observers experience several other sources of discomfort that contribute to
the experience of culture shock One of these is the feeling of always "being
on," that is, playing the role of being the participant observer and never
able to escape, always having to be alert as an observer, when the natural
human role is to relax into being a participant. We have often had to repress
our irritation when children in communities in which we have worked have
stared at us for hours on end, sometimes hanging over house windows or
outdoor shower stalls to see what we were doing. Another aspect of always
"being on" is the result of being an identifiable outsider in a particular set-
ting, often one perceived to have more resources than members of the local
community. This is compounded in cultural settings in which asking those
with resources to help out is acceptable. It includes being asked, sometimes
continuously, for gifts of food, medicine, tobacco, transportation, and so
forth. Paul Rabinow (1977), working in Morocco, describes how much
easier his life became after his car blew up and he no longer had to give
people rides or, worse, tum them down. Many ethnographers complain
about the difficulty of dealing with demands on a daily basis. Finally, "be-
ing on" also includes the results of cultural and linguistic incompetence
70 Chapter4

of the neophyte. Some researchers tire of being laughed at or occasionally

ostracized for their language and cultural mistakes.
Another element of culture shock for the participant observer is that the
fieldworker is not just trying to live in a new setting, but also feels acutely
the need to be accomplishing the task of research in this setting-a granting
agency is paying for the work and expects a report, an advisor is asking for
field notes, an employer is looking for the data, the researcher's degree and
career may be on the line, and the researcher is paralyzed with loneliness
and anxiety.
For the researcher, as for the conventional sojourner, the characteristics
of culture shock include anxiety, depression, anger, and frustration. There
comes a day when we just want to be able to defecate in private (Good-
enough 1992), throw the toilet paper in the toilet, look another person
directly in the eye, communicate effectively without being laughed at by
the people with whom we are trying to communicate, etc. Just coping with
the logistical difficulties of getting into a new context is a challenge that is
often unanticipated by the novice fieldworker. Finally, being alone in the
field, at least in the beginning of fieldwork, before rapport is developed, is
as lonely as it gets (Mead 1970a).
Paul (1953) calls culture shock one of the costs ofthe participant obser-
vation method. Perhaps understating the extent of the experience for many
fieldworkers, he notes:

The strains of making constant accommodations, of living in the public spot-

light, of denying his own preferences, all deplete his patience. He may be able
to conceal his exasperation from the people, but he cannot escape the unpleas-
ant effects of suppressed resentment. The first weeks of field work are often
trying. The investigator may want to quit and go home, staying only because
he is ashamed to give up. (440)

Rosalie Wax describes her entrance into a Japanese resettlement camp

in 1943. After an arduous two days of travel, Wax arrived at the Gila camp
outside Phoenix in heat that she found nincredible. n Alone, in the camp
with little preparation for the field experience Wax finally found her room
(ncelln) by process of elimination from a number of other rooms. She
writes:

It contained four dingy and dilapidated articles of furniture: an iron double

bedstead, a dirty mattress (which took up more than half the room), a chest of
drawers, and a tiny writing table-and it was hotter than the hinges of Hades.
Since there was no one around to ask where I might get a chair, I sat down
on the hot mattress, took a deep breath, and cried. I was too far-gone to be
consciously aware that I was isolated or to wonder why I had left a beautiful
and comfortable university town to stick myself in this oven of a concentration
camp. Like some lost two-year-old I only knew that I was miserable. After a
 The Costs of Participation: Culture Shock 71

while, I found the room at the end of the barracks that contained two toilets
and a couple of wash basins. I washed my face and told myself that I would
feel better the next day. I was wrong. (1971:67-68)

Wax goes on to eloquently describe the weeks of ostracism, despair, and

perceived failure that followed her arrival at Gila. Few would speak to her,
and when she did have conversations, she frequently insulted her potential
informants, because she did not understand the conventions of conversa-
tion with Japanese Americans. She was clearly not trusted; lonely beyond
belief; ready to leave at any moment and sure that the entire project was a
failure. All the while the supervisor of the project she was supposed to be
carrying out was demanding data. She writes: "Every time I returned to my
stifling room after a series of futile 'interviews,' I just sat down and cried.
I took long walks in the desert in temperatures of 110°-120°, and cried"
(1971:72).
Wax eventually found a way to cope with the situation and to make
some progress with her research while she became acculturated to life
in the camp, and gained the trust of the residents. She moved from her
original room to one even less comfortable in the ruder barracks to which
the Japanese were assigned. She avoided the staff. She enlisted the help of
another social scientist in the camp and found someone to introduce her
to several people from whom she took "Japanese lessons" as a ruse to get
to know them better. Finally, she devised a set of "red herring" studies.
These were plausible concrete data studies, which, while they had little to
do with her real research project, were innocuous enough to be nonthreat-
ening to respondents. She became much more like a formal interviewer
than participant observer. She developed structured questionnaires and in-
terviewed women on how evacuation to the camps had affected their lives.
She interviewed people on social stratification in Japan. The red herring
studies allowed her to meet a number of people in a role they could easily
understand. And she says "meanwhile I was gradually pushed into the role
of a willing learner ... friendly respondents now began to instruct me in
some of the less confidential aspects and attitudes of center life as well as
the rudiments of Japanese etiquette" (77). In the end, Wax found her work
in the resettlement camps to be one of the most rewarding of her life. She
then describes the difficulty of reverse culture shock upon reentry into her
life as an anthropology graduate student.
Mead (1970a) also suggests the new fieldworker begin with more struc-
tured data collection to be able to show progress through the difficult first
weeks. She writes: "The ability to register progress of some sort is often es-
sential to the field worker's morale, and progress may be noted in counting
up the thousands of words of vocabulary mastered, a tantalizing problem
solved, a bad cut healed instead of turning into an ulcer ... " (249). Even
while describing the plight of the new and lone field worker she also notes
72 Chapter 4

that a person alone in the field may, in fact, be incorporated more quickly
into daily life, learning the language more quickly, perforce socializing with
"villagers." It is easier for the community to take in a lone field worker, to
feed and house him or her. Even Malinowski (1961 (1922), 1967) writes
about the

feelings of hopelessness and despair after many obstinate but futile attempts
had entirely failed to bring me into real touch with the natives or supply me
with any material. I had periods of despondency when I buried myself in the
reading of novels, as a man might take to drink in a fit of tropical depression
and boredom. (4)

Indeed, his diary (Malinowski 1967) makes frequent reference to his

reading of novels when he was feeling ill or despondent. Deborah Picchi
(1992) also relied on novels for the difficult times, especially when she was
not feeling well. However, as she had to travel by bush plane to the Bakairi
Indian settlement in Mato Grosso, Brazil, she was only able to bring a few
novels and had to ration them for the really bad times. We also have to
admit to turning to novels at times to escape the community into which
we had placed ourselves.
The first few weeks may not hold the only or even the worst patch of
culture shock. Paul (1953) agrees with Oberg that, once the logistical prob-
lems are long over or at least adequately accommodated,

a letdown may set in long after the work has gotten well underway. The investi-
gator may school himself to accept physical hardship, he may even gain ascetic
satisfaction from enduring deprivation, only to be assailed unexpectedly with
a craving for a shower, or a soft bed or a home-cooked meal. More insidious
than the material discomforts are the petty and subtle aggravations of social
participation. (440)

Sometimes a particular event acts as a trigger for culture shock (or more
like a match in dry tinder). Mead talks about how she "burst into tears
of helpless resentment when after sitting up all night with a very sick
Balinese child, I went home for a moment, and came back in the chilly
dawn of the mountain morning and was bitten by the family dog" (Mead,
1949:444-48).
While Wax attributes the depth of her despair on her first day and many
subsequent days to a lack of experience, we have found that even after many
years of fieldwork in several different settings, we still experience some form
of culture shock in a new setting. However, it is less than it was in our earlier
experiences and lasts a shorter period of time. Since we expect it, we have
become rather adept at identifying the stages as we pass through them: initial
elation at finally BEING THERE; loneliness; irritation that nothing works as it
 The Costs of Participation: Culture Shock 73

should; anxiety that we just can't get our work done, the project will fail for
sure; planning to abandon the project; and, finally, the feeling that We can
0

do this," nit's not so bad," We are getting the data," We can cope., ... While
0 0

it appears that some field workers never do become comfortable, most do

and most, given enough time, find the experience good.

COPING WITH CULTURE SHOCK

Culture shock is a virtually universal experience for investigators pursuing

the method of participant observation. As a result, a number of fieldwork
narratives discuss the ways in which investigators have dealt with culture
shock. Perhaps the most important coping strategy is to realize that the
experience of intense anxiety and hopelessness is temporary. As Oberg
noted to the expatriate women of Rio de Jaheiro so many years ago, nThere
is a great difference in knowing what is the cause of your disturbance and
not knowing" (4). Following Oberg and more contemporary culture shock
researchers (Ward et al. 2001 ), knowing what to expect and understanding
that there are cultural differences is one of the key strategies for coping.
Today it is called cultural training, but it is in essence the notion of cultural
relativity central to anthropology since its beginning.
While some fieldworkers never feel entirely comfortable in the field set-
ting, most of us move through the period of culture shock in a reasonable
amount of time. The day comes when the researcher finds that sfhe looks
forward to talking with neighbors, now friends, and has figured out how
to meet the needs of everyday life with the resources available at hand, no
longer feels like a fool in attempts to maneuver in the local social setting,
and has figured out how to deal with constant demands. While there may
well be periods of despair after this point, they can be dealt with. As we
have noted earlier, and Ward et al. (2001) also note, some people embrace
a new setting to the extent that they adopt it in place of their original one-
they ngo native."
As Wax and Mead note, it often helps to find research tasks that can be
done easily, with little additional stress. As we have noted earlier, we have
found that in community studies carrying out a census early in the process
helps to introduce us to the community and offers a simple data collection
exercise that can allow us to feel that some progress is being made.
While we do not suggest abandoning the field during the adjustment pe-
riod (we do know the occasional researcher that never returns), it can be very
helpful to plan one or more nvacations" from the field when the researcher
can leave the community for a short period. Sometimes this is a trip back
home to take care of business. Other times it is just a weekend in another
town where the researcher does not have to be non" all the time. In our initial
74 Chapter 4

fieldwork experience in rural Mexico we were able to take an occasional

weekend trip to Mexico City, about four hours away. There we hung around
tourist sites and listened to tourists speaking English, ate hamburgers and
french fries (We LOVE Mexican cuisine, but we are talking about culture shock,
here), and took multiple hot showers. A vacation from the field can also al-
low for a more objective review of notes, other data, and a bit of analysis. Not
all research settings (for example, when you are working on a Micronesian
atoll) allow for a weekend trip away. Sometimes it takes more effort to get
away from the field, but it can be an effective way of coping. Also as we have
noted, the researcher often finds after returning from a trip away, that he or
she is greeted as a long lost friend or relation. It often marks the deepening
of rapport and the relationships with the community.
Finally, as with the hamburgers in Mexico City or the Pop's ice cream
shops in Honduras, cultural comfort food helps. There are some foods we
try to take with us and ration out over time. For many anthropologists of
our generation, this includes peanut butter. We have found that anthro-
pologists working all over the world have reinvented all of the peanut
butter based recipes known. We were able to drive to fieldwork in Mexico
and took a case of Campbell's chicken noodle soup (again, it is not about
cuisine; it's about comfort). Kathleen still usually packs a couple of bags of
M&Ms in a suitcase.
Having a companion or family in the field may help. While it is true, as
Mead notes, that the needs of a nonprofessional companion may increase
problems, and some of the greatest sources of anxiety for us in the field
have been the logistics of trying to meet the needs of children with local
resources, couples and families may find that some members of the family
have an easier time of integration into the community bringing along the
rest of the family. Dentan notes that his wife, also an anthropologist, eased
his own entrance into Semai society.
Novels DO help. Kathleen prefers science fiction. Bill likes mysteries and
novels of place.
In coping with culture shock, many people have often assumed that
having a significant other and/or a family in the field is a great advantage.
In our experience, as the following section shows, a family can be both a
source of solace and familiarity and a hindrance in doing research.

PARTICIPATING AND PARENTING:

CHILDREN AND FIELD RESEARCH

While fieldwork is traditionally portrayed as a solitary endeavor, in real-

ity many researchers bring their families, including their children, to the
field with them. The presence of children in the field shapes the research
 The Costs of Participation: Culture Shock 75

experience in a number of distinct ways. Children can help ease the loneli-
ness and isolation characteristic of fieldwork in foreign cultures. However,
children also present a number of challenges to researchers in the field.
As part of the trend to demystify anthropological fieldwork, a number of
researchers have written about their experiences with children in the field.
While each fieldwork experience is unique, a number of themes emerge
regarding the effect of children on participant observation.
Many researchers report that their children had a positive impact on par-
ticipant observation. Bringing children to a field site can lead to increased
rapport with the research community. A solitary researcher showing up in a
remote area to live alone for a period of a year or more may seem extremely
bizarre in many cultures. In most cases, the people who are being studied
are able to relate more easily to a researcher living with his or her family.
Mimi and Mark Nichter (1987) believed that the presence of their young
son made it easier for villagers to relate to them during their research in a
rural Indian village. Bourgois (1995) describes how his son's cerebral palsy
was diagnosed in a clinic in El Barrio, and that his son's ability to negotiate
the neighborhood, rolling his walker over trash and crack vials in the streets
of El Barrio, helped to establish Bourgois as a community member.
Also, the presence of children accompanying a researcher can signify his
or her adult status. In many cultures a childless adult, especially a married
childless adult, may be viewed as strange, dangerous, or the object of pity.
During our first field experience in Temascalcingo, it was a concern for
many people that we had been married for more than a year without hav-
ing a child and without signs of Kathleen being pregnant (see also Klass
and Klass 1987). During their first field experience in the Sudan, Carolyn
Fluehr-Lobban and Richard Lobban (1986, 1987) reported that people had
trouble accepting their status as a married couple because they had no chil-
dren. Many Sudanese doubted that they were truly married but their return
to the field ten years later with their daughter Josina reassured their friends
and acquaintances.
Bringing children into the field can also open new areas of information
to the researcher. Most researchers who bring young children in the field
often receive a constant stream of advice about childcare from friends and
neighbors. While an overabundance of friendly advice can be exasperating,
it can also teach researchers about the culture they are working in. Mimi and
Mark Nichter reported that they gained valuable insight into rural Indian
ideas about child development from villagers' comments made about their
son's "constitution" (Nichter and Nichter 1987). This advice can also chal-
lenge the researcher's unexamined cultural biases and assumptions. Renate
Fernandez (1987) learned that children sleeping alone in their own room
was viewed as a type of social deprivation in rural Spain. Researchers can
also learn about a culture from the way people react to their children. When
76 Chapter 4

informants are enculturating children, they are also teaching the researcher
about their culture. During Diane Michalski Turner's (1987) fieldwork in
Fiji, the villagers with whom she lived devoted a lot of time teaching her
two-year-old daughter to become Fijian. By watching how villagers inter-
acted with her daughter, Michalski Turner was able to learn not only how
one becomes Fijian, but also about Western/Fijian power relationships.
Children can also help gather data that is inaccessible to adults. G. E.
Huntington (1987) reports that her nine-year-old daughter was an invalu-
able source of information about Hutterite children's informal culture. As a
result, Huntington learned how Hutterite children engage in very different
behaviors in front of adults and when they are among other children par-
ticipating in their own culture.
Bringing children into the field, however, also has its disadvantages.
Some researchers report that the responsibilities of childcare forced them
to miss out on certain opportunities. Reflecting on her research in Jamaica,
Joan Cassell (1987) relates how she frequently missed nighttime events
because she felt compelled to stay home with her two children. Young,
unruly children can also disrupt meetings and interviews. In Nancie Gonza-
lez's (1970) account of her research in Guatemala she talks about how her
young son spilled soda pop on the president of the university's rug which
did not bode well for the rest of the meeting. Perhaps the biggest disadvan-
tage of bringing children to the field is the amount of time that researchers
devote to child care (and hence lose to the field). Many researchers, espe-
cially those who are solely responsible for child care, report that the pres-
ence of children severely curtailed the amount of time they could devote to
field work Melanie Dreher, who brought three children to rural Jamaica to
conduct post-doctoral research with her, states, "I suspect it took me twice
the time to accomplish half the work that I would have normally accom-
plished" (Dreher 1987:165). During fieldwork among an indigenous tribe
in the northwest Amazon, Christine and Stephen Hugh-Jones (Hugh-Jones
1987) had to devise alternating fieldwork schedules so that one of them
would always be available to supervise their two children.
Our personal experiences with children in the field have been generally
quite positive. Our two fair-haired children were an instant magnet every-
where we have traveled in Latin America and led to the opening of many
doors for us. We also found that, early in our careers when we were rela-
tively poor graduate students or assistant professors, we could more easily
afford childcare and household help in Mexico or Honduras than we could
in the United States. We did have some unpleasant brushes with illness,
but, in the end, nothing of long-term consequence. We know of others
who have had seriously ill children and have even lost children in the field
through illness or accident (see Howell 1990). More importantly, as our
children moved into their teens and began to have obligations and wishes
 The Costs of Participation: Culture Shock 77

of their own, it became more difficult for us to take them to the field. More
to the point, it was not worth the complaining to which we were subjected.
During these years, we began to schedule our time in the field separately
so that one of us stayed at home with the children, while the other was en-
gaged in doing field research. A telling incident reminded us of some of the
difficulties of children in the field. After our youngest child was a teenager
Kathleen returned from several months of fieldwork in coastal Ecuador say-
ing it was the best field trip she had ever had. When Bill asked why, her first
reply was that it was the first time in the field that she did not worry about
children, whether they were in the field with her or left at home. It must be
said, that while we enjoyed having our kids in the field it was a big relief
to carry out fieldwork without having to attend to the needs of children.
Whether children help or hinder participant observation depends on a
number of factors. It seems that there is a significant effect depending on
whether the researcher is returning to a field site or arriving for the first
time. Most researchers who are arriving in a field site for the first time with
their children seem to experience more problems than veteran field workers
(Cassell 1987; Michalski Turner 1987). The age ofthe children also shapes
the field experience. Very young children, while requiring more care, adapt
more readily and experience less severe culture shock (Fluehr-Lobban and
Lobban 1987; Nichter and Nichter 1987). Older children seem to have a
more difficult time adapting to new and foreign cultures (Scheper-Hughes
1987). The field situation itself also shapes the experience with the chil-
dren. Bringing children to a field site where they already speak the language
is easier on both the children and the parent than introducing them to a
culture where they are only able to communicate with their family (Cassell
1987; Hugh-Jones 1987). The presence of another parent to share childcare
responsibilities certainly facilitates a fieldworker's time in the field with his/
her children (Fluehr-Lobban and Lobban 1987; Scheper-Hughes 1987).

REVERSE CULTURE SHOCK (REENTRY SHOCK)

Finally, keep in mind that "return culture shock" is also a problem. Wax
writes that when she was beginning work on Doing Fieldwork (Wax 1971)
she asked a young colleague recently returned from fieldwork in Melanesia
what was the most important thing to tell students who had never been
to the field. He replied: "Tell them to keep a personal diary in addition to
their field notes and tell them that returning to your own society can be as
difficult as trying to enter a strange one" (Wax 1971:172-73).
Ward et al. (2001) discuss a growing literature that confirms that reverse
culture shock sometimes called "reentry shock" is extremely common in
conventional sojourners. Judith Martin ( 1984) suggests that one of the
78 Chapter 4

reasons for reverse culture shock is that it is unanticipated. New travelers

rarely anticipate that they will experience distress upon returning home.
Subsequent research has supported this hypothesis (Ward et al. 2001). In
addition, there are some demographic differences in the experience of reen-
try shock Women are somewhat less likely to experience it. Older people
are also less likely to experience reentry shock, and adolescents appear to
be the most vulnerable.
In our experience, readjusting to life in North America after extended
fieldwork in economically marginal rural communities in Latin America
includes a period of time in which the everyday activities of life seem
wasteful, too quickly paced, and unresponsive to the "real problems" of the
world. (All of which, upon reflection, is true in our everyday North Ameri-
can lives.) Furthermore, many seasoned researchers, and new researchers,
once they get over the anxiety of being in the field, find field research to be
a very enjoyable break from the kinds of work we do while not in the field.
We find fieldwork energizing and intellectually exciting. It helps us gain a
perspective on our own lives, to realize that the academic politics that swirl
around us are petty and insignificant, and that most of the problems of
North Americans are internally generated rather than externally driven. We
experience a "let down" upon return to home base.
Wax reports that it took her several years to reengage with her life as a
graduate student after her time at the relocation camp during World War II.
We find with graduate students returning from the field that the most obvi-
ous result of reverse culture shock is an inability to get down to analysis
and write-up of research materials. More experienced researchers seem to
move through the readjustment period more quickly. Now, it is true that
many researchers have a bit of trouble getting to the analysis after the data
is collected. These are two very different kinds of tasks. However, the reen-
try into the home setting after immersion in another cultural setting seems
to add significantly to this period. For most, the period of readjustment to
home is a few weeks or months. But it does occur, and the wise researcher
anticipates this phase of research as well.

NOTE

1. Oberg used the term "sojourner" to describe people, like researchers, who are
in a different cultural context for a limited period of time and expect to return home
at the end of a defined period. The term has been picked up in the more general
literature (e.g., Ward et al. 2001) to refer to such travelers as international students,
business people, diplomats and some missionaries, as compared with short-term
travelers such as tourists and permanent travelers such as immigrants and refugees.
 Doing Participant Observation
Becoming an Observer

Of course, all crises are grist for the ethnographer's mill-if he himself is
not ground in.
Benjamin Paul (1953:440)

While developing an effective participant role is critical to the method of

participant observation, it is not a tool of research unless the participant
is also an effective observer. In this chapter we will discuss some of the
specific skills and details of observation that fieldworkers use to under-
stand people's daily lives, relationships, social organization, values and
expectations.
It is a joke among anthropologists that when we have caught an obvious
event in everyday life, to point out that we are "trained observers," therefore
far more adept than the average individual at capturing nuance. Of course,
our peers also cast it up to us when we miss an obvious event, with the im-
plication that we would be truly abysmal observers if we were not trained.
Our joke, however, is based on our real assumption that people can be
trained, or can train themselves, to be better, more detailed, more objective
observers. People do vary with respect to their attentiveness to detail, and
their ability to recall detail. Remember that Mead (1953) included innate
sensitivity to events as one of the characteristics a would-be researcher
should assess before embarking on fieldwork. Anyone, however, can im-
prove the degree to which sfhe attends to detail, remembers detail, and,
perhaps most importantly, records detail. But, as Wolcott (1994) notes, this
is not a very easy thing to convey to others. There is much more discussion
about what a participant observer will observe (initially, everything; later, a

79
80 Chapter 5

representative selection of events and situations), but not how one should
observe.
In fact, in reviewing a number of discussions of participant observa-
tion as a method and fieldwork accounts, we found that descriptions of
how researchers developed their abilities to become better observers are
rare. Researchers have spent more time describing the nuances of success-
fully taking the role of participant than they have the concrete details of
observing and recording observations. At the same time the literature is
full of descriptions of the "aha!" moments when the researcher notes that
"suddenly it dawned on me," "then I realized .... " That is, the moments
in field work in which the researcher came to understand what sfhe was
observing, but more about that below. In part, this is because, as we noted
in an earlier chapter, a good deal of what we learn is the field is tacit. The
process of participant observation is, in part, a process of enculturation (see
Schensul, Schensul, and LeCompte 1999). The researcher gradually ab-
sorbs the big picture and some of the details that lead to an understanding
of people's daily lives, structure of events, social structure and expectations
and values. However, even the gradual development of understanding
is based on the accumulation of observations of daily routines, specific
events, and conversation, to which the observer has carefully attended and
captured in field notes.
At its most basic, observation is just that: the researcher explicitly and
self-consciously attending to the events and people in the context they are
studying. It is not just a visual phenomenon, but includes all of the senses.
"Observation thus consists of gathering impressions of the surrounding
world through all relevant human faculties" (Adler and Adler 1994:378).
In participant observation, especially, it also includes a kind of self-obser-
vation, both of the way in which the investigator experiences the setting
as a participant, the particular values and biases sfhe brings to the setting
(reflexivity); and observation ofthe impact of the observer on the research
setting. In this chapter, we discuss some of the practical steps that should
be taken in order for an individual to develop their observational skills.

THE ROLE OF THEORY AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

As we noted in earlier chapters and above and will discuss again in chapter
9, the theoretical framework with which we enter the field is one of the
key influences in what we will observe and record. While in an earlier time
researchers were often trained (or not trained) to go into the field with no
preconceived theories or expectations, most researchers now enter the field
with well-defined and specific research questions, well-thought-out theo-
retical and conceptual frameworks and ideas about social structure, social
 Doing Participant Observation: Becoming an Observer 81

interaction systems, power relations, networks, etc. Even before entering

the field, researchers have thought carefully about what kinds of individu-
als they will seek out, which venues for observation they will try to attend,
what kinds of events they will observe. While the participant observer is
learning to become a participant, sfhe is also trying to identify the specific
actions and products of action that are indicators of key concepts and com-
ponents of a conceptual framework. For this reason, careful observations
and the recording of observations in field notes (see chapter 9) are critical
elements of the operationalization of the conceptual framework. They are,
simultaneously, powerful ways of discovering new elements of a concep-
tual framework.

TAKING THE OBSERVER ROLE

We find that, after years of experience, we probably observe many situa-

tions more closely and more analytically than our noninvestigator friends
and colleagues. However, we also observe better when we are consciously
carrying out fieldwork; when we define ourselves as being "on"; when we
are thinking of what will go into the field notes (more about field notes
as critical to the development of the observer below). In a way similar to
choosing and taking on a participant role, the participant observer self-
consciously takes on the role of observer as well. In fact, the need to be
observing, and observing effectively, is one of the strains early in fieldwork
that can lead to the experience of culture shock. We find that when we are
"on" we have in the back of our minds the fact that, whether or not we are
taking cursory notes at the time of the observation, we will be writing field
notes later. Keeping consciously in mind that we will have to describe what
we did and saw in itself keeps us attuned to the detail of the context.

AITENDING TO DETAIL: MAPPING THE SCENE

The most important skill the participant observer needs to develop is the
ability to attend to details. Effective observation means "seeing" as much as
possible in any situation. This can include noting the arrangement of physi-
cal space, the arrangement of people within that space, the specific activities
and movement of people in a scene, the interaction among people in the
scene (and with the researcher), the specific words spoken, and nonverbal
interaction, including facial expressions.
It is a good idea to map the scenes in which the researcher is participat-
ing. Whyte (Whyte and Whyte 1984) writes about the importance of con-
structing maps of the interactions in the Comerville S&A Club. Whyte was
82 Chapter 5

interested in studying political and social relations in this community, the

structure of action, and the formation and composition of subgroups. He
hypothesized that the men who associated most with each other would be
allies when it was time to make decisions. He needed to understand the in-
teractions of members of the club in more depth. One of the tools he used
to do this was to construct positional maps of Club meetings he observed.
Some of this he did surreptitiously. He could see into the room in which
the Club met from the front window of his apartment.

I simply adjusted the venetian blind so I was hidden from view and I could
look down and into the store-front dub. Unfortunately, however, our flat was
two flights up, and the angle of vision was such that I could not see past the
middle of the clubroom. To get the full picture, I had to go across the street
and be with the men. (Whyte and Whyte 1984:85}

While at the club meetings Whyte observed uwho was talking together, play
cards together, or otherwise interactingu (86). As he knew the uregularsu
well after months of interacting with them, he was able to easily remember
who was talking with whom, etc. He made mental pictures of men in rela-
tion to the physical objects in the room. He counted the number of people
in the scene. He made mental notes of movements around the room. When
the scene changed, when people moved around, he went through the same
mental processes again. However, Whyte could not keep all of this reliably
in mind at first.

I managed to make a few notes on trips to the men's room, but most of the
mapping was done from memory after I got home. At first, I went home once
or twice for mapmaking during the evening. But, with practice, I got so that I
could retain at least two positional arrangements in memory and could do all
of my notes at the end of the evening. (Whyte and Whyte 1984:86}

Whyte's description of his observation of the Club makes several important

points.

• Mapping the physical and social scene provides important data for
understanding social relationships;
• Mapping is a very good tool for developing the kind of attention to
detail and memory that truly effective fieldwork requires; and
• We all get better at this with practice.

Mapping the scene is a fairly common tool of observation. 1 Pelto also

describes how he came to a better understanding of social relationships
among members of several communities by mapping a reindeer roundup
in Finnish Lapland.
 Doing Participant Observation: Becoming an Observer 83

We found in our first exposure to a reindeer roundup, that mapping the

physical structure of the corral and nearby dwelling units provided a nearly
complete outline of the structure of the social interaction talking place ... the
first observation to made about these cubicles is that the Skolt Saame positions
tend to be bunched together on one side of the corral, although the segmenta-
tion of Skolts from other groups is not complete. Second the cubicle of any
one reindeer association tend to be together and the relative positions of the
associations are visible in the organization of the cubicles .... The positions of
the cubicles in this case correspond to both the social and territorial placement
of these people. (Pelto and Pelto 1978:201-2)

Creating the map and attending to the details of position and interaction
allowed Pelto to draw important conclusions regarding social relations,
ethnic interaction, and political and economic power.
In addition to mapping the physical and social scene, Pelto observed
and recorded a running record of the activities of the roundup as they oc-
curred. He does not tell us if he took running jot notes, periodically left the
scene to take notes, or was able to commit all of this to memory and write
up the notes later. But the information gained through participating in the
roundup became a key part of the description of economic and social rela-
tionships among various Saame groups and Finns.
In a study of women's social power in Ecuador (K. M. DeWalt 1999;
Poats and DeWalt 1999) we were interested in the ways in which women
and men interacted in community meetings. We attended a sample of
community meetings in four communities, observing who spoke, whose
opinions appeared to influence discussion, the ways in which decisions
were reached. We also made sketch maps of who was sitting and standing,
where men and women were seated, where specific individuals we believed
were community leaders were seated and where speakers were sitting or
standing. Figure 9.1 (p. 162) shows a rough sketch map captured in jot
notes during one particular meeting in one of the study communities.
Our notes regarding who spoke showed equal participation by men and
women. However, the sketch map shows an all male cluster seated apart
from other members of the community. While they were not officers of
the organization (the officers were seated in a cluster at the head table and
were both men and women), by attending to where decisions were being
made, it became clear that all decisions were being made within the cluster
of men. Vogl, Vogl-Lukasser, and Puri (2004) mapped the home gardens
in which they and the gardeners they were studying were working in order
to better understand the ethnobotany of home gardens in Mexico, Austria,
and Indonesia.
Mapping the social scene and the spatial layout of living and working
spaces, whether it is a corral, a meeting, or a garden, becomes not only a
way to examine spatial arrangements in various venues and events, but also
84 Chapter 5

a tool to focus observation and a way to train the observer to note detail
carefully and record it faithfully.

(PARTICIPATORY) COMMUNI1Y MAPPING

In addition to the mapping of social spaces and venues, more detailed and
accurate mapping of communities is also an important activity in field
work and can be a component of participant observation. The mapping of
communities can be a means of defining the study area, understanding and
analyzing the geographical distribution of community members, describing
the activity spaces (as compared with living spaces) in a community, and
identifying locational problems inherent in the research area (Cromley
1999). In community-based research we have always begun the process
by making maps of the community, position of houses, public spaces, and
services.
There are several good reviews of concepts and techniques for com-
munity mapping available (Chapin, Lamb, and Threlkeld 2005; Cromley
1999; Kuznar and Werner 2001; Spier 1970; van Willigen and DeWalt
1985; Werner and Kuznar 2001). Increasingly, community-based maps are
available from census bureaus, geographic services, and land management
agencies. It is also easy to secure aerial photos and remote sensing images
of regions and communities. Satellite images are readily available for free
from sites such as GoogleEarth (earth.google.com). All of these can be
used as bases for community maps. In some, individual structures such as
houses and community spaces can be identified. Others provide a backdrop
on which structures and spaces can be mapped in more detail. Werner and
Kuznar (Kuznar and Werner 2001; Werner and Kuznar 2001) note that
detailed community mapping has been part of ethnographic practice since
the early twentieth century. They outline the basics of sound ethnographic
mapmaking emphasizing attention to accuracy, scale, and measurement.
Kuznar (Kuznar and Werner 2001) found it helpful to grazing areas in re-
search with both the Navajo and the Aymara.
Chapin et al.'s (2005) review of mapping land in indigenous communi-
ties reviews the history of participatory approaches to mapping in indig-
enous communities in both rapid and long-term research, and reviews the
key methods of participatory mapping. Participatory and rapid assessment
approaches frequently use participatory mapping to integrate community
interests and views with those of the researchers. Participatory community
mapping is also a useful method for the development of rapport (Bastidas
and Gonzalez 2009; Cromley 1999; Maman et al. 2009). Bastidas and Gon-
zalez (2009) describe a set of methods for participatory mapping and social Des
cartography they used to identify community conflict and approaches to arro
llar
rap
port
 Doing Participant Observation: Becoming an Observer 85

resolve conflict in Robles, Colombia. Maman et al. (2009) drew on par-

ticipatory mapping not only to assist in their understanding of the limits
and meanings of spaces to the people in the communities in Thailand,
Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Tanzania in which they were conducting ran-
domized community trials of HIV testing and counseling, but also to build
opportunities for the development of trust and rapport for the experimental
more quantitative phase of the research.
We should note here that mapping raises some ethical concerns regard-
ing the maintenance of confidentially, especially if dwellings are noted on
maps. Also, as Kuznar found out in his research with the Aymara, some
information on important resources such as grazing areas is contentious
and a breach of confidentiality, a potential source of conflict, even violence.
Finally, mapping can be a means of doing something useful while
learning a language or while building rapport. One of the first things we
encourage new researchers to do when entering the field is to do a sketch
map of the community (see van Willigen and DeWalt 1985:42-45). This
serves a number of purposes. It gets them acquainted with the physical
surroundings and settlement pattern of the community. Walking around
the community also makes you visible so people become accustomed to
seeing strangers in their midst. In addition, there are lots of opportunities
for informal conversations while mapping that encourage new researchers
to get over their shyness and to begin interacting on a regular basis with
people in the community.

COUNTING

Participant observation is often described as the quintessential qualitative

research method, and, in fact, it is. However, that does not mean that no
quantitative data can or should be collected. All researchers make some
quantitative statements such as "very few people attended the meeting,"
"many children miss school because they are taking care of the animals,"
"most of the vendors are women," etc. In fact counting, both during events
and activities, and later in analysis, can be a key component of improving
the level of description and objectivity of observation. Counting can take
place in every situation. How many of what kind of people are in a particu-
lar setting? How many are doing what? How many men as compared with
women as compared with children are acting, moving, speaking? How many
chairs, chickens, cows, cars, corporate executives are present? In other words,
the researcher should train him/herself to count people, things, and actions
in all sorts of routine and everyday events and activities. Seemingly trivial
"countings" can form the basis of latter conclusions regarding change over
time, or differences in distributions of things and actions across subgroups.
86 Chapter 5

More importantly for this discussion, counting is an exercise that can aid in
developing stronger observational skills.
One of the first training assignments given us as beginning researchers
was to observe the weekly market in the Mexican community in which we
were living. Although we had only rudimentary Spanish during our first
field trip, careful observation was a useful thing for us to do that did not
require verbal skills. However, we were not just to observe, but to count the
number of sellers of each kind of good, count the people, count the number
of people without shoes, etc. There is a big difference between being able to
report that the majority of sellers are women, and to report that 60 percent
of the stalls were attended by adult women, 30 percent by adult men, and
10 percent by children; or that 15 percent of the people in the food section
of the market were without shoes and only 5 percent in the clothing section
were without shoes.
Some people are natural counters. We realized this one day when an
acquaintance stopped by our home in the United States to pick something
up. As she walked in the door she noted that the door (which was original
to our 100-year-old bungalow) had 30 small panes of glass. We had lived
in the house several years and could not have told anyone how many panes
there were if asked. Since then, we have met a number of natural counters.
Such people immediately note how many chairs are set up in a room, how
many groups of people there are, how many pounding strokes it takes a
woman to reduce a pile of com into meal. Unfortunately, neither of us is
a natural counter. We have to consciously think about the importance of
counting people and things. The effective observer can cultivate the habit of
counting, and either record the count immediately or commit it to memory
for later inclusion in field notes.
At this point, the new researcher might well ask: How much recorded
detail is enough? The very best answer is: there is never enough. One could
observe the same event for hours or days, or a hundred times, with all of the
very best powers of observation and still find something new each moment
or time. However, this is not a reasonable approach. There are diminishing
returns, even to the time spent in observing and recording observations
in field notes of a single event. Also, the researcher carrying out extended
fieldwork will likely have more opportunities to observe and participate in
similar events and activities. As in most aspects of fieldwork, the researcher
does the best sfhe can at a particular time and in a particular setting.
With mapping, counting, actively listening, and keeping a running men-
tal stream of observation, observing complex events as a researcher can
seem to be an overwhelming experience, especially for a new researcher. To
be truthful, it is. But with time, practice, and experience it is not only pos-
sible but likely that most researchers will do it well, certainly well enough.
 Doing Participant Observation: Becoming an Observer 87

ATIENDING TO CONVERSATION

The participant observer is also attending carefully to what is being said.

We will discuss informal interviewing in more detail in chapter 8. However,
much of the time a researcher is participating in an event or activity, s/he is
also engaged in active listening. Active listening is listening attentively, us-
ing casual facilitation techniques, making mental (sometime written) notes
about the conversation( s), and sometimes being prepared to offer a prompt
when an aspect of the conversation touches on material important to the
researcher, but when the information being offered is not entirely clear to
the researcher. With respect to the last point, it is sometimes a good idea
to let a point pass, with a mental or jot note to follow up on it in a more
directed interview later rather than break the normal flow of conversation
when hanging out.
Even in participant observation, as compared with informal interviewing,
the written record should contain as much verbatim conversation as pos-
sible. Realistically, however, unless the researcher is making rather detailed
jot notes, or audio or video taping while interacting, reproducing much of
any verbatim conversation will be difficult. 2 Finally, nonverbal expression
and gestures are also important to understanding what is going on. Atten-
tion to detail in observation should also include noting nonverbal cues
and communication. These are the kinds of data that are (obviously) not
picked up in audio recording, so even an researcher who audio records in-
formal conversation should be observing and noting the nonverbal aspects
of conversation.

FIELD NOTES AS A TRAINING TOOL FOR OBSERVATION

We have found that doing detailed field notes (see chapter 9) is an im-
portant means of training one's mind. As one replays (in the mind) and
recounts (in field notes) conversations and events, many different details
emerge than when one just simply participates. Although neither one of us
seems to be able to remember even the main topics of conversations as we
go through our daily academic lives (and this is definitely getting worse as
we age), when we are "on" in the field, we can write pages of detailed field
notes, often capturing people's verbal and nonverbal expressions. Writing
field notes becomes an additional training tool for improving a researcher's
observational skills. When a new researcher sits down to write an accurate
detailed account of the day's observations, the areas in which more com-
prehensive and detailed observation would have been critical become im-
mediately clear. The meta-notes (chapter 9) for the next day of work should
88 Chapter 5

include comments on the elements of activities, events, and conversations

that will need more detailed attention in subsequent encounters.

SEEING OLD EVENTS WITH NEW EYES

The participant observer in a new scene may often feel overwhelmed by the
complexity of events, the amount of new detail to be observer and recorded,
and the difficulty of understanding exactly what is going on. As difficult as
it seems at the outset, this situation is far easier to deal with than entering
a scene after having participated in it as a native. While autoethnography
(Reed-Danahay 1997) has a number of advantages, the researcher knows
at least parts of the context intimately; its major disadvantage is that it is
difficult to attend to level of detail necessary to gain new insight, when the
context is so familiar. Furthermore, the naive observer not only sees detail
the native does not, but also does not take many things, including social
relations, for granted.
Through many years of teaching field methods to students, we have
come to believe that the students who write the poorest field notes at the
outset are those who are carrying out their project in a familiar context.
They have to see their world with new eyes. Our approach to working with
students with this problem is to force them to take detailed jot notes and
later write extensive field notes about things that seem obvious to them.
We require them to make spatial maps, map out interactions, and take
notes as though they were carrying out running observations. 3 Invariably
we find that when they review their notes they find aspects of the scene
they had not nseen" before.
While this is quite true of native researchers, it can also be a problem with
fieldworkers who have been in a context for some time and are observing
and participating in the hundredth occurrence of an event or activity. As we
note in chapter 10, a researcher who has been in the field for some time
runs the risk of not looking carefully enough for new insights; not seeing
contradictory material; not seeking out new explanations for phenomena.
It is a good idea to go back to basic observational techniques later in field-
work, just as a self-check on the potential effects of ennui.

PRACTICING AND IMPROVING

OBSERVATION AND MEMORY

Over the years, we have seen and used a number of exercises to help new re-
searchers improve the level of detail they observe and record. One such tech-
nique is not worrying about memory but keeping a running observational
 Doing Participant Obseroation: Becoming an Obseroer 89

record. This is a technique used in some types of structured observation, but

can be used to improve observation of detail. The researcher observes an
event or activity keeping a running record, writing a stream of observation
record. Every observed action, conversation, expression is recorded while
in the scene. This can be done in written form or even audiotaped, if it is
possible in the particular context chosen. The goal is to see how much the
researcher can observe in a certain period.
Several researchers can observe the same event or activity, keep a record,
and then compare records. It is a humbling experience to realize that each
observer attends to different aspects of the context, but the comparison can
help each to be more attentive to aspects of events they have a tendency to
miss. We do enough team research ourselves to continue to use this tech-
nique to keep up our skills and check the accuracy of our observation and
recording. When more than one team member is in a particular event or
activity, each writes his/her own set of field notes and then circulates them
to the other researchers. Discrepancies can be discussed, and if possible
resolved. Otherwise differences in observation are noted in analysis.
New researchers should have the opportunity to carry out observations
in a context in which someone reviews field notes and critiques them for
content and detail. 4 This is much of what happens in the field methods
courses we teach. Again, as in team research, experienced researchers can
continue to circulate field notes to their colleagues for critiquing, using this
as a check on detail and accuracy. Even the most experienced anthropolo-
gists can improve observational and recording skills when colleagues help
by pointing out gaps in the record.
The only key to improving memory is to practice observing, making men-
tal notes, and then writing detailed notes. Being conscious that we will be
writing notes seems to make remembering a bit easier. Each one of us has
a natural limit on the capacity and accuracy of our memory, and, unfortu-
nately, the capacity appears to change with time. We are strong believers in
taking jot notes or even more detailed notes when the nature of the activity
and the people involved will allow it.

WHAT TO OBSERVE

The tempting answer to the question: "What should I observe?" is, "every-
thing." Not only is this not feasible, it is probably completely impossible.
In chapter 6 we discuss the importance of choosing a representative set of
activities and events in which to participate and observe. What kinds of
activities and events in which to participate and observe are also influenced
by the specific research questions addressed and theoretical approach ad-
opted for any particular piece of fieldwork. Participant observation is an
90 Chapter 5

iterative process, so a list of the events and situations that one will observe
will change over time. What is observed in a particular setting will also be
shaped by the interests of the observer (see below). All observation is par-
tial {Agar 1996; Wolcott 1999).
Most of the activities that researchers record in their notebooks consist
of mundane, frequently repeated events. That is one of the underlying as-
sumptions in almost all social science studies: there are patterned behav-
iors, embodying and exemplifying culturally significant knowledge and
attitudes. Many behavior patterns are daily events-eating, washing, caring
for the animals (and the children), going to school, going to regular jobs
and so on. Others are weekly (weekly market; weekend activities, reading
the Sunday newspaper), still others are repeated several times, or hundreds
of times, daily such as store transactions or physician-client interactions.
On the other hand, every field worker also experiences very unusual
events-some of them periodic, others unpredicted and aperiodic (such as
police raids, floods, and gang fights). The participant observer should do
the following:

• Observe the activity and study the "story line"

• Identify the component segments of action
• Try to sort out the regular, nonvarying components from the more
variable items
• Look for variations in the "story line" that reflect differences in SES,
education, ethnicity, seasonality, etc.
• Look for "exceptions" (e.g., "mistakes," "poor manners," "insults")

If the observed behavior is important for one's theoretical purposes, then

the researcher should develop a plan for systematic observation, including
an estimate of how many observations will be "enough" (depending on the
degrees of regularity and "structuredness" of the behavior).
One of the inherent biases in observation, especially participant obser-
vation, is the likelihood that unusual and rare events will be more closely
observed and recorded than commonplace events and activities. The com-
pelling nature of unusual events and situations can lead to a bias in which
they are more likely to influence analysis and dominate description. Events,
activities, and situations experienced early in fieldwork are also likely to
take a more central place in analysis and write-up.
It is also common that the researcher, after having participated in an
event or activity one or two times, tends not seek out opportunities to
participate again but "moves on" to other events. In this case, there is less
opportunity to compare the way similar events unfold on different days,
under different circumstances, and at different times of the year. To take
one simple example of the problems this might cause, there is the everyday
 Doing Participant Obseroation: Becoming an Obseroer 91

consumption of food. Because we and the people we study do it several

times a day, it may not be noteworthy to include what foods are consumed
at every meal. Yet, nutritional anthropologists know that the "seasonality"
of food (i.e., what foods are available and when they are consumed) may
be critically important. Not having certain foods available can lead to nu-
tritional deficiencies and/or health effects in a population. The point is that
the researcher should continue observing commonplace events over time
throughout the course of the project.
One of the other key uses of observation is to allow for the juxtaposition
of what people say they do, and what they are observed to do, as part of
analysis (Agar 1996). For example, Bill and his students have had experi-
ence in studying agricultural credit programs in Latin America in which
development banks provided fertilizer to farmers to use in producing cash
crops. While farmers reported using the fertilizer for its intended purpose,
observation showed that farmers were either using the fertilizer on sub-
sistence crops or selling it. Knowing this, further investigation was able to
show that farmers did not see it as being in their economic best interests to
produce the cash crop. For them, the cash benefits of selling the fertilizer or
using it to produce food for their families was a better use of the resource.
It is also important for the researcher to observe and experience those
activities and events that are core to the processes the researcher hopes to
describe and interpret. Eileen van Schaik (1992), who carried out a study of
workplace issues among community health aides in rural Jamaica, collected
a number of accounts in which the aides discussed the problems of fulfill-
ing their obligation to visit the homes of their clients regularly using only
public transportation. However, she never fully understood the concerns
until she began traveling with the aides on local buses and could observe
the constraints on mobility this imposed. Descriptions of events and activi-
ties that appear to be important to the research question should provide
prompts for seeking opportunities to observe and participate. Going the
other way around, observing events and activities carefully generally pro-
duces a number of questions that can be addressed through interviewing.
The researcher also needs to keep in mind that what sfhe is observing
changes with time in the field. What seems overwhelming at the beginning
becomes much more manageable as the researcher has more information
and observations. The nature of the enterprise changes from trying to ob-
serve and record everything, to one in which more attention is paid to new
activities, or events that have an unusual twist, or an aspect that the observer
has not previously observed. One of the benefits oflonger-term participant
observation research is that we may get a chance to observe rare events.
But more importantly, we are allowed to observe more as individuals and
communities become more comfortable with us in their midst and come
to trust us. Wolcott (1994) notes that he portrayed one of his informants
92 Chapter 5

as a teetotaler in an early publication, only to find out after knowing the

informant six years that, in fact, he did occasionally take a drink socially.
Some rare events may never be directly observed. Brymer (1998) notes
that he spent years working with Mexican American "gangs" in a Southwest-
em city before he saw a real gang meeting. Most of the time, the young men
with whom he was working hung out in smaller groups (8-10 guys) called
palomillas. The large gangs that most people agreed existed actually came
together only under unusual circumstances when it was thought that a fight
with a rival gang would take place. In the case Brymer was able to observe,
gang X was represented by a large number of heavily armed young men and
a number of women. No fight took place because gang Y never showed up,
but the situation provided Brymer's only opportunity to observe a meeting
of the larger gang.

JUST EXPERIENCING

Finally, while we have just spent a good deal of time arguing that the partic-
ipant observer should be consciously aware of observing most of the time
in which sfhe is engaged in research, one of the inherent contradictions in
the methods is sometimes, it is a good idea to "just experience" events. It
is the tacit understandings and insights that being a participant bring to
research that make participant observation an important method. To the
extent to which "being on" interferes with that experience, the researcher
may sometimes need to lay aside the explicit observer role and attend not
to remembering but to feeling and experiencing. The irony is that, after
some experience as an observer who is "just participating," the experienced
participant observer finds that sfhe can come away from an afternoon off
with the ability to write hours of field notes. In other words the observer
role becomes second nature, almost automatic.

LIMITS TO OBSERVATION

Observer bias in what is observed, how it is observed, and how it is recorded

is not limited to the method of participant observation. Niels Bohr, the the-
oretical physicist who was a major figure in the development of the theory
of quantum mechanics, understood the critical importance of the idea that
every observer observes a phenomenon from the place from which the ob-
server observes. Furthermore, he noted that one only observes a phenom-
enon when it intersects with the observer. An observer has no idea what is
happening when not connecting with the phenomena in some way (Bohr
1963; Frisch 1967). Following Bohr, biologist Rene Dubois (1968) argues
 Doing Participant Observation: Becoming an Observer 93

What scientists really try to do ... is to develop ways of stating, without am-
biguity the experience they gain of the world, either directly by observation, or
indirectly by instrumentation and computation. The word "reality" thus has
large subjective components because it involves the nature of personal experi-
ence. (108)

Finally, Bohr also noted that the act of observation (because it includes
the need to intersect) always has an impact on the object observed (and,
of course, the observation)-5 Bohr's discussion of the nature of observation
in particle physics anticipated a similar reexamination of the nature of ob-
servation in social science that became a dominant theme in the critique
of ethnography and ethnographic representation in the last quarter of the
twentieth century. While social science has mostly backed away from an
extreme relativist position and the paralyzing debate about the nature of
observation and an outright rejection of the notion of objectivity, the result
has been the now routine inclusion of reflexivity in the planning, conduct,
and reporting of research. Being reflexive involves a careful examination by
investigators of the "place from which they observe" in order to better un-
derstand the relationships among the observer, the observed, and the report
of the observation. We do not care to contribute to this debate, but to say
that we are with Bohr (and many others) on this question. We don't ask
the question "is the research/researcher biased?" All researchers and research
are biased. We need to ask the question "How is the researcher biased?" We
believe that there is an object reality "out there" and that the researchers
can report more or less well on reality, depending on the degree to which
they carry out careful and reflexive research. The "place from which the
observer observes" and the impact of the observer on the observed then
become part of the methodology of research and the reporting of research.
Perhaps more interestingly, there is enough experience with a number of
the more common sources of observer bias that we can anticipate some of
the sources of bias.
The "place from which the observer observes" is influenced by a mix of
a large number of characteristics, experiences, and situations that exist in a
particular time and place for a particular observer. As we will note below,
after the theoretical crisis in social science, especially ethnography, in the
last quarter of the twentieth century, the need for the researcher to clearly
examine his/her biases in a reflexive way before, during, and after research
became commonplace in research design and the creation of ethnography.
Clearly, the research question and the theoretical position taken by the
researcher are obvious sources of bias in the collection of data and analy-
sis. In addition to limitations to what will be observed as a result of the
research questions and theoretical approach, personal attributes can sub-
stantially affect participant observation in field research. In chapter 7 we
will discuss some of the constraints placed on observation by the gender
94 Chapter 5

of the researcher. Other personal characteristics include age, ethnic back-

ground, or class physical characteristics. Postmodernist writers particularly
emphasize that the observer and his or her circumstances and biases cannot
be separated from the accounts that sfhe writes. As a result, as Agar (1996)
notes, all observations are partial. A different observer with different per-
sonal characteristics and interests is likely to report quite different aspects
and dimensions of the same event.
In addition, ethnographers surely differ in terms of their abilities and
qualifications. Until recently, however, it has been rare for the accuracy of
field reports to be questioned. This is so despite an increasing number of con-
troversies coming to light in which the data collected by different researchers
who have worked in the same area differ substantially (e.g., Redfield ( 1930)
and Lewis (1951) concerning Tepoztlan in Mexico, Mead (1928) and
Freeman (1983) on Samoa, Benedict (1934) and Barnouw (1963) on the
Zuni). This acceptance of the reliability of data contrasts markedly with the
controversies embroiling anthropology and other social science disciplines
concerning the interpretation or theory built with the data.
Building theory depends upon having reliable data so it is lamentable
that so little attention has been placed on the issues of reliability and va-
lidity of the information collected. The relatively small amount of formal
examination of ethnographer bias in anthropology provides evidence that
these issues merit much more attention than they have previously received.

ETHNOGRAPHER BIAS

The notion that characteristics of the researchers and of the research situ-
ation have a predictable impact on reporting-ethnographer bias-was
examined by Raoul Naroll (1962, 1970) who became concerned that his
cross-cultural research results may have been affected by systematic biases
in ethnographic reporting. In the most striking finding, Naroll (1962:88-
89) found that the incidence of witchcraft reported in particular societies
was related to the amount of time the ethnographer spent in the field. He
showed that ethnographers who spent more than a year in the field were
significantly more likely to report the presence of witchcraft beliefs among
the societies they studied than ethnographers who spent shorter amounts
of time in the field.
Our own research in Temascalcingo provided a striking personal confir-
mation of Naroll's finding. We have referred earlier to leaving the field for
a three-week period of time after our first six months in the field. Before
our brief hiatus, we had asked people many times about magical and witch-
craft beliefs, particularly because these topics were so relevant to Kathleen's
medical anthropological research. Everyone had denied that there were any
 Doing Participant Observation: Becoming an Observer 95

such beliefs in the community. Almost the very day of our return, however,
one of our key informants began regaling us with a recounting of a conflict
that had occurred during our absence. The conflict included accusations
by one of the parties that witchcraft was being used against them. During
the remaining months in the field, witchcraft became a common theme of
our conversations with people who had denied its existence before. We are
convinced that the willingness of people to talk with us about such themes
reflected a break-through in their level of confidence and comfort with us.
Thus, as Naroll (1962) and we can attest, the length oftime that a person
spends engaged in participant observation does make a very large difference
in the kind of findings that may be reported.
Another example of predictable ethnographer bias comes from the work
of Rohner, DeWalt, and Ness (1973). Their work focused on the effects of
bias in reporting about parental acceptance/rejection and its importance
in personality development in children and adults. One striking finding of
these analyses was that those ethnographers who use multiple verification
efforts report more parental rejection and other a negative" personality traits
among the people they study. They reported that this seems to be linked to
a "bias of romanticism a among anthropologists. Unless ethnographers use
methods other than just participant observation, they are unlikely to report
the negative aspects of their subjects' personalities and lives. They quoted
Levi-Strauss (1961:381) who observed that

at home the anthropologist may be a natural subversive, a convinced opponent

of traditional usage; but no sooner has he (sic) in focus a society different from
his own than he becomes respectful of even the most conservative practices.

This argues for a mix of methods in which participant observation is just

one of the tools that anthropologists use in order to find out the behavior
of the people they study.
The n quality" of participant observation will vary depending on the
personal characteristics of ethnographers (e.g., gender, age, sexual orienta-
tion, ethnic affiliation), their training and experience (e.g., language ability,
quality of training), and their theoretical orientation. As interpretive an-
thropology makes clear, all of us bring biases, predisposition, and hang-ups
to the field with us and we cannot completely escape these as we view other
cultures. Our reporting, however, should attempt to make these biases as
explicit as possible so that others may use these in judging our work. What
is also apparent, however, is that by utilizing more formal methods of data
collection in conjunction with participant observation, we may improve
the quality and consistency of our reporting.
Much of the recent trend in postmodemist writing in anthropology ex-
plicitly aims toward presenting both nthe Self and Other ... within a single
96 Chapter 5

narrative ethnography" (Tedlock 1991:69). The point is often made that

"objectivity" is not possible in the study of human behavior. While we can
agree with this position, we do not accept the corollary that is often drawn
that therefore we should not strive to improve our observational skills or
search for explanatory theories concerning human behavior. 6 Understand-
ing ourselves and our reactions to field research and the individuals we
study should be a beginning point, not the final product of ethnography.
Indeed, psychoanalysis was commonly used by anthropologists like Cora
DuBois, Abram Kardiner, Ruth Benedict, and others both as a method of
studying other cultures as well as a personal means for coming to terms
with their own reactions to their research. They then went about the busi-
ness of trying to construct social scientific explanations of people's behavior
through ethnography. Our perspective is that we should go beyond the
individual postmodem musings that are too common in contemporary
anthropology to more systematically examine how the anthropologist's
race, gender, sexual preferences, and other factors affect their observations.
This chapter has explored different dimensions of becoming an observer.
As we have shown, observational skills can be enhanced by attending to
detail, mapping, counting, seeing old events with new eyes, and comparing
observations with others. Although we acknowledge that there are limita-
tions and biases in the observations made by any individual, we continue
to believe that we can improve the quality of participant observation and
that these observations can be used in comparative and theoretical social
science. Explicit attention to sources of bias, and controlling for these, is a
better approach than giving up on the scientific enterprise.

NOTES

1. Doing this kind of mapping in everyday life is often illuminating as well. In

that aspect of our lives that has occasionally involved academic administration, we
have found that charts of who sits next to whom at faculty meetings provides us
with clues about potential or real coalitions and alliances.
2. Some researchers do routinely leave a tape recording going during meetings
and even hanging out. As long as the participants in research know they are being
taped, a taped record can be a great aid to memory when writing field notes, or
even be transcribed verbatim. Bourgois (1995) had a tape recorder running much
of the time.
3. Running observation is a technique for structured observation in which the
observer takes running notes on all events as they unfold.
4. As we will discuss in chapter 11, we believe that it is unethical NOT to experi-
ence a period of supervised research before undertaking a completely independent
project.
 Doing Participant Observation: Becoming an Observer 97

5. Kathleen has come to use the film version of the Michael Frayn play Copenha-
gen which examines the nature of observation through the interaction of Bohr and
his former colleague, Werner Heisenberg, during World War II.
6. Marvin Harris went even further in criticizing those anthropologists with a
post-modernist or reflexive bent. He said that the solution to the criticisms they
raise "is not to abandon one's attempt to be scientific but to attempt to overcome
subjective limitations by being more scientific. The phenomenological obscurantists
would have us believe that no objectivity is better than a little objectivity. They blow
out the candle and praise the dark" (1979:327).
 Gender and Sex Issues in
Participant Observation

As we have shown in the previous chapters, one of the important contribu-

tions of theoretical discussions in social science over the past two decades has
been the axiomatic acceptance of the ethnographer as an individual with a
specific gender, race, class affiliation, and any number of other characteristics
that will have had an effect on specific ways in which a person will approach
a research project, experience the research setting, be experienced by infor-
mants, and the expectations and perceptions he or she will bring. No one
argues that the researcher enters the research setting as a neutral research tool.
Being a man or woman may be the most significant social fact concerning
an individual and obviously will have an impact on participant observation.
This chapter includes a discussion of gender and sex issues in participant
observation. Our discussion of gender examines how being male and female
can affect access to, and the recording o£ information from field research.
The discussion of sex focuses on how one intense kind of participation with
some individuals in a society can affect the observations of the ethnographer.

THE GENDERED ETHNOGRAPHER

The gender of the ethnographer has an impact on several areas of the ethno-
graphic enterprise. A quite important influence relates to the experiences of
the ethnographer during the field research. Women in the field have often
been harassed and have become victims of violence in ways different from
men (Warren 1988). Just as men are often barred from situations in which
they can know the intimate worlds of women, women ethnographers are
sometimes barred from important parts of the worlds of men. The reports

99
100 Chapter 6

of ethnographers, however, suggest that women may find it easier to gain

access to some aspects of men's lives than male ethnographers find it to
gain access to the worlds of women (Nader 1986; Warren 1988). Other
researchers have argued that, in general, women make naturally better field
workers because they are more sensitive and open than are men (Nader
1986; Warren 1988). Some feminist and ethnic writers argue that true
rapport and accurate portrayal of the voice of the participant can only be
achieved by researchers who come close to matching the informants in
gender, race, and class (hooks 1990; 1989). Although, in contrast, Lunsing
(1999) argues that as a gay European man in Japan, Japanese women were
much more open to him about their sexuality and sexual harassment than
to other Europeans including women. Lunsing also recounts personal ex-
perience of a level of sexual harassment from men in Japan that rivals that
reported by many women researchers.
Differential access to the lives of women has resulted in generations of
predominantly male-biased ethnography, which has often paid little heed
to the lives and concerns of women. Several classic ethnographic debates
are, at least in part, the result of the different vantage point of the ethnogra-
pher. The gender of the ethnographer, for example, may be partially behind
the discrepancies in the reports of Mead (1928) and Freeman (1983) con-
cerning the sexual lives of Samoan girls. The view of economic exchange in
the Trobriand Islands that Malinowski (1961 [1922]) presented is enlarged
and enhanced by the work of Weiner ( 1988) who focused more of her work
on exchanges involving women.
Katherine Lutz ( 1988) has written about the experience of being a woman
in Ifaluk, a Micronesian atoll. She noted that the lives of men and women
on Ifaluk are sharply divided. Men and women, husbands and wives, may
spend very little time together. This is not to say that women do not have
high social status in many domains of life on Ifaluk. It is a matrilineal
society, in which women contribute strongly to the economy through con-
trol of agricultural production, but Ifaluk world is highly gendered. Lutz,
however, had anticipated that she would be able to achieve the "genderless"
or "generalized gender" status that a number of women ethnographers
reported in other settings (see Fluehr-Lobban and Lobban 1986; Jackson
1986; Lederman 1986; Warren 1988). In fact, she found that she could not
achieve this, but was required to conform to the gender expectations of
the community around her. Lutz recorded the event that finally convinced
her to abandon the hope that she could create a role outside of the Ifaluk
system of expectations. She wrote:

On the first evening, Tamelakar [her fictive "father") and my "mother," Ilefago-
mar, gave me a first elementary primer on what I should and should not do; I
should say siro (respect or excuse me) when passing a group of seated people;
I should use the tag mawesh (sweetheart) when addressing someone; I should
 Gender and Sex Issues in Participant Observation 101

crouch down rather than remain standing if others were sitting; and, Tamela-
kar emphasized, I should not go into the island store if there were more than
two men inside. I was to consider myself their daughter, they said, and Tamela-
kar would from then on refer to me before others as his daughter. A week
later, a toi, or • mass meeting." of the island's men was called; on hearing this,
I said that I would like to see it and was brought over to the meeting site by
a middle-aged man from the village. Tamelakar was already there. Seeing me,
he anxiously asked, "Where are you going?" and looked both uncomfortable
and displeased when he heard I was interested in observing the meeting. As
direct requests are rarely refused, he did not respond, but waved me to sit off
to the side by his relatives. With this and subsequent encounters, such all-male
occasions soon lost their interest for me, and I spent the great majority of my
time with women in cook huts, gardens and birth houses. (Lutz 1988:36-37)

Lutz expected to be able to choose the role that she would adopt in Ifaluk
and anticipated that she would "allow" (1988:33) herself to be socialized
in arenas in which she was interested. If one is to be successful as a partici-
pant observer, however, that is not always possible.
Jean Briggs (1986) also reports that she was never able to adopt the role
of kapluna (white) daughter to the satisfaction of her fictive Utkuhiksaling-
miut "family." As a result, she reports many months of stymied research, in
which community members essentially shunned her due to her inability to
keep her temper and act like an Utkuhiksalingmiut woman.
A number of women, however, have successfully stepped outside the pre-
scribed roles for women within a particular cultural setting. Women have
been involved with research on agricultural production or other economic
activities in which both men and women might work, but the spheres of
men and women are different. Allen (1988), for example, was able to study
the tasks of both men and women in her Peruvian research, although she
notes that her original entrance into the community was eased because she
was accompanied by a male colleague.
Some of the most successful and fascinating fieldwork is conducted by
teams of men and women. Murphy and Murphy ( 1974) provided a view
of Mundurucu society that was almost unique for its time in the way that it
placed in counterpoint the perspectives of men and women. The Murphys
were able to do this because they had simultaneous access to different
events and to different informants during the same events.
Having the perspective and/or assistance of a member of the opposite sex
can often be quite important. In research on food security of older adults in
rural Kentucky (Quandt, Vitolins, DeWalt, and Roos 1997) in which Kath-
leen participated, we had tried to discover information about the use of
alcohol. After a number of months of in-depth interviewing with samples
of key informants in each of two counties, we had heard virtually nothing
about alcohol use or production of moonshine. Direct questions, care-
fully worded oblique interviewing. and "knowing" questions had all been
102 Chapter 6

answered with flat denials. One day the research team traveled to Central
County with Jorge Uquillas, an Ecuadorian sociologist and collaborator on
another project, who had expressed an interest in visiting the Kentucky field
sites. On this trip they visited Mr. B, a natural storyteller who had spoken
at length about life of the poor during the past 60 years. Although he had
been a great source of information about use of wild foods and recipes for
cooking game, he had never spoken of drinking or moonshine production.
Within a few minutes of entering his home on this day, he looked at Jorge,
and said n Are you a drinkin' man r (Beverly whipped out the tape recorder
and switched it on!) Over the next hour or so, Mr. B talked about commu-
nity values concerning alcohol use, the problems of drunks and how they
were dealt with in the community, and provided a number of stories about
moonshine in Central County. The presence of another man gave Mr. B the
opportunity to talk about issues he found interesting, but felt would have
been inappropriate to discuss with women alone.
Men and women have access to different settings, different people, and dif-
ferent bodies of knowledge. Our own experience has been that having a man
and woman involved in field work at the same time has provided a more
balanced view of community life, of key relationships and of the interaction
of households and families, than we would have had if we had worked alone.
We base this not only on our experience in working with one another in a
number of projects, but also on other projects in which we have worked with
larger teams involving men and women. Fortunately, for many decades, men
and women have been about equally represented among students entering
cultural anthropology programs. For this reason, it is much more likely that
collaboration by males and females in field research can occur.
At the same time, we would not claim that working as a couple has given
us any nspecialn insight into the communities and people we have studied.
Any ethnographer brings their own special perspective to the field. Single
ethnographers with characteristics that differ from our own would not have
discovered some things that we noted, but at the same time, there are other
behaviors that our own perspective did not allow us to see. Kathleen's inter-
ests in medical and nutritional topics, and Bill's interests in economic and
agricultural issues, resulted in rich data on those aspects of life in Temas-
calcingo (B. R. DeWalt 1979; K. M. DeWalt 1983) and other locations in
which we have worked together. On the other hand, we have much less
data on issues like kinship, sexuality, religion, symbolism, or ethnohistory.

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL: SEX IN THE FIELD

As several writers have noted (Caplan 1993; Kulick 1995; Lewin and Leap
1996a, 1996b), even in the climate of reflexivity, until the late twentieth
 Gender and Sex Issues in Participant Observation 103

century the sexuality of the fieldworker has not been much discussed by
ethnographers, in either their monographs or methodological notes. Dis-
cussion of sex in the field was not a part of the methodological or theoreti-
cal training of many anthropologists. Esther Newton has written that she
learned in graduate school "because it was never mentioned-that erotic
interest between fieldworker and informant didn't exist; would be inappro-
priate; or couldn't be mentioned" (Newton 1993:4).
Ashkenazi and Markowitz (1999) in the introduction to their edited
volume on sex and sexuality in anthropological research (Markowitz and
Ashkenazi 1999) cite their experience with a young woman researcher who
was very distressed by an unwelcome, unanticipated sexual advance expe-
rienced at the end of the collection of a life history interview with a male
narrator.

After describing the interview setting, she recounted how, as she rose to leave,
the interviewee turned her hand shake into a passionate embrace. Then she
looked up from her coffee visibly shaken, and tearfully asked, "What did I do
wrong?"
HNothing! we declared. We explained that the closeness temporarily cre-
11

ated during the course of a life history interview is open to interpretation and
that a narrator may regard it as an invitation to more intimate contact. "Surely
you know this, we added. "No, she replied, "how could I?" (Ashkenazi and
11 11

Markowitz 1999: 1)

They go on to note that these issues are little discussed, either in fieldwork
accounts or in discussions of methods.
Kulick and Willson (1995) found the reluctance of many researchers
to discuss sex and the sexuality of the ethnographers somewhat curious,
as ethnographers have not hesitated much to discuss the sexuality of the
people they have studied. Some early well-known exceptions include refer-
ences in Malinowski's diaries (1967), Rabinow's (1977) discussion of an
affair in Morocco, Turnbull's (1986) mention of his Mbuti lover, and from
one of the very few women to speak of this, Cesara's (1982) reflections on
her fieldwork experience among the Lenda.
Good's account (1991) is less about sex and sexuality, but describes the
evolution of his relationship with a Yamomama woman. He first agreed
to become betrothed to Yarima when she was less than twelve years old.
Although his initial agreement to this arrangement was made almost casu-
ally in a conversation with a village headman, Good became more attached
to Yarima during several years of returning to South America. He describes
his increasing emotional involvement, the eventual consummation of their
relationship after she began menstruating, how he dealt with his rage and
jealousy after Yarima was raped by another Yanomama, and their even-
tual marriage and moving to the United States. The book also includes
104 Chapter 6

observations from Yarima's perspective (Good 1991). An engaging and

personal account, Good makes no claims that this relationship enhanced
or hindered his understanding of the Yanomama.
Jean Gearing (1995), however, describes how she became attracted to
her "best informant" on the island of St. Vincent, became his "girlfriend"
and eventually married him. She argues persuasively that her romantic re-
lationship with a Vincentian, which was viewed as completely appropriate
by the community, not only increased her acceptance in the community,
but opened up the opportunity to gain significant insight into Vincentian
life, both through a shifting in her relationships with others and with her
husband as an informant.
In the introduction to one of several recent volumes on sex and sexual-
ity in the field, Kulick (1995) reviews some of the factors implicated in the
reluctance to discuss sex and sexuality in field work. He includes among
these the supposed objectivity ofthe observer (Dwyer 1982); that sexuality
should not make a difference in the objective recording and analysis of the
customs and habits of other people; the general disdain (until recently)
in the discipline for personal narratives (Pratt 1986); and more general
cultural taboos about discussing sex, or at least our own sexuality (Kulick
1995:3). Kulick suggests as well, following Newton (1993), that silence
about sexuality has served the purpose of "fortifying male heterosexuality
by keeping above the bounds of critical inquiry and of silencing women
and gays" (1995:4).
Cupples (2002) discusses in detail the ways in which her work in Nica-
ragua was highly sexualized, with a number of instances of what would be
considered sexual harassment in the United States (but perhaps not in Ni-
caragua) and the ways in which she both handled the sexuality of men with
whom she was working and even used it to gain access to data. She writes
about the impact of being an obvious object of sexual desire in the field
on her own experience of sexuality. She also notes the sexualized nature of
the "arousal" of just being "in the field" and being "in love with the field."

Over the course of my fieldwork, my sexual and gendered subjectivities shifted

and I found myself renegotiating my femininity and performing it more self-
consciously. Gender is performative ... and these shifts and renegotiations
are particularly valuable in highlighting the performative nature of gender,
which can have a destabilizing impact on normative heterosexuality (Cupples
2002:386).

In recent years, several volumes of essays have been published that deal
more directly with the issues of sex and sexuality in the field (Whitehead
and Conaway 1986; Bell, Caplan, and Karim 1993; Kulick and Willson
1995; Lewin and Leap 199Gb; Markowitz and Ashkenazi 1999). Sev-
eral factors have contributed to this increased attention. The first is the
 Gender and Sex Issues in Participant Observation 105

contemporary emphasis on reflexivity which suggests that the ethnographer

is situated sexually as well as with respect to gender, class, race, and so on
(Kulick 1995; Caplan 1993; Lewin and Leap 1996b; Altork 1995; Ashke-
nazi and Markowitz 1999; Cupples 2002; Lunsing 1999). Discussions of
sexuality, then, became part of the process of reflexivity. A second trend is
the increase in research on gay and lesbian communities by gay and lesbian
ethnographers; this has resulted in a number of accounts of the experience
of being a "native ethnographer" in a sexualized context. Finally, there is
increasing acceptance of the discussions concerning sexual relationships in
the field for all researchers.
Several ethnographers have written about the impact on their research of
a fuller participatory involvement in the community itself, both the effect
of being accepted as a "native" and the information they gain as a result
of sexual activity (Bolton 1995, 1996; Leap 1996; Murray 1996; Gearing
1995; Cesara 1982; Lewin and Leap 1996b; Newton 1993; Lunsing 1999).
Bolton (1995, 1996), for example, discusses not only the ways in which
his homosexuality influenced his examination of gay communities in the
"years of the plague" (AIDS] but also how his sexual activity became "data."
Murray (1991, 1996) has written several thoughtful essays on the use
of information gained during sexual activity as data in research. For Mur-
ray, having sexual relationships with other gay men in Guatemala became
fieldwork on eliciting terms relating to homosexuality in Central America
only in retrospect. His primary motivation for having sex with Guatemalans
was not to recruit informants, although he does admit to having thought
about the "representativeness" of his "sample" at one point. In the one in-
stance in which he reports that he went with a man out of curiosity, rather
than attraction, they ended up not having sex. However, Murray argues
that "Having sex with the natives is not a royal road to insight about alien
sexualities" (1996:250). Further, he is concerned that "conclusions based
on sexual participation are distorted by confusing the intimacies possible
with strangers with natives' everyday intimate lives" (1996:242). Coming
from a more textually oriented theoretical and methodological approach,
he suspects that even behavior under these circumstances is adjusted to
fit what the participants believe the researchers want to know. He prefers
"native documents not elicited by foreigners" as data (1996:250). Even this
conclusion, however, is, in part, the result of his juxtaposing "experience
near" data from participant observation with interviews and other research
materials.
To summarize sexual relationships in the field raises two issues that
are quite important to review here. One has to do with observation. In-
creased attention to reflexivity suggests that sexuality is a key characteristic
of the observer, apart from gender (although obviously these two cannot
be separated). As Kulick puts it, it is time to ask the question, "What are
106 Chapter 6

the implications of the anthropologist as a sexually cognizant knower?"

(1995:6). The answer to this question, provided by a number of con-
tributors to his and several other volumes, is that there are a number of
implications, and recognizing the observer as a sexually situated observer
is important in both the writing of ethnography and the reading of the
ethnography.
The second issue has to do with participation. As several writers have
noted, participation in sexual relationships may be important to acceptance
in a community and the development of rapport (Turnbull 1986). More
commonly, ethnographers who discuss these issues argue that intimate
relationships not only allowed them to participate more fully in with the
community, but provided access to information that might not have been
available otherwise (Gearing 1995; Murray 1996).
Intimate relationships, however, raise several ethical questions. What is
the potential for sexual exploitation of research participants? Despite the
feeling of many ethnographers (especially new researchers) that they are
dazed, confused, and relatively powerless, differences in race, class, gender,
and status put most ethnographers in a more powerful position than the
citizens of the communities in which they work. Gender differences may
not be an issue for gay and lesbian researchers, but class and ethnic differ-
ences are still likely to be important. What are the implications for the use
of information gained during sexual encounters as "data"? As we note in
chapter 11, participant observation raises a number of ethical questions,
principally because it is not always clear when the ethnographer is conduct-
ing research. This potential would be magnified in the context of intimate
relationships.
In this vein, the matter of informed consent, which is becoming more
important in research involving human subjects, becomes extremely rel-
evant. Should we be developing informed consent scripts that can be whis-
pered at an appropriate moment? This is not an idle question. Professional
societies and universities have developed elaborate guidelines for insuring
that the people we study are given a full explanation of the purposes of the
research and that no harm should come to our research subjects. Physical
intimacy and/or emotional attachments between the researcher and mem-
bers of his or her research population clearly raise significant ethical issues.
Another disturbing question that arises for us is: What will be the impact
of sexual relationships on the experiences of subsequent researchers in do-
ing ethnography? Several women researchers, Kathleen included, have ex-
perienced reluctance and even hostility from potential women informants
as a result of their expectation that "U.S. women" were out after their hus-
bands. Several of our female graduate students have found themselves in
awkward situations because of the perception among some Latin American
men that all U.S. women are "loose." In several instances, these problems
 Gender and Sex Issues in Participant Observation 107

were the results of previous female researchers from the United States who
did have intimate relationships with men (including married individuals)
in the community.
Finally, to what extent does sexual activity place researchers, especially
women, at risk for sexual assault? The very work of participant observation
puts researchers, both men and women, at risk for sexual harassment (at
least in U.S. terms), and assault, but the risk for women is higher (Lee 1995;
Warren 1988). Harassment of all types, from the mild, such as the propen-
sity to piropo 1 of Latin American men, to outright rape is not only possible,
it may be very common. Rape of the researcher in the field is not often
talked about, but we know of several women who have been raped but are,
understandably, reluctant to write about it. In the literature, Eva Moreno
(1995) discusses how a combination of ambivalence and inattention to
sexual cues resulted in her rape by a male research assistant. Howell (1990)
reports that 7 percent of a sample of women anthropologists reported rape
or attempted rape in the field, noting at the same time that this probably
represents a significant underreporting of rape. Some women attempt to
assume a "sexless" identity when in the field to help protect them against
assault. Others have, or invent, burly husbands and boyfriends, who, even
in their absence, can serve as male protectors. An interesting byproduct of
the discussion of sex in the field provided by Murray (1996) is his mention
that his beginning sexual activity with other men in Guatemala may have
compromised the position of his woman companion. She had been using
him as a foil against other men, a strategy that became much less effective
when he became sexually active in the field.
Like a number of other anthropologists, we have always strongly ad-
vised students that sexual relationships with informants or other individ-
uals in communities in which we were working should be avoided. Ber-
nard (2006) notes this advice as common for beginning anthropologists.
The risks-ethical, personal, and to the research enterprise-have always
seemed too high to us. The narratives of researchers who have developed
intimate relationships in the field, however, suggest that the risks are not
always great and a "blanket prohibition" is not only impossible (ethnogra-
phers are, after all, human) but perhaps not even desirable. Our own advice
to graduate students has often been ignored, although the results of these
encounters (and sometimes marriages) have further reinforced our conten-
tion that sexual relationships and fieldwork are not a good combination.
This chapter has shown how the gender of an ethnographer can affect
access to some aspects of different societies, as well as affecting the kinds of
observations that may be made. One advantage that cultural anthropology
has as a discipline is that there are relatively equal numbers of male and
female researchers. Although no one has done a systematic analysis of this,
it may be that anthropological theory and research are consequently less
108 Chapter 6

gender-biased than other social science disciplines. Team research may also
be a means for reducing the potential biases introduced by the gender of
the ethnographer.
Our discussion of sexuality in the field showed how this formerly taboo
topic is now increasingly written about by anthropologists. Sex in the field
clearly affects the observations and insights of the ethnographer, but it also
raises a variety of practical and ethical considerations. While we applaud
the fact that many more researchers are sharing their thoughts concerning
intimate relationships while in the field, we continue to believe that placing
sexual limits on participation is warranted.

NOTE

1. The website wwwfpiroposkc.comfwhatis.html (2009) has a good definition

of piropo:

Pi-ro-po \pi-'ro-po\n. pl-pos (Sp. Piropear)

1. An amorous compliment 2: A flirtatious remark.
There are some words that simply cannot be exactly defined, except within the
Spanish language, "piropo" is one of those. A "piropo" is "a flirtatious or poetic
compliment to a woman." In Argentina these expressions of admiration, when well
constructed are not only traditional but even an art form. The more clever the piropo
the more it is appreciated by its intended recipient.
Known throughout Latin America, piropos are especially prevalent and practiced
in Argentina's capital city of Buenos Aires. Considered one of the most elegant cit-
ies in the world, its women are acknowledged as some of the most charming and
beautiful in Latin America. A piropo is an expression of gratitude for that beauty.
Piropo combines the Greek words for fire (pur) with eyes (oops) and while poorly
constructed piropos can be obvious and callow ("don't get too dose to me, I don't
have fire insurance") creative piropos are subtle with refined machismo that arrive
quietly like an anonymous gift.
Some examples of a Piropo:

"If beauty were a sin, you'd never be forgiven."

"I'm now sure there is a heaven because I've seen an angel."
"You move like the Bolshoi Ballet."
"Oh! If you could cook like you walk, I want to eat scraps!"
"I must be asleep to dream of such beauty."
"Where you go, flowers must spring up."
"So many curves, and me without brakes. •

Piropos are good fun, and only thought and practice make them perfect and more
appreciated.
 Designing Research with
Participant Observation

The first part of this book has focused on some of the theoretical and prac-
tical aspects of doing participant observation. Part two emphasizes topics
concerning the incorporation of participant observation into field research,
how to record and analyze these observations, and ethical issues related to
participant observation.
In this chapter, we focus on how we can better incorporate participant
observation into research design. Unfortunately, participant observation
has too often been treated as a method that does not require the researcher
to think much about research design. Like a lot of early field research in
anthropology, the presumption seems to be that by going to a unique loca-
tion and participating and observing, the researcher will come back with
insights into human behavior. Our position is that participant observation
requires even more attention to the design of research so that the results of
this relatively flexible method can be ultimately analyzed and interpreted.
Moreover, more attention to the detail of design issues enhances the poten-
tial for securing funding for research using participant observation.

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION AND RESEARCH DESIGN

Research involving participant observation as a method is not different

from any other empirical research endeavor in that it is a way to take ideas
(theories and hypothesis) and hold them up against the real world to see
if they can survive. We agree with Kirk and Miller (1986) and many others
that uThere is world of empirical reality out there. The way we perceive and
understand that world is largely up to us, but the world does not tolerate

109
110 Chapter 7

all understandings of it equally" ( 11). The trick in participant observation,

as in any other method, is to allow for as fair a test as possible. The goal
for the design of research using participant observation as a method is to
develop a holistic understanding of the phenomena under study that is as
objective and accurate as possible given the limitations of the method. In
the terms of science, the researcher will try to maximize the validity of the
data that are collected and present a fair and objective analysis and inter-
pretation of them.
Paying explicit attention to the design of research enhances the likeli-
hood that the test is as fair as we can make it, and also allows for others
to be able to evaluate the degree to which our particular understanding of
the world has been influenced by our theoretical position, the particular
methods we used to approach the question, and the particular vantage
point from which we observe. In considering the design of research that
includes participant observation as a method, we would like to make
several points at the outset. The first is that one of the goals of designing
research that includes participant observation is to improve the degree to
which the products of the research (written accounts/ethnography) pro-
vide as valid a view of the context and phenomena under investigation
as possible.
The second is that participant observation is rarely the only research
method used in a project, nor do we believe it should be. While projects
based virtually completely on participant observation are carried out, we
believe that the most effective research includes a number of methods that
can be used to investigate different aspects of the phenomenon and to im-
prove the likelihood of accuracy and objectivity in a project. 1 A particular
project might include the use of other qualitative methods such as more
structured forms of interviewing and observation, as well as more quantita-
tive methods such as interviewing with interview guides, or interview sched-
ules, and questionnaires, structured observation, and formal elicitation. For
some, in fact, participant observation is an approach to getting deeper more
solid contacts with people and situations rather than a method in itself. In
this case it is a backdrop to other research methods. The use of participant
observation allows for the building of greater rapport, better access to in-
formants and activities, and enhanced understanding of the phenomena
investigated using other methods. Again, we are approaching participant
observation as a technique in and of itself, capable of providing valid data
on a number of aspects of social life.
The third is that, while researchers generally use participant observation
to address descriptive research questions as the data base for interpretive
studies or to provide information from which to build new theory and
generate hypotheses, participant observation can be used as part of design
that tests certain kinds of hypotheses.
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 111

Fourth, whether participant observation is the primary method being

used or one of several methods, the degree to which participant observa-
tion can provide a valid view of context in which research is being carried
out is based in part on taking several aspects of research into consideration
before and during the research. These include an assessment of the types of
questions that can be addressed with participant observation; selection of
the research site; attention to the representativeness of venues and activities
for participating and observing; attention to the representativeness of infor-
mants; development of a strategy for recording observations as completely
as possible; and planning for the ways in which the materials collected
during participant observation (data) are analyzed. For projects that will
include other methods of data collection in addition to participant obser-
vation, the researcher should also address the specific place of participant
observation in the overall project design.
Finally, in the method of participant observation the observer is the
research tool. The limits to objectivity flow from this fact. Understanding
from where any observer is observing, is fundamental to understanding the
products of research. It also means that successful use of participant obser-
vation supposes that the researcher is able to assess the impact of his/her
own viewpoint on the collection of data, analysis, and the written product.
Self-reflexivity has become central to understanding the impact of gender,
sexuality, ethic group class, theoretical approach, etc. on observation and
analysis. In chapter 2 we quoted Finnstrom regarding his up-front assess-
ment of where he, as an observer, stood and his assessment of the probable
impact on the kinds of data he could collect and his approach to analysis.

FUNDAMENTALS OF DESIGN OF
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

Objectivity
The main goal of explicit design is to enhance the objectivity of the re-
search. But can any research be objective? If objectivity is conceived of as
an absolute state, the answer is clearly no. Objectivity is not a concept that
has to do with the discovery of truth. Rather, it represents a continuum of
closeness to an accurate description and understanding of observable phe-
nomena. It does imply that there is a real world "out there"; and while one
can construct any number of views of the world, not all will stand up to a
fair test equally; and that any one observer can know aspects of that world
to greater and lesser degrees of accuracy based on his/her carefulness in
observation, recording, and analysis. However, the understanding that any
researcher (using any method) develops is partial.
112 Chapter 7

All observation includes an observer. Every observer observes from where

sfhe stands. Tools of research-gages, telescopes, survey questionnaires,
formal elicitation frameworks-allow for more precise observation and
standardization of measurement tools, but it is still observation from a
particular theoretical position and, as increasingly acknowledged, from par-
ticular gender, class, ethnic, etc. perspectives. In the case of participant ob-
servation, the observer is the primary tool of research. In some sense, then,
there is greater burden on the participant observer to understand the tool.
In social science research, objectivity is often broken down into two con-
cepts: validity and reliability. Reliability refers to the extent to which results
can be reproduced using the same approach over time and under different
circumstances. For example, would two different observers observe the
same thing in similar ways? Would the same observer observe the same
thing in the same way at two different times? Would two different analysts
reviewing the same set of transcripts or field notes identify the same themes,
characteristics, and interpret them in similar ways? As we noted above, reli-
ability is difficult to assess in research using participant observation, as it
is rarely replicated. That is, it is not common for two different observers to
approach the same question in the same setting using similar techniques.

Reliability
There are two issues regarding reliability that we would like to discuss. The
first is that careful documentation and reporting of the methodological
choices including how observations were made, under what circumstances,
and how they were recorded and analyzed allows the reader not only to
assess the validity of the work (see below and the discussion of audit trails
in chapter 10) but for interested individuals to attempt to reproduce the
results.
The second issue has to do with the several kinds of reliability. First,
classically, reliability is assessed in laboratory or experimental research
by conducting multiple observations, over time, of phenomena that are
thought to be unchanging (test, retest situations). When dealing with social
phenomena, the assumption that change has not taken place over time is
a very shaky one. It is almost axiomatic that social conditions are always
changing. Several classic debates in anthropological research, between
Oscar Lewis (1951) and Robert Redfield (1930) on the nature of social
life in Tepoztlan, Mexico and Derek Freeman's (1983) critique of Margaret
Mead's (1928) analysis of adolescent sexuality in Samoa, are based on re-
search carried out several decades or more apart. Therefore, even when two
researchers make observations in the same physical setting, it may not be a
fair test of the reliability of the observations. However, current analyses of
both of those debates suggests that differences in methods and conceptual
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 113

frameworks 2 also contributed to the differing conclusions arrived at by each

researcher (Shankman 1996, 2000; Wilk 2001).
Another way to test the reliability of observations is to carry out several at
much the same time. This is commonly done by researchers who attempt to
observe or participate repeatedly in similar events over the course of field-
work; or to discuss the same issues with a number of different informants.
In some cases, a research project has several researchers working at the same
time. In much of our recent work, this has been the case, and it is possible
to compare observations of the same event generated by different observ-
ers. Table 7.1 presents two sets of field notes written by two researchers
observing the same event, in this case a meeting of members of the Rural
Health Insurance Program in a community in Ecuador. Comparison of the
two sets of notes shows that while both observers noted the same series of
events, each attended to somewhat different details. Researcher #1 identi-
fied groups and individuals, and focused on the details of the meeting.
Researcher #2 attended more to the layout of the room and its occupants,
and on the ways in which consensus and decision making were attained.

Table 7.1 Two Sets of Notes: Meeting at Seguro Campesino: Cruz Alta de Miguelillo
Notes by Researcher #1
Setting: Ramada next to the dispensario at Cruz Alta de Miguelillo, about 80 women,
30 males.

Meeting set for 1pm and actually began about 1:20pm. KD and I entered the ramada
when more than half of the women were already seated greeting them and taking our
place on the front left side. I recognized so many groups women, who were all seated
in organized places to me. There were the San Antonio INNFA moms, the Chirimoya
Segura, the PLAN crowd from Cruz Alta. It was comforting to feel that I really have
interacted with a wide range of the women from the entire community when I had
been doubting this a bit. I talked to a woman next to me about what there were so
many women and no men. She said that they are affiliated under the male head of
household but that the men work and the meetings are always during their work day
so they send the women to represent. But she also explained that even if the meetings
were at 3pm the men would be too tired and not interested in participating. Up at
the front the almost all female directive was collecting past fines from some member.
When the meeting was about to begin in filed all the men to tallying about 30. Unlike
the spatial arrangement of San Vicente there was no way that the men could have
stayed outside and just looked in through the windows. There was about 2 meter cane
wall all around mandating that they enter if they are going to be part of the meeting.
The men found places dispersed among the women and a group of about 8 filed up to
the front left corner and took their places (very reminiscent of the San Vicente meeting).
Ml stood up and read the agenda, we were point II and then Ramon opened with a few
words from the President of the Committee Central. He was the only male seated with

(Continued)
114 Chapter 7

Table 7.1 Two Sets of Notes: Meeting at Seguro Campesino: Cruz Alta de Miguelillo
(Continued)
the directive. [But the actual President of the three-group Segura is Angela Parraga. So
what is his role?]

President of the Comite Central - Ramon

Presentation by research team KD. BB, Hernan

Acto Anterior: last meeting's minutes

Words from the President

Asunto Varios

KD stood up and gave a speech thanking the community for the hospitality and
welcoming us into the community and that we all had a good experience. She asked
for permission to come back once more in October and do the health portion of the
study. They received her well, and the only thing that may have been left out was a
recap of what the study was about specifically, women's participation. Health, decision
making, etc. . . . She also promised to give a report on the analysis of the data and
what we have learned from the study to the community in October. (Note: This will
coincide with the 3-Seguro meeting). Next, I stood up and thanked them and said I
would be in the community for a little while longer. Hernan said a few words that his
work in the community was not over, thanked the 3 women who helped us out and
hinted that he'd be back. AP stood up and on behalf of all said we were welcome there
and that as well any benefit that we might bring would be welcome as well. She ended
with the words that the door of the community would always be open to us.

Minutes of the last meeting: Secretary began with the wrong date then got on track.

Words of the President: That we are 3 different patronos but under one dispensario
and this is the meeting that we all need to be at to be informed of the expenses and
purchases of the funds collected from the members in the Segura. You should come to
understand to learn about where the money goes, and then not just talk and assume
where it goes. There are monthly purchases, paper transmissions (when have to go to
other clinic), medicines etc. She said that people don't know (is she avoiding some
deeper issue), and that other people are new affiliates and don't know what rights they
are entitled to. All need to pay the dues on time, to get their service outside of the
dispensario. She talked about having been in PV and went to the Segura, said that they
will only attend parto de cesaria, no normal. That they will only attend the cesarean
births and that normalize births will have to go back to their homes for the births!!!
[This hit me as atrocious! And more and more makes me question the high reported
cases of Cesarean births here in Manabi-could make an interesting study, on the
social and medical levels, what is going on socioeconomically in the system that may
influence the birthing options or more important the diagnosis by the doctors???]

[The doctor entered at this point and came to the front; Pres. gave her the floor to talk.]

Doctor: She delivered her words in a vague and uninterested manner, not making
eye contact with anyone, although looking towards KD and I a few times. She began
with the fact that there are always problems, the bridge being out, the river, the roads
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 115

and that they need to be fixed and the new government will hopefully do that. That
she has only been there for 6 months but mucha queja de Ia columna. She is worried
that because of all the walking that they have to do since vehicles are out. She talked
about rheumatic fever [ASK KDJ and that to get the lab results analyses you have to
go to several different lab to believe the results. (she was jumping all around during
the talk with out a focus about what she was saying). She mentioned that many of the
senoras complain of arthritis because they wash clothes in the rivers, in the cold water
and they should avoid this. "That this is a very sick community." (what she had told me
in the interview the week before) that everyone has problems con el hueso, that they
need to get the bridge fixed and the roads better and coop transports that enter (are
all of these things realistic-what does the community make of these statements). She
told the assembly that they need to not smoke, boil water which many of them are not
doing and she tells them this all the time. Don MT silenced all to listen better. She
mentioned that a child recently died from having too many antibiotics, and that they
should prevent the illness and not just use antibiotics for everything including acne.
That the nurse would be going on vacation for 3 weeks and that there is no $ for the
replacement, so the dispensario will be closed. That with the Nueva Reforma-that
is happening with the government doesn't seem to be of any good for them, the
government has no $ and what will that mean. She'll visit the houses, and do the
transference.' That if there is an emergency they should go to the Segura hospital in
PV, but only if they are emergencies. Then from the men emerged jokes that death will
not wait 3 weeks and neither will emergencies. (What will the community do? Would
be interesting to observe the health during these three weeks) She continued that the
Segura at the national level is cutting back in all in the meds that they give by 112. That
she will attend 20 patients and 4 emergencies and that is it because she gets tired and
then the service will not be that good, and you know how that is.

Don MT raised a point that he had asked her a few months back to put together a
chat about AIDS for the community and had she done that. She agreed and said she
looked for laminas and that it was a lot of work, (totally avoiding but then went into an
impromptu talk-not what I understood to be his desire). She began a dialogue about
the AIDS that was very interesting. "First the symptoms: weight loss! Loss of appetite,
hot skin and this all depends on what it attacks, your lungs, bronchitis, weak organs.
Anny B jumped in and said that she saw a movie in the high school the night before
about AIDS. Diarrheas also. The doctor then flowed into a cancer talk and isn't that
what AIDS is, yes, a Cancer." She said that some are malignant. "That the people who
have AIDS are mainly homosexuals, and that if you did an exam of them, the majority
would have AIDS. Be careful of these people!!" Mentioned the one AIDS case in La
Floresta/La Chirimoya. Then that you need to do prevention. No tiene estar dispuesta
con ellos. That men should have just one woman and then went into a talk about
marriage and the Bible that says men should have just one woman. The men jumped in
and said that women should be with just one man. She continued with men giving the
disease to women like venereal disease when they visit prostitutes. That men get AIDS
and then bring it home to their wives in the house. AB jumped in again about and
that condoms don't prevent the transmission of AIDS, right, the doctor agreed. At this
point the nurse walked in and corrected some of the information and took over the talk.

(Continued!
116 Chapter 7

Table 7.1 Two Sets of Notes: Meeting at Seguro Campesino: Cruz Alta de Miguelillo
(Continued)
[I have to admit that I was having a hard time holding professional composure during
the talk, a bit disappointed in myself.]

Nurse: "only way that you can get it is blood to blood, and saliva and that condoms
don't protect. But she said that we should not isolate people with AIDS but yes take
certain precautions like not have sexual relations with them. AB jumped in again that
with conversation you can't translate, don't isolate them, but tratar de animarse, but
treat them well.

The doctor continued with una sola mujer para un hombre (bringing religion in as a
reason for the people to have one partner). But then she jumped to "es Ia persona que
busca el problema, --the person her/him self is the cause of the problem-just like girls
who get pregnant. It's their fault destroying their life. Then their babies have no father."
Said that they found a kind of cure but now AIDS is stronger than ever 1,800 cases
in Ecuador (AB). The doctor said that you need to avoid blood transfusions. And that
everything is like a "cancer!"

Ramon asked her for her address if they needed it while the nurse is gone. Portoviejo-
Sucre/Espejo. Nurse said I am tired and taking vacation. That the doctor will attend to
patients but outside the building. [Why can't she have keys and get into the building?]
And she told the community to pay attention to the situation in the Segura in the
coming weeks with the installation of the government. [This has the potential to be a
highly politicized problem for the communities and will have interesting impacts on the
unity of the community.] Her idea is that there are a few meds but she wold like them
to be there when the people need them.
Nurse addressed a big issue that I had sensed a before. She straight forward said,
ask me any questions that you have about her or for her please bring them up now.
Don't wait until the meeting is over and she leaves because it then gets back to her
later. From the directive asked about what about new affiliate, nurse answered they'll
have to wait until she returns at the end of August, this was not the answer they were
waiting for. Brought up the issue of the Licenciada that comes once a month but is
fat and will not come past the bridge, a big companion for the community. And then
she encouraged the community to enter into a dialog with her and not with harsh
words but to ask her to come up, they have the right for her to come all the way up to
Cruz Alta and not just to Cascabel, [incentivizing them to act on their own behalf-
interesting in light of the first conversations I had with her.]

Nurse: that she knows that some people in the community are uncomfortable with the
way that the doctor attends the patients but then they need to tell her, that when you
talk to people, they will understand "que hable con ella."

Order of attention of patients: MD from the Chirimoya said she is not against anyone
but would like to know why the policy changed from attending children and elderly
ended and now is not in use. That mothers with small children have to wait. Nurse
said changed it because of complaints from the community, she has always preferred
children then elderly but what do they think. The Pres intervened to moderate the
situation. The assembly got involved with opinions about how the system should be.
let's vote raise hands for priority attention to children under 12 years. Most did. Don
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 117

MT who made the compliant, and nurse directly pointed this out to him. Lost to the
argument. Woman in yellow, margarita's mother, who is over 60 and said well, I am
not elderly. Why not under 6 years. Then AB said that not fair should under 12 ( she
has daughter under 10). Nurse, let's compromise how about less than 8 years. That
was decide. At one point looked to KD and I what we thought, I said no me meta en
esto. MS was quite vocal about how people have to get up early to eager turno and
then AB said not right that the mothers from La Chirimoya wait until the nurse passes
on her way up to the health center and that is not right, and then they complain that
they are not attended to. They should be conscious and not do this, Nurse reminded
that they are 3 groups but one dispensario and need to unite.

AB stood up and made quite a speech "Angelita, Yo hablo en una voz alta y clara no
para ofender pero para que todos me escuchan, y entienden" Shaking her finger in the
air at the directive. (people we laughing at her a bit) I was not the one who collected
the fines from the woman for s/5,000. The woman who was refused her slip for the
fine stood up behind Anny to counter her, spoke much less fluidly than A.B. and said
you charged me the fine when it was the meeting during the para. A.B. definalty has a
sharp tongue and it had come out in the Chirimoya meeting the Sunday before.

Nurse said that there is a risk to close the dispensario because there are few socios
and they need more people to join to keep them alive. At this point the nurse excused
herself and I followed her out to catch her for the interview I was waiting on. (SEE
KD"S NOTES FOR REST OF MEETING.)

Manual had a big presence form the past, one of only two men who really voice in the
meeting. Forgot who he was at first, then recognized.

Notes by Researcher #2

In the road we greeted people in the house of the familia "Br," where BB stays
sometimes, and the house of A B (called by BB: "Ann from Plan").

In the truck we arrived in Cruz Alta at about 11 :45. We stopped at the dipensario and
got down from the truck. The driver was kind enough to lower the tail gate so I didn't
have to climb over the side.

BB asked about the meeting which was now scheduled for 1pm. BB took me into the
dispensario and I met the Auxiliadora, briefly. We then went over to the house of M P,
who was a young woman who had helped in the encuesta. Hernan wanted to pay her
and get her informe. We stayed a few minutes and then went on to the house of the
woman with whom BB was going to stay, in order to tell her than BB would not stay
with that night but would in the coming week. The woman's name is D.

Impressions of Cruz Alta. This town appears somehow more prosperous and well
maintained than most I have seen. Many of the houses have front yards with
decorative plants and actual lawns. Houses seem to be in good repair, clean, open and
airy. Several I saw seemed to have ramadas which were also neat and clean. I had the
sense of more agricultural equipment around. [Ask BB to count or confirm this, BB says
that she has not seem farm implements, I may have been reacting to the having seen

(Continued!
118 Chapter 7

Table 7.1 Two Sets of Notes: Meeting at Segura Campesino: Cruz Alta de Miguelillo
(Continued)
the open bus (chiva).) The town seems to be sort of set up on a grid, at least close to
center.

At about 12:45 we moved on to the ramada by the dispensario where the meeting was
to be held. As we waked into the courtyard, Hernan called us over to meet a couple
of men. He said we should meet them, one was "interesting." He was talking in such
a low voice I could not really understand what he was saying. As people seemed to
be moving into the Ramada, BB and I went in, Hernan stayed outside with the men
he was talking to. I thought this was curious at the time. As we entered there were a
number of people sitting on benches along the wall and relatively few on the benches
in the middle. At this point I counted over 60 women and 4 men. People continued to
trickle in, and filled in the center benches. At a bout 1:10 a large group of men (who
had been standing outside talking) all filed in. Hernan was one of this groups. He sat
next to me on the far left side almost to the back wall. And several of the men who
walking in at this time sat next to him, filling the benches on the far left and back left
wall. [I now feel that he was waiting to come in with the rest of the men. I wonder if
this is common pattern.) In the end, just as the meeting started we counted 84 women
and thirty men. Over twenty came in at the last moment after virtually all of the women
were in the ramada. Many of the men sat along the wall in the left hand corner of
the room. Others, however, were dispersed among the rest of the participants. There
was no group of men who sat with authority in any special place, as there was in
San Vicente.) [Hernan said that one of the men who came in with him was a former
assasin.

The president of the "comite central" is a woman named AT

The meeting was the three monthly meeting of all of the patronos. The Segura
Campesino of Miguelillo has three distinct groups with their own organizations,
presidents treasurers, etc. They are: La Chirimoya, the smallest, San Antonio and Cruz
Alta, the largest with 137 families. In all however, the number of families affiliated
with the seguro is only about 200. Several times in the meeting this was mentioned
by the president that it was a small number and if they didn't get more members, they
were in danger of losing the Segura. Each group meets separately two months out of
three and in the third month, they meet together and the meeting is run by the comite
central.

[Themes of the meeting brought up several times: we are under attack, the government
wants to reform the seguro campesino system; we have too few members, they might
close us down and we would not have anything; complaints about the way in which
people were attended at the clinic. Apparently in the past children and older people
were given preference.)

The first punta was a call to order. The second punta was our "thanks" I spoke, BB
spoke and Hernan said he would not say "thanks" since that meant that he would not
come back and he intended to continue to come to the community. I thanked them for
their collaboration and hospitality.

At about this point the doctor came in. She is woman who I would guess at 55 years of
age, short, partially gray hair.
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 119

The third point was a presentation by the doctor. Side comments suggested that she
rarely gives "charlas" for the community. She talked about all of the complaints that
she got about "dolor de los huesos y de Ia columna." She attributed it to the need to
walk from the road now that the bridge is out. She said that the community needed
to organize to get the authorities to repair the road so that buses could come in. She
said that she would complain about this as well. She feels that this in one of the most
important health problems in the community. She went on about this for some time.
She then made a point of how she could only attend 20 regular patients and 4
emergencies in her visits. She said that in reality she gets very tired and could not
attend more than this number well.
[later it became apparent that people often come to the dispensaria at 4 or 5 am to get
a number or ficha which determines the order in which they will be seen. If they come
too late and all of the fichas are gone, and it is not a true emergency, they cannot be
seen that day.)
Some one (president) reminded her to talk about what will happen during the time that
the auxiliadora is on vacation beginning on Friday July 31, and for three weeks). The
dispensary will be closed for the three weeks that the auxiliary health worker is out.
The doctor will come on the Tuesdays and Thursdays, as usual but will not be able to
get into the dispensary. She will go to houses or dar consulta outside of the dispensary.
In between times any with an emergency will have to go to the seguro hospital in PV,
but they must have their cedula, carnet and a referral order. The auxiliadora will leave
a number of signed slips available for people who need it. This was reinforced several
times. By the auxiliadora, doctor and the presidenta.
The man sitting next to Hernan asked the doctor if she would tell him what the first
symptoms of AIDS were (apparently there was a case of AIDS in La Chirimoya recently).
She actually sort of hesitated and then went into an explanation of AIDS that was
essentially incorrect. At one point she said that AIDS was a cancer. Later she reversed
and said it was a virus that destroyed blood cells and lowered immunity. She said
that it was infectious and no one should go near anyone with AIDS. That almost all
homosexuals had AIDS, that the bible said that a man should have only one women and
if he did he wouldn't get AIDS. The first symptom was weight loss, but she did say that
it would attack whatever organ was weakest, so it could manifest as diarrhea, bronchitis
or cancer. AB said she had been at a seminar about AIDS in which it was said that
condoms didn't prevent aids, that one could get it from saliva, or if one hugged another
and both had open wounds. No one corrected her about the condom part.
The doctor then left. The auxiliadora said that she gets a lot of complaints about the
doctors and that people should talk to the doctor directly, not be groseros-rude--but
tell her directly their complaints. She made a snide remark about the coordination of
the vacations saying that her (the auxiliadora's) vacation had been requested a long
time ago, and if the doctor had coordinated it would have been fine. But it was the
doctor's problem not hers.
There was discussion of the need to get new members and the member list is low. There
are several people who want to affiliate, but they need to get the licenciada (lawyer)
here to do the paper work. She doesn't want to walk in and wants the people to come
(Continued)
120 Chapter 7

Table 7.1 Two Sets of Notes: Meeting at Seguro Campesino: Cruz Alta de Miguelillo
(Continued)
out to Cascabel to see her. The auxiliadora said, "just tell here to come out one day. I
come out every day. It takes me an hour and a half but I do it. She can do it too."

Margarita from Chirimoya raised the issue of who should be attended first. She noted
that mothers with children have to sit for a long time, the children get hungry and
restive, they pee, etc. And it is hard. She feels bad for the mothers and children. She
wanted to know when the policy of seeing children and ancianos---old people-had
changed. The auxiliadora had a frustrated expression and she finally said, that she
had gotten "1 001 complaints" about the policy. Sr. Assassin (one of the "familia"
R's) said that it wasn't fair that someone would come to stand in line at 4 am and a
mother with a child would come and take a place in front of him. There was a more
general discussion and a finally the auxiliadora suggested that within the 20 places that
children and older people would be seen first. That is that 20 people would get fichas,
and then among those, children and older people would be seen first.

There seemed to be general agreement, consensus was apparently acknowledged. The

discussion then followed as to what age would constitute children. The first proposal (I
think from MD) was that 12 years and below. A man in the back said that was too old,
twelve year olds were capable of waiting, so 6 and below would be more appropriate.
There was some discussion and the auxiliadora suggested the compromise of 8 years
and below. MS spoke saying he didn't much care, 8 years seemed Ok with him, but
that everyone could come and take their ficha. That if he had to come at 4 am they
could too. He said he got there the other day at 5:30 to get an appointment for his
child, and he was 11th, most of the fichas had already been given out at 5:30. He also
took the opportunity to say that he didn't understand why people were complaining so
much about the cost of the seguro, even the fines. That it was cheap, even if they got
fined. That a single operation in Guyaquil costs millions of sucres. He said that he
couldn't understand why anyone would threaten to resign because of a fine, as the cost
is still so low.

[MS appears to be someone of influence in the community. Hernan use the work
"caudillo" to refer to him. He is from Cruz Alta, but now lives in Cascabel.]

There was a brief discussion of how old "old" was someone suggested fifty, but there
was a general clamor against it and people settled quickly on 60 years of age and
older.

The auxiliadora asked if there were any more complaints or comments, if not she
would go home. Which she did. BB left to interview her on the way out.

The president ( a man) of the San Antonio groups stood up and said no one from his
community had complained, but if there were any now to speak up. No one did.

MD then raised the question of the funeraria, that there were no curtains. She asked if
there was any money to buy curtains. Someone suggested that money from the central
comite be used to buy curtains. Someone said that someone had rented the funeraria
for 200,000 sucres and this money could be used. Then someone mentioned that Dr.
Humberto (the "prefecto") had sent for and paid for curtains two times and both times
they had gotten lost in Quito. There was some sniggering. Clearly some people felt
that the money was lost but not the curtains (i.e., that he had taken it). A decision was
 Designing Research with Participant Obseroation 121

made to put some money into the funeraria. But first to find out how much it would
cost. Again, MD brought it up, but both men and women contributed to the discussion.

The final points had to do with two meetings to which they had to send representatives.
The first is the national meeting in Quito that we heard about last month in San
Vicente. It is to discuss policy changes . It in now supposed to take place on Aug 6.
It was not clear who was going to attend. Then someone raised the issue of a meeting
of seguros in PV in the sala de choferes on Aug. 8. They sent an "encuesta" to be filled
out by each SC group before the meeting. They will organize and present their vision a
nivel campesiono on Aug 10.

Important things about the meeting:

Consensus was reached in much different way than in San Vicente. People spoke
aloud and proposals were made, counter proposals were made and compromises
suggested. The president would then say OK we will do this .... If there was no more
discussion, she apparently assumed that there was consensus. There was no period of
open simultaneous discussion, as there was in San Vicente.

The whole meeting seemed to me to be much more well organized. The presidenta
seemed to be tentative at the outset, but actually stayed pretty much in control of the
meeting without seeming to put n a lot of effort. When more general talking, among
neighbors would break out, a number of people would shout that they should respect
order and the talking would stop and individuals would be allowed to talk.

There was a general feeling of being under attack, both because of the changing
national policy, and the low number of affliados.

Both women and men spoke and it appeared that the points of both women and men
were taken seriously. Both women and men suggested solutions and compromises. The
number of women speaking was similar to the number of men. Three men (outside
of the men who were there representing the patronatos of the sub groups). One was
the assassin, one was Manuel Sornosa (guy who rents the "planta" Miguelillo to make
almidon) and another I didn't know. At the point in which AB got into an argument,
there was a man outside the back wall of the ramada who spoke through the window.

There is apparently some factionalism between Chirimoya and the other communities.
One of the main points of discussion was the decision that had been made by the
general (full 3 group meeting) about the forgiving fines for late payments during the
strike in Feb(?). But Chirimoya had decided to collect their 5,000 sucre fine from a
woman who did not pay. This provoked an argument between AB, who seemed to
be the treasurer of the Chirimoya. MS, who is from Cruz Alta said that every patrono
should be able to make their decisions independently in fact, they have different
policies for fines; Cruz Alta charges 2,000 s and Chirimoya charges 5,000). The
presidenta de Ia comite central disagreed and said that the whole group, including
representatives of Chirimoya had come to this decision. They also read the minutes
from that meeting to reinforce this.

AB got very angry, she felt that several people were misrepresenting her comments at
the meeting they were discussing (the one in February). She kept asking if they had
heard HER say, what they were attributing to her. Finally the man who was saying" but

(Continued)
122 Chapter 7

Table 7.1 Two Sets of Notes: Meeting at Seguro Campesino: Cruz Alta de Miguelillo
(Continued)
you said ..." backed down and said that he had not heard HER specifically say these
things, but that they were said.
There is apparently a good deal of tension between the Dr. And the auxiliadora.
The auxiliadora seemed to be talking behind the doctor's back at several points after
the doctor left. Even thought the aux. Had made of point of people speaking and
complaining directly to the Dr. and complaining directly to her (the aux.) when they
had problems with her (the aux) work. BB said that people really liked the last doctor,
but do not like this one. She came as a replacement 6 or 7 months ago. BB also
believes that the Dr. does not like it in Miguelillo.

When similarity of results is achieved either by researchers observing at

different times or by several observers at the same time, there are times when
the reproducibility of results is not meaningful. Kirk and Miller (1986) use
the term quixotic reliability to refer to a phenomenon we have all observed.
This occurs when we ask the same question of a number of informants and
get the same answer. In research in Ecuador, we asked a number of infor-
mants at what age they weaned their children. We received the answer-at 24
months-from almost all of our informants. There was virtually no variation.
We immediately discounted these results. We realized that we were getting
the culturally appropriate response to the question. In actuality, there was
a relatively large range of variation in the length of time of breastfeeding
in the community, but our question, which produced reliable answers, was
not a valid measure of the age at weaning of children. Only through a lon-
gitudinal observation of a cohort of children did we get a more valid picture
of the range of variation in weaning practices. We are always suspicious of
responses to either formal or informal interviewing that are always the same.
While quixotic reliability can be a problem in participant observation, par-
ticipation in and observation of behavior often provides an important check
on the responses of people to questions about behavior.
We noted above that a series of measurements (recorded observations)
can be reliable without being valid. What then is validity? Validity is a
quality of any type of observation that has to do with the extent to which
the results of the observations correspond to the presumed underlying real-
ity. In other words, the description accurately represents the phenomenon
studied. For practical, applied research we can also speak of the degree to
which the results provide sufficiently accurate descriptions so that that they
prove useful and productive for programs of planned change (Pelto 2001 ).
Again, while we would like to have absolute validity of observations and
conclusions produced through research, in practice, it is not attainable in any
research setting. Much of research design is aimed at enhancing the validity of
observations to the extent possible, given the limits of any method. In some
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 123

sense, because participant observation is an experiential approach in which

the characteristics of the observer are part of the mix, any observation that
is carefully recorded is valid (that is, it truthfully represents the response of
the observer, but is not reliable in that there is no assumption that a similar
description could be produced by another observer). However, this does
not mean that it is a valid view of the phenomenon under review if an ob-
jective view of that phenomenon is the goal. While some theorists say this
"personal" level of validity is all we can achieve, we disagree. Experience and
comparison of the writing of others convinces us that observations of trained,
self-reflexive observers, using several different approaches to a phenomenon
can achieve an acceptable level of reliability and validity and are, to the extent
of the method, objective. Attention to the elements of design can enhance the
reliability and validity of observation and, hence, the objectivity of research.

ELEMENTS OF DESIGN

The elements of research design in field studies are:

• The positing of a question, or questions, for research drawn from the

literature and theoretically grounded, whether or not specific hypoth-
eses are articulated
• Selection of a research site in which the question(s) can be addressed
• Selection of methods and techniques of research that can address the
question
• Development of a strategy for the selection of places, activities, indi-
viduals, etc. from which data will be collected in a way that maximizes
the likelihood that the materials collected represent the range of vari-
ability in the setting
• Development of a strategy for management of data for effective analysis
• Development of a preliminary strategy for analysis that suggests a set
of analytic categories and techniques that responds directly to the re-
search question( s) and hypotheses

These elements of design also correspond to the kinds of questions that

must be satisfactorily answered in the various components of a research
proposal.

Choosing a Question
All discussions of research design, whether from the laboratory sciences,
natural sciences, or social sciences, have to deal with the types of questions
that can be addressed with a specific method; issues of objectivity, validity,
124 Chapter 7

and reliability associated with the method; and the generalizability of con-
clusions drawn using the method. In the last two decades, epistemological
discussions of social science have focused on the limits to objectivity of
experiential methods such as participant observation. However, the same
debates also have a history in other disciplines. It should be clear that we
approach social research, a position that places this type of research within
the context of scientific approaches. The ongoing discussions of the limits
to objectivity when the primary research tool is the researcher him/herself
has been not only part of healthy scholarly debate, but has also reinforced
and sharpened the discussion of the concern (that we believe has always
been part of social research) that both the researcher and the reader must
continually evaluate the impact of the particular vantage point of the ob-
server on what is observed and how it is interpreted. This is no less true
of research and scholarship in the natural sciences and humanities (Bohr
1963; R. J. Dubois 1968; Harding 1998).
Again, following many other researchers, we would argue that any ac-
count of any phenomenon, approached scientifically or not, is partial. It
is a fundamental characteristic of scholarship. Arguing points from one's
disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological perspectives is central to the
fun of scholarship. We live for this stuff! It is not only part of the fun, it is
also central to the development of knowledge of the world around us. As
Agar (1996) notes, drawing on the well-used analogy of the six blind men
and the elephant, the point is not that any particular view is ever complete
or true, but that the integration of information from different observers·or
different methods provides a better understanding. As we will note below,
however, one of the limitations of fieldwork, in general, and fieldwork
that uses participant observation as a method, is that the cost in time and
money often means that any one setting or set of phenomena are unlikely
to be investigated by a large number of researchers. There are often only one
or two views available. This limits the degree to which we can assess the re-
liability (reproducibility) of any particular analysis. It also means we often
have only one or, perhaps, two views from which to build a more complete
picture. In the laboratory and clinical sciences, it is common to see dozens
of studies of the same question, from different disciplinary and theoretical
positions and using differing sets of methods in different types of research
settings that are trying to achieve reproducible results.

Appropriate Questions
There are three different kinds of questions that can be addressed in any em-
pirical research project including qualitative research: description (descrip-
tive/ exploratory/theory generating), interpretation, and explanation (Bernard
2006; Johnson 1998). While different research methods and techniques are
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 125

more appropriately applied for different goals, participant observation can be

used to address all three. Historically, participant observation has been used
most commonly to provide data for descriptions of societies and phenom-
ena. The classic ethnographic study seeks to provide a theoretically relevant
description of aspects of social life. The description, then, can be an end in
itself or the basis for interpretation of some kinds of hypothesis testing.
Like all research methods and techniques, participant observation is more
appropriate for some kinds of questions. First, it is essentially a synchronic
method. That is, it is a method that is used to understand what is happen-
ing NOW. The researcher's experience is tied to a specific time and place.
Participant observation cannot be use to understand change or changing
conditions, unless the change is taking place during the research period or the
researcher engages in serial research projects. While informants often com-
ment on their perception of changing conditions, technically, the researcher
only knows that they say they perceive that there has been change. While
change can become a theme of analysis, it is the perception of participants
that is under research with participant observation. Other methods such as
review of documents and other texts, oral history, and life history approaches
also have limitations, but are more appropriate to understanding change.
Participant observation is also an experiential approach. Data come from
observation gained while experiencing and participating in events. This
implies several important limitations to the method. First, participant ob-
servation is used effectively to understand phenomena that are observable,
which implies that they are available for observation. Some kinds of events
and activities are rare enough that a researcher may not observe/participate
in them during a period of fieldwork. Again, other methods of data collec-
tion may be more appropriate for the study of rare events.
Second, without careful thought, the experiential nature of the method
can also allow researchers to ignore the importance of processes taking
place outside the rather circumscribed world of the local community. The
participant observer can report on the perceptions of these events and
processes from the point of view of members of the local community. But
participant observation provides an inherently ernie view of phenomena.
Other data and methods are critical to understanding the wider context
within which communities and groups exist. One of the greatest limitations
of ethnographic research that was criticized by Eric Wolf ( 1982) in his book
Europe and the People without History was the tendency of anthropologists to
depict non-European societies as isolated and frozen in time. Wolfs point
was that all peoples have a history and that, in particular, the history of
non-Western societies was profoundly altered by European colonialism.
While many researchers approached ethnography and qualitative studies
using theoretical approaches that were based on critical theory or political
economy approaches before 1982, it is now uncommon for any researcher
126 Chapter 7

to ignore the impact of global processes on local communities. Originally,

a tool for understanding the local using an isolationist mindset, participant
observation is now often a tool for understanding the local response to
those processes.
Participant observation has most frequently been used in descriptive and
interpretive research approaches. However, it can be used to test hypoth-
eses when the hypotheses can be phrased in terms of presence or absence
of traits and characteristics; or rather the presence of traits and character-
istics. [The absence of a trait may be meaningless using this method (see
chapter 9)]. In experimental designs, in which the researcher consciously
manipulates some aspect of the context, the absence of a response to that
manipulation is meaningful. In observational designs (e.g., participant ob-
servation) absence of observation may be suggestive, but may only mean
that the observer failed to observe or to have the opportunity to observe any
particular response. However, every phenomena, characteristic, or trait that
is observed can be said to present. The distribution or importance of par-
ticular ideas, traits, characteristics, etc. may not be known, but if observed,
we may suppose that they exist.
Participant observation is also part of a strategy that can allow us to dis-
cover the existence of patterns of thought and behavior. Again, it will not
help in completely understanding the distributions of characteristics, but it
can assist in identifying patterns of thought and behavior.
Finally, as we have noted, the method of participant observation, and
recording of observations in chronologically organized field notes was
developed, or at least originally described, within the context of a function-
alist theoretical approach. The holistic, interrelated, and isolationist view
of social processes of the functionalist approach fit well with the method.
Some of the most well known products of participant observation research
are synchronic descriptions of nculturesn and the interconnectedness of so-
cial institutions. However, as we noted above and as others have discussed
(Agar 1996; Picchi 1992; Sanjek 1990c), the method is such that it chal-
lenges many assumption about a setting made before beginning fieldwork
It is more commonly used now as the primary method, for researchers
taking a more interpretive approach to the study of ethnography. It is our
belief that the method of participant observation is so close to the central
core concepts of disciplines such as anthropology that it is compatible with
a number of theoretical approaches and, moreover, has been instrumental
in theoretical change in anthropology.

Choosing a Site
In a perfect research world, the site of a research project involving field-
work and participant observation is chosen because it is the best site in the
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 127

world to address the research question chosen. In the real world of research,
sites for research are chosen for a number of other reasons, which include
the practical considerations of the life of the researcher, that is, can the
researcher conduct research outside his/her own local area; will family con-
cerns, funding, or health considerations limit the range of places in which
the research can be conducted; what are the language skills of the researcher
and what languages is it feasible to learn; how will the personality and
other personal characteristics of the researcher limit the extent to which the
researcher can become an effective participant. In addition to conditions re-
lated to the personal situation of the researcher, disciplines such as anthro-
pology usually require a specialization in a small number of geographical
and cultural regions, with an in-depth knowledge of existing research in the
prehistory, history, current economic, political, and social conditions, in
addition to the existing ethnographic literature. This "culture area" concept
is still central to training in anthropology. Researchers develop interests in
culture areas and particular regional and country settings for all sorts of
reasons. While these are sometimes theoretically driven, more commonly
for whatever reason a particular region or country has an intrinsic appeal
to the researcher. In other words, in an ideal research design the question
drives the site. In the real world, the site selection often drives the question.
There is nothing inherently problematic about this, as long as the particular
question chosen for study can be effectively and usefully addressed within
the geographical context in which the researcher is comfortable. One can-
not, for example, study questions involved in understanding legal polygyny
in North American settings (although the study of covert polygyny might be
quite interesting). The site does not have to be the ideal place to address a
question, it just has to be good enough in theoretical terms.
The advantages to specialization in a particular culture area are many.
The researcher has a strong incentive to learn the languages important in
the region before embarking on a research project. The researcher often has
a broad understanding of the extra local economic and political setting. The
researcher begins fieldwork with a fairly good idea of what to expect cultur-
ally, socially, and logistically.

Appropriate Methods and the Benefits of Triangulation

In well-designed research, the choice of methods of investigation flow
directly from the specific research question to be addressed and the goals
(e.g., description, interpretation, explanation) of interest to the researcher.
In this book, we are dealing exclusively with the method of participant ob-
servation, and presume that the question being asked is one that can be an-
swered, at least in part, with this method. However, we would like to stress
that in any fieldwork project, participant observation is usually only one of
 128 Chapter 7

several methods being used. Other methods commonly used in fieldwork

include more formal in-depth interviewing; life history interviewing; oral
history interviewing; formal elicitation approaches (e.g., pile sort, free list-
ing, elicitation frameworks); survey research using interview schedules or
questionnaires; review of documents and texts; and structured observation.
Each has its strengths and limitations, and there is an extensive literature
surrounding their appropriate use in research. It is our belief that the use
of different techniques with different strengths and limitations allows for
the cross validation of conclusions by comparing them using data collected
· in different ways. This is sometimes spoken of as triangulation, but is also
part of the classic approach to assessing validity. Insights gained through
participant observation can be cross-checked through the appropriate use
of other methods.
Some researchers argue that the most effective use of participant obser-
vation is as a means to generate hypotheses that can be tested using other
methods of data collection. We think that this is a limited view of the
strengths of participant observation, but in research proposals written to
agencies that generally do not fund much participant observation, we have
successfully argued that a phase of research based on participant observa-
tion was necessary before we could formulate the appropriate questions for
a precoded interview schedule.
In general, however, our own research projects generally include some
more formal, often audiotaped, interviewing, using interview guides and
schedules, in order to generate some data that are comparable across indi-
viduals (see chapter 8 for a discussion of the limitations of comparison in
informal interviewing approaches). We use structured observation to gather
comparable data on food use, childcare, health practices, agricultural prac-
tices, sources of income, etc. At the same time, the insight gained through
participant observation allows us to assess the relative saliency of concerns
and enables us to interpret the results of more structured approaches in
ways that are closer to the understandings of participants. We believe that
each method, with its own special strengths and limitations, gives us a
slightly different viewpoint from which to observe the elephant.

ENHANCING REPRESENTATIVENESS:
SAMPLING IN PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

Sampling is a process more generally associated with quantitative research

subjected to statistical analysis. The validity, and, more importantly, the
generalizability of statistical analysis depend on the extent to which the
probabilities in the sample reflect the true probabilities in the popula-
tion being sampled. In qualitative research in general, and in participant
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 129

observation in particular, we are more concerned with understanding a set-

ting or question in depth and from the perspective of a participant than we
are in knowing the distribution of variable across a population. However,
we know that no community or group is homogeneous. Communities are
collections of individuals and groups that share some understandings of
the world, but individuals have their own perspectives and interpretations
depending on their individual experiences and places in the social system.
If we wish to go beyond the most general and superficial generalizations
about a setting or community, it is necessary to understand the range of
variation of experiences and perspectives. Therefore, assuring the represen-
tativeness of information gained through participant observation is no less
important to the enterprise of ethnography (Honigmann 1970; Johnson
1990; Mead 1953; Paul1953) than it is in quantitative research.
Mead (1953) was very interested in the issue of sampling in qualitative
research and in assuring the representativeness and hence the validity of
descriptions. In discussing the criticisms of anthropological work leveled by
sociologists and psychologists regarding the limitations of anthropological
sampling she argued:

Anthropological sampling is not a poor and inadequate version of sociologi-

cal or sociopsychological sampling, a version where n equals too few cases.
It is simply a different kind of sampling, in which the validity of the sample
depends not so much on the number of cases as upon the proper specifica-
tion of the informant, so that he or she can be accurately placed, in terms of
a very large number of variables-age, sex, order of birth, family background,
life experience, temperamental tendencies (such as optimism, habit of exag-
geration, etc.), political and religious position, exact situational relationships
to the investigator, configurational relationship to every other informant, and
so forth. (654-55)

She went on to note that while the sociologist might be concerned with
questions such as how many middle-aged men will express dissatisfaction
with their jobs, the anthropologist is asking a different question: how are
job dissatisfaction and satisfaction integrated within "cultural character."
While quantitative researchers are interested in the quantity and distribu-
tion of phenomena (variables), the qualitative researcher is interested in
the nature of the phenomena within a particular setting and in identifying
broad patterns. The nature of sampling in participant observation is of criti-
cal importance, but different from sampling in quantitative studies.
As Honigmann (1970) pointed out, sampling begins when the research
question and site are chosen. The choice of a particular question for re-
search limits the kinds of information and types of people and events that
must be observed to answer it. A specific site, out of all the possible sites in
the world, is selected and this also places important limits on the research.
130 Chapter 7

While the process of participating and observing may appear to respond

primarily to external cues, in fact, we are continually choosing individuals,
places, and events. How do we make decisions regarding places and events
in which to participate, and with whom to have informal conversations?
The issue of sampling, even in participant observation, is intimately re-
lated to the research question and theoretical approach of the investigator.
As we have noted above in chapter 1, while one of the strengths of partici-
pant observation is to discover new insights into a question, good research
starts with a clear question and theoretical framework. The question and
theory influence the kinds of places, activities, events, and people that are
likely to be important to the research. One of the first steps in sampling for
participant observation is to make a preliminary identification of places,
activities, events, and people. Others will be added as the investigator gets
a better sense of the context and new questions that arise in the fieldwork.
The preliminary list then provides a sampling frame. In fact some of these
can be anticipated from preliminary information about settings and should
be included in research proposals.
Johnson (1990) has discussed the importance of choosing informants
to achieve representativeness. While Johnson was concerned with more
formal ethnographic interviewing, his arguments about the importance of
attention to representativeness are critical. In the more formal language of
sampling, when we talk about representativeness in the individuals with
whom we interact and the activities and events in which we participate, we
are referring to types of judgement and opportunistic sampling. In judge-
ment sampling (Bernard 2006) the investigator chooses individuals and
events on the basis of a set of criteria for inclusion. The criteria are drawn
from theory, existing literature, and fieldwork (What do you want to know,
and from what kinds of people: experts, participant, neophytes, etc.?); and
include a determination of the degree of expertise of an informant (Does
this person know about what the researcher wants to know about?) and the
articulateness of the informant (Will she tell you, and in detail?).
Opportunistic or convenience sampling is even less structured and relies
on talking with people as they are encountered by the investigators. The
researcher participates in and observes events as they arise. While in the real
world of fieldwork using participant observation a proportion of people
with whom the investigator interacts and an even greater proportion of the
events and activities in which sfhe will participate will be of this sort, re-
searchers should make an great effort to get beyond opportunistic sampling
to achieve greater representativeness.
One of the early goals of fieldwork should be to understand the kinds and
sources of diversity within a setting or group. Some of the obvious sources
are age, gender, economic strategy, income, ethnic identity, religious affili-
ation, and household type. But there may be other unique or more subtle
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 131

sources of diversity. In our research in an agrarian reform community

(ejido) in Temascalcingo, Mexico we discovered very quickly that there
were two identifiable factions, and a group that saw themselves as non-
aligned. There was also a small but active group of Evangelical Protestants
in a predominantly Catholic community. The size and type of household
had an impact on how agricultural work was organized. While most ejido
members were men, the few women members were quite different depend-
ing on whether they had adult children to help them in agriculture or were
single mothers of young children. We were able to identify informants and
events related to the different factions and churches and then attempted to
develop relationships with a variety of people and to visit occasions during
which different members of the community would be present.
ln rural Kentucky, the counties in which we were working were large
enough that it was more difficult to get a handle on diversity. However, we
knew we needed to include men and women, living alone and in unions,
and of different ages. We also knew that there were marked economic
differences within the communities. ln this case, we identified a series of
organizations and agencies we felt were likely to have contact with different
kinds of people. We identified homemakers clubs, retired teachers clubs, se-
nior citizens centers, several different service organizations, including home
care organizations, food banks, religious charity groups, and farmers' orga-
nizations. We used club meetings and senior citizens centers as venues for
observation, and dub lists as sources of names for individuals to contact as
potential informants. With careful attention to age, gender, and household
differences, we made it our business to find people with whom we should
interact, and different places in which to hang out to meet diverse parts of
the population. While not everyone we identified in this way turned out to
be a good informant, we did establish a number of relationships that led to
opportunities for participant observation, as we were invited to parties and
picnic, meetings, and food procurement and preservation activities such as
harvesting, gathering, canning, and hog butchering.
It is not only important to identify a diverse pool of informants, but also
to identify a representative pool of events and venues. Again, in the work
in rural Kentucky we were interested in the food resources for older adults.
Part of our strategy was to observe people in eating establishments. To do
this we identified a range of eating establishments used by older adults.
These included a range of restaurants of varying prices, including fast food
restaurants, corner stores that served some hot food and sandwiches, and
the senior citizen centers. We also accompanied the drivers for the meals on
wheels programs. We then included "hanging out" in these different places
as part of our research strategy.
Another way to gain an acquaintance with a wide range of people in a
particular setting, especially in a community study, is to carry out a census
132 Chapter 7

or other short formal inteiView with a sample of people or households

chosen in some structured or random way. In our experience in community
studies, this has been a way to identify people from a wide range of social
and economic circumstances with whom one might want to establish more
of a relationship later in the fieldwork. Surveys and censuses are common
enough in the contemporary world that it is not so odd for an inteiViewer
to knock on your door, especially if the researcher has been introduced in
community meetings and has obtained some official community recogni-
tion and approval for the work. In research in Latin America we have often
conducted a census early in the fieldwork experience and then used both
the contacts and the data from the census to guide more informal research.
In Mexico, it allowed us to quickly move beyond the contacts provided by
Pedro, our assigned guide. This kind of an approach, of course, will not
work in settings where a survey or census phase is inappropriate or difficult.
Philippe Bourgois could probably not have surveyed crack dealers early in
his fieldwork in the Barrio. Likewise, if Agar had tried to do a survey among
the inmates of the narcotics hospital, he would probably not have met with
much success.
Participatory research approaches most frequently include the incorpora-
tion of the insights of community participants in the selection of places,
events, and venues. This adds to the strength of the participatory designs.
Mullings and her associates (Mullings 2000; Mullings and Wali 2001;
Mullings et al. 2001) drew on the recommendation of the member of the
Community Advisory Board in identifying the specific neighborhoods and
work places that would be most important for the participant observation
phase of their research in Central Harlem. Since the time devoted to par-
ticipant observation was comparatively short (several months rather than a
year or more), the identification of meaningful sites was even more critical
and attending to the experience of community members was an important
component of the design.
Rapid appraisal procedures that include some form of participant obser-
vation require even more careful attention to the choice of places, activities,
venues, and events for observation as the time frame is often weeks rather
than months. The shorter time available for the development of a closer
understanding of the experiences of participants means that sampling
must be focused even more carefully on those places and activities that
are most likely to yield insight. Since most research projects using RAP are
quite tightly organized around a particular issue or program, the particular
questions being asked focus the sampling procedures. RAP approaches are
much less likely to result in information that radically refocuses research, as
participant observation over longer periods of time frequently does.
On the other hand, a period of participant observation at the outset of
a RAP project .can help identify precisely the people, places, and activities
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 133

for which more quantitative techniques, such as semistructured interviews,

structured interviews, and surveys would be appropriate. In this sense
participant observation can assist in the development of more appropriate
sampling strategies for other types of data collection. Schensul, Schensul,
and LeCompte (1999) refer to this as "exploratory observation" and suggest
that a period of observation can enhance the design of subsequent research.
An even more abbreviated form of rapid observation (with very little
participation) is the "windshield survey" approach developed for rapid
rural appraisal techniques (Chambers 1980, 1983, 1992; Mukherjee 2004)
used in rural development programs and now frequently incorporated into
community health research. A windshield survey is a technique in which
the observer walks, bikes, or drives through a region, neighborhood, dis-
trict, observing the spatial placement of structures, people, fields, and so
forth. However, it also includes talking with people along the way, observ-
ing what is done, and getting into fields and markets and homes and other
venues to get a "feel" for what is important. Schensul et al. (1999) further
suggest mapping the route during a walking "survey" of a community.

PROPOSING PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

There are a number of reasons for writing a formal research proposal before
beginning a new project. Some are merely pragmatic. Submitting a formal
proposal is usually required to obtain funding for research, your master's
thesis or dissertation committee requires it, or you need to submit a request
to do research with human subjects. While funding research and meeting
the demands of committees for completing your degree are very important
reasons for writing proposals, and often critical, they are perhaps not the
best reasons. The very best reason for writing a formal research proposal is
that it allows the researcher to develop clear research questions and a strat-
egy for data collection and analysis before beginning the actual fieldwork.
All of this work, even when it is modified and refined in the field, enhances
the efficiency and effectiveness of the fieldwork.
Some people believe that it is difficult to obtain funding for research
that is based mainly on participant observation. We have often heard our
colleagues complain that review committees do not understand the value
of qualitative research in general, and of participant observation in particu-
lar. Between the two of us, we have sat on over a dozen different review
panels for the National Science Foundation, National Institutes for Health,
Centers for Disease Control, Agency for Health Care Policy and Research,
U.S. Agency for International Development, Inter-American Development
Foundation, and the Fulbright Program and we have reviewed, literally,
hundreds of proposals. On review panels, we are often chosen to represent
134 Chapter 7

anthropology or "qualitative researchers." While on a handful of occasions

we have felt that our colleagues on the panels truly did not understand
qualitative research and/or devalued it, it has been far more commonly the
case that researchers who want to do qualitative research have written poor
proposals. It is not enough for a researcher to say that he or she will do a
descriptive study of "Group X" because they have never been studied be-
fore, or to describe the design of the research, including sampling, record-
ing of observations and analysis of field notes and other materials in terms
so vague that a reviewer is asked to take a leap of faith that the researcher
knows what sfhe is doing.
In a proposal submitted for funding the proposer has to convince a panel
of other researchers, most of whom will not be experts in the specific field
of study, that:

• the question is important to answer

• answering it will add to existing knowledge (i.e., you contextualize it
within an existing literature)
• the research site is appropriate to answer the question
• the theoretical approach/conceptual framework to be used is valid and
flows from existing research
• the methods used will allow the question to be answered
• the proposer is competent to carry out the proposed project

When an economist, epidemiologist, sociologist, or another anthropolo-

gist is reviewing a proposal, to say merely that participant observation will
be used is not enough. We have to justify why this is the best method for
answering the question, or how it relates to other methods we will use to
answer the question. Moreover, the description of what will be done has to
include the elements of design that both seasoned qualitative researchers
and researchers from other more quantitatively oriented disciplines expect
to see in a research design. That means being clear about sampling (repre-
sentativeness), being clear about the ways in which data from observation
and informal interviews will be captured (field notes, recordings), and the
provision of a detailed description of how the data will be analyzed.
The research proposal represents a specific genre of writing and most
proposals conform more or less to a standard format. While there are varia-
tions, and some funding agencies emphasize some aspects of the proposal
over others, most proposals must include:

1. A succinct statement of the objectives of the research project. Objec-

tives may be descriptive, interpretive, explanatory, or any combina-
tion of these. The statement generally includes one or more specific re-
search questions and may include specific hypotheses (but need not).
 Designing Research with Participant Observation 135

2. A "background" statement (drawn from the literature and previous re-

search) that summarizes existing knowledge on the subject; identifies
debates or lacunae in the record; and demonstrates how achieving the
goals of this project can add to existing knowledge.
3. A summary of research design that presents an overall design that can
directly address the goals and questions of research. It should describe
why the particular setting chosen is the appropriate, indeed, the best
setting to study this phenomenon; how the project will be set up to
meet descriptive, interpretive, or explanatory goals; how any com-
parisons proposed will be carried out; how hypotheses, if proposed,
will be tested; what kinds of data collection methods will be used. It
is here that the researcher must clearly state the utility of including
participant observation in the mix of methods and the specific kinds
of data and knowledge it will generate.
4. A detailed discussion of specific methods of data collection. For par-
ticipant observation this should include a discussion of how repre-
sentativeness will be assured ("sampling" of people, places, activities,
and events); how data will be captured (jot notes, field notes, tape
recordings, video recordings); how field notes and other data will be
managed in the field.
5. A preliminary discussion of the strategy for analysis, including a pre-
liminary indexing system; a specific strategy for identifying themes; any
software that might be employed to assist in analysis; what kinds of
data will be used to address the specific goals and questions of research.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

At least some of the objectives of the project must be addressable with

participant observation. For example, one of the most common problems
we see in proposals is a stated objective to study change or changes in a
phenomenon using participant observation. As we noted above, partici-
pant observation is essentially a synchronic method. It tells the researcher
about what is happening now (ethnographic present) but little about
what has happened in the past. While including oral history or a review of
documents can allow for a reconstruction of some of the past, participant
observation per se cannot.
While most research objectives to be addressed by participant observa-
tion will be stated in terms of description, they may also include the testing
of hypotheses. If the research objectives include explanation and the test-
ing of hypotheses with participant observation, the hypotheses need to be
stated in terms of the presence or absence of phenomena, or the existence
of patterns of ideas or behavior.
136 Chapter 7

This chapter has emphasized that a project based upon participant ob-
servation requires as much, indeed more, attention to research design than
any other kind of research. Careful attention to research design at the be-
ginning of a project will enable relatively unstructured method to be more
easily justified to funding agencies, as well as for the results to be ultimately
analyzed and interpreted. Just as with other methods of research, in partici-
pant observation we need to pay attention to issues like research objectives
and sampling.

NOTES

1. The strategy of using several different methods or techniques to examine the

same phenomenon is often referred to as triangulation of methods.
2. Mead interviewed adolescent girls; Freeman talked with adults and focused
on the ideal behavior of young girls. Redfield used participant observation and
interviewing as his principal methods and focused theoretically on community co-
hesion; Lewis used more structured interviewing and focused on intra-community
heterogeneity.
 Informal Interviewing in
Participant Observation

Most researchers who use participant observation as part of their approach

to research also use a number of more structured data collection methods.
The other techniques used will include mapping and counting, informal
interviewing, semistructured interviewing, formal interviewing, formal
elicitation frameworks, and very structured interview schedules and ques-
tionnaires. In this chapter we will explore the more informal end of the
interview continuum, particularly the collection of data from conversations
and very informal interviewing.
The type of ninterviewing" that is part of participant observation is usu-
ally informal and is usually more like a casual conversation among ac-
quaintances. After all, the goal of the technique is for the researcher to par-
ticipate in naturally unfolding events, and to observe them as carefully and
as objectively as possible. The researcher is looking for new insights into the
point of view of the participants. The basic rule in carrying out interviewing
or conversing during participant observation is that the researcher is intent
on following the lead of the informant, exerting only minimal impact on
the topic and flow of the interaction. The goal is to get out of the way of the
participants or informants and let them talk (Bernard 2006).
This is not, however, the same as participating in a conversation in a
nonresearch setting for at least two reasons. The first is that, ultimately, the
researcher is interested in some phenomena more than others (answering
the research question or questions). The second is that the researcher will
soon be writing notes about the conversation, and knowing this he or she
is likely to conduct the interaction in a different way than if this were not
the case. In other word the researcher is likely to be directing conversation
and asking many more questions that would usually take place in a casual

137
138 Chapter B

conversation among acquaintances. Because verbal interaction between the

researcher and those with whom he or she interacts in the project has some
of the characteristics of an interview, ethnographers should know about
different kinds of interviews and be able to use some of the techniques
commonly used in interviewing.

1YPES OF INTERVIEWS

There are a number of types of interview and they can be classified along
two continua. The first continuum is the degree of control by the researcher
and informants (Bernard 2006; Dohrenwend and Richardson 1965; Sprad-
ley 1979). At one extreme, the end in which there is the least control by
the researcher and the most by the informants, lies the pure observer, who
observes but does not participate in the conversation (on the Internet, this
is a "lurker"). At the other end of the continuum is the precoded written
questionnaire filled in without the presence of the researcher. In this case,
the form and content are completely controlled by the researcher, with no
accommodation for the concerns or understandings of an individual re-
spondent. A respondent can only choose one of several precoded responses
or can choose not to answer a question at all.
The second continuum is the degree to which the stimuli (questions)
presented to each informant are uniform. At the conversation end, each
conversation is unique; there is no intent or attempt to raise the same topics
or ask questions in the same way with each participant in the conversation.
At the other end of the continuum, it is presumed that the self-administered
questionnaire presents each respondent with an identical stimulus (the
questionnaire).
Between the extremes on both continua lie most of the forms of inter-
viewing carried out by qualitative researchers (see figure 8.1). Bernard's
(2006) category of informal interviewing includes much of the verbal
interaction in which the participant observer engages with informants and
other participants. Bernard (1995) has defined informal interviewing as
being characterized by:

a total lack of structure or control. The researcher just tries to remember con-
versations heard during the course of a day "in the field." This requires con-
stant jotting and daily sessions in which you sit at a typewriter, unburden your
memory and develop your field notes. (209)
We would call the situation he describes in the quote as conversation, and
in another, closely related category we would put informal interviewing. In
"remembered" conversation the researcher is observing informants as they
go about their daily activities and are interacting and conversing in culturally
 Informal Interviewing in Participant Observation 139

Unstructured Semi-structured Structured Self-administered

Conversation Interviews Interviews Interviews Questionnaires

Control by Informant/Participant/Respondent

LOW HIGH

Uniformity of Stimulus Presented to Informant/Respondent

Figure 8.1 : Continuum of control and uniformity of stimulus for different types of
interviews.

patterned ways. As Bernard notes, the researcher makes notes, tries to remem-
ber verbatim passages of conversation, and records those in field notes.
In informal interviewing the researcher follows the lead of the partici-
pants, but asks occasional questions to focus the topic or to clarify points
that sfhe does not understand (Spradley 1979). In this case, the informant
may be more aware that sfhe is explaining something to the researcher,
training them in his/her culture. In both conversation and informal inter-
viewing, the researcher is not necessarily directing the topics for discussion,
but is following, or following up on points raised by another person during
the natural flow of conversation.
Other forms of interviewing are more directive and are clearly under-
stood as interviews by both the researcher and the informant. In unstruc-
tured interviewing, the researcher typically has a plan for the interview and
may have a brief interview guide that includes the topics to be addressed as
an aid to memory, but he or she presents topics in an open-ended way and
exerts as little control over the interaction as possible. In semistructured
interviewing, the interview guide includes a list of questions and prompts
in order to increase the likelihood that all topics will be covered in each
interview in more or less the same way. A somewhat more structured ap-
proach would include a guide with opening questions and suggestions for
prompts to be used as needed.
When a formal set of questions is used in an open-ended way, we can
refer to the result as structured interviewing. In this, the questions asked by
the interviewer are scripted although the responses of the person can be rel-
atively open-ended. Finally, the step before questionnaire use is the use of
an interview schedule (often precoded) and administered face to face by the
interviewer. With the administration of an interview schedule there is still
an interaction between the researcher and respondent, and the respondent
can have a small amount of impact on the interchange, but the researcher
is clearly in charge and usually attempts to administer the interview in the
same way to each respondent.
Both of the dimensions in figure 8.1 have an impact on the nature of the
data collected. The extent to which the researcher, as compared with the
140 Chapter 8

informant, controls the flow of the interaction has an impact on the degree
to which the content of the interaction reflects issues and information that
are salient to the informant. Even the best of open-ended interviewers, that
is, those who intervene minimally in the interaction, direct the content to
some extent. If the goal is to understand the way that participants view a
phenomenon, then it is important to allow the flow of conversation to re-
flect those aspects that are salient to the informants. On the other hand, the
degree to which information gathered from different individuals is compa-
rable across individuals is dependent on, among other things, the degree
to which they were responding to similar stimuli (questions and probes).
While individuals may interpret and respond to even precoded question-
naires differently, the likelihood that the responses of different individuals
can be considered comparable is higher than in a more unstructured inter-
view. When different individuals are engaged in free-ranging conversations,
even when the topics discussed are similar, there is no way to assess the ex-
tent to which the individuals are responding to the same ideas or questions.
Noncomparability of responses is most important when there is a wide
range of disagreement about information or interpretations. For example,
in one project, Bill had conversations with a wide variety of people from
industry, government, nongovernmental organizations, communities, and
universities about the social and environmental effects of shrimp farming
(aquaculture). Responses from these different stakeholders reflect consid-
erable disagreement about the effects, and sorting out claims and counter-
claims has been important for policy purposes (see DeWalt et al. 2000). At
the same time, if several informants in different contexts voice similar ideas
or concerns, it is in fact powerful evidence that the issues are salient and
that understandings are widely shared. In research in Mexico in the early
1970s, Kathleen found that the phrase ''The illnesses no longer understand
the herbs" (Las enfermidades ya no entienden las hierbas) kept coming up in
open-ended conversations about health with different people, in different
contexts over the course of several months (K. M. DeWalt 1977). It ap-
peared that this was a widespread interpretation of medical change in the
community and the consequences (the need to seek biomedical treatment
rather than use traditional medical remedies) were becoming consciously
appreciated by people.
On the other hand, when conversations or unstructured interviews do
not tum up information about a particular topic, the lack of information is
not interpretable. That is, if a description or comment by one informant is
not voiced by another, it does not mean that that issue is not salient to the
second person. It only means that it did not come up in conversation with
that person. If asked directly, the second informant may or may not have
articulated something similar. The absence of information in the conversa-
tion and in the record is not interpretable in any way.
 Informal Interviewing in Participant Observation 141

More structured approaches to interviewing are more likely to yield data

that are comparable. Clearly there is a trade-off. Most research projects will
include several different types of interviews. A common strategy is to begin
with less directive approaches. Later, the researcher can follow up themes
of particular interest in a more structured way, with a sample of informants.
While any one researcher may employ all of the types of interviewing
mentioned in course of fieldwork, when in participant observation mode
the investigator will be engaging in conversation and the most informal in-
terviewing. Even conversation, however, will probably not be as completely
"nondirective" (Whyte and Whyte 1984) as Bernard's definition suggests.
Because researchers always have their research questions in the back of their
minds, they are likely to consciously or unconsciously direct interactions
toward their interests. Even showing a bit more interest in some topics
rather than others will direct conversations toward those topics. The in-
terests of the researcher will always have an impact. The trick is to use this
impact to encourage informants to discuss more fully the topics that relate
to the research question, but to direct the content of the conversation as
little as possible beyond that.
One of Bill's first experiences in doing research exemplifies some of the
important points about interviewing. During one summer, he was hired as a
research assistant by the Labor Education Center at the University of Connecti-
cut to examine discrimination in the construction industry. He was sent out
with a semistructured interview and showed up at a job site, pen at the ready,
to begin interviews. It did not take long before he realized that the direct ques-
tions he was asking about numbers of, and attitudes about, minorities on the
job site and in the union were being met with silence and/or hostility. After
discussing the problems and potential solutions with the researchers directing
the project, Bill changed strategies to use informal interviewing. Keeping the
main objectives of the research in mind, he abandoned the use of an inter-
view schedule and through informal conversations was able to gather much
more information about perceptions and attitudes. He did explain the gen-
eral purposes of the work to the people he interviewed and was able to make
jot notes to help him recall information. After the interview, he entered as
much of the information as he could on the original interview guide.
It is important, then, to understand that different kinds of interviews are
more appropriate depending on the populations being studied as well as
the research questions of interest. Self-administered questionnaires are ob-
viously useless in nonliterate populations but we have both seen examples
of researchers committing errors that are nearly as silly. Most typically, this
involves researchers who put together complicated and impressive (at least
on paper) structured or semistructured survey interviews that, when they
are actually used, generate results that are nearly meaningless. We agree
with Chambers (1983) who wrote about surveys in rural development:
142 Chapter 8

they are more limited, less reliable, and less able to generate insight than is
commonly believed. By capturing and enslaving so many researchers, espe-
cially social scientists, they also raise questions of cost-effectiveness and op-
portunity cost, of alternative uses of those same resources of staff and funds.
(51-52)

In many cases, more participant observation and informal interviewing can

generate more meaningful and interpretable results, more insight for the
researcher, and be much less intrusive for the population being studied.

INTERVIEW TECHNIQUES

Even at the least intrusive, researchers should be aware of the techniques

of interviewing and be able to use those that are the least directive. The fol-
lowing discussion of techniques can be used in conversation and informal
interviewing and also in more structured interviewing, such as unstruc-
tured, semistructured and formal interviews. However, we have included
for discussion only those that are least intrusive here. For discussions of
how to effectively conduct more structured interviews, the reader is directed
to Babbie (1973) and Dillman (1978).

Active Listening
The most fundamental technique for being a good interviewer is active
listening. Active listening is first and foremost, listening. As Doc said to
William Foote Whyte early in research in Comerville:

Go easy on that "who," "what," "why," "when," nwhere" stuff, Bill. You ask
those questions, and people will clam up on you. If people accept you, you
can just hang around, and you'll learn the answer in the long run without ever
having to ask the questions. (Whyte and Whyte 1984:69)

Doc's advice underscores the most important aspect of conversation and

informal interviewing in participant observation: the researcher is quiet,
primarily a listener and, more importantly, is gaining information in the
terms used by participants, and in a progression of thought that is natural
to them. However, active listening is also n active." By this, we mean that the
researcher is more actively aware of the conversation than in conversations
in a nonresearch setting. The researcher is making mental notes about what
is said, who said it, and what it might mean in the context of the project.
In other words, the participant observer is non," with heightened awareness
of the context and increased attentiveness to detail. S/he may be making
mental notes of specific words and information, or may be talking jot notes
 Informal Interviewing in Participant Observation 143

during the conversation. The researcher is not only attending to verbal

communication, but is also noting nonverbal cues as well. The researcher
is also trying to communicate that sfhe is interested in what the informant
is saying and respects the ideas and opinions of the informant (whether or
not the researcher agrees with them).
Being an active listener also means using the least directive types of
probes and prompts in order to facilitate the conversation. Probing is used
when the researcher feels that something is left out, that the informant
might say something more about an issue if encouraged in some way (Yow
1994). There are several ways of using probes to facilitate a conversation or
informal interview that stop well short of asking even the simplest of ques-
tions (Enelow and Swisher 1979; Mishler 1986; Wiese 1974; Yow 1994).
Some of the least directive probes are meant merely to communicate that
the researcher is listening and interested.

Sensitive Silence
We think of sensitive silence as silence with an edge. The researcher is
engaged in a conversation in which sfhe is not saying anything but shows
attentiveness to the interaction through body language and eye contact
(Yow 1994). The researcher/interviewer may be leaning in toward the par-
ticipants. S/he assumes a position in the most intimate level of closeness
that is appropriate to the expectations of personal space in the culture,
the particular setting of the interaction, the degree to which the researcher
knows the participants, and the gender of the participants.
Appropriate personal space differs in different culture settings (Hall
1959, 1974). One of the aspects of learning the rules that a participant
observer has to deal with early in research in a new setting is how to judge
personal space. It generally takes a few weeks of pulling away from people
who the researcher feels are "too close" or backing people into corners as
they try to get farther away from the researcher to develop a tacit feel for
personal space. Also, appropriate space is likely to be different for men
and women, in mixed or same sex groupings, and for people who know
each other as compared with relative strangers. Again, the researcher at-
tempts to adopt the most intimate space appropriate for gender and de-
gree of acquaintance.
The degree to which eye contact is facilitating or offensive is also influ-
enced by cultural differences. For most North Americans and Europeans,
attentive eye contact is facilitating. It denotes interest in what is being said
and suggests that the researcher would like to hear more. In our experience,
this is also true in the Latin American contexts in which we have worked.
However, it is also true that in mixed gender settings, strong eye contact
can sometimes be mistakenly interpreted as an invitation to more intimacy.
144 Chapter 8

Again, it is important to figure out relatively early in fieldwork what degree

of eye contact is appropriate and facilitative.
Researchers should not underestimate the difficulty of remaining silent
ether in conversations or informal interviews. It is probably the most dif-
ficult technique to use. For North Americans, especially, silence that contin-
ues several seconds is threatening and very difficult to maintain. Our col-
leagues who have worked with Native American communities in the United
States assure us that the tolerance for silence is much greater in those
cultural settings. Our experience in Latin American settings suggests that re-
maining quiet even a second or two encourages our informants to continue
with their discussion, without active intervention by the researcher. In years
of teaching interviewing techniques to first year medical students, Kathleen
found that remaining silent is the most difficult thing they have to learn.
Not many are successful at the start.
Researchers speak when they should be quiet for a number of other
reasons as well. The most common is that a comment by an informant
reminds the researcher of another issue, also interesting, and the researcher
breaks in with a question or comment about the second issue before the
informant has finished his/her comment on the first issue. Sometimes the
new idea seems so compelling that, without thinking the researcher jumps
to the new idea. The new idea may seem to be closer to the core interests
of the project. The researcher may feel that sfhe will forget to follow up on
the second idea later. (As we age, we realize that this particular problem in-
creases in salience for us.) In all of the cases, the researcher can and should
focus on not interrupting and waiting for the informant to come to the
natural end of the first idea before moving on. Make a jot note of the idea
so that you do not forget it and will come back to it later. Usually a single
word in the margin is often sufficient to act as an aid to memory.
In the following excerpt from a taped conversation with Mrs. L, she and
the researcher are talking about what Mrs. L plants in her garden. The reader
can see that this section of conversation has a very choppy, jumpy feel to
it. The reason is that the researcher keeps interrupting Mrs. L and does not
allow her to finish her sentences. We join this conversation speaking of
tomatoes: 1

Mrs. L: ... yes, pulp in them, and they're just great, I think. Then I too, raise
the big yellow ones, and I also raise the big purple ones. I like some of that
old kind ...
Q: You save that [seeds]?
Mrs. L: Oh, yes ...
Q: What else do you raise besides the lettuce, radish, and tomatoes?
 Informal Interviewing in Participant Observation 145

Mrs. L: Well, I ...

Q: What else did you put out?
Mrs. L: I hadn't put out anything, but I will put out peas ... I have onions out
now. But I will put out the sweet onions later ... maybe 200 of them.
Q: You don't use the sets?
Mrs. L: Yes, I do ...
Q: You use onion sets?
Mrs. L: I put out ... oh ... !
Q: Is that for your own use?
Mrs. L: Oh, I like to divide with my neighbors ...
Q: And your son?
Mrs. L: Yes, he has a garden, too. He lives right over there. They have a gar-
den ...

Some researchers, especially inexperienced intetviewers, are netvous

enough in a new setting to-frankly speaking-blather. Blathering often
takes the form of sharing far too much (unasked for) personal informa-
tion, often in response to a comment by the informant. (Please note that in
conversations in nonresearch contexts, we often offer such information as
part of the conversation. However, let us say again, even in a conversation-
like situation in a research setting the researcher is not engaging in a com-
mon conversation). New researchers often feel that offering unrequested
personal information and opinions is part of keeping up their end of the
conversation. However, it is very poor intetviewing style. 2
After years of training and supetvising social science graduate students,
medical students learning communication and interviewing skills, critiqu-
ing our own and colleagues' audiotaped intetviews and field notes, we have
come to the conclusion that the most common mistake made by interview-
ers using any type of intetview strategy is not keeping quiet and letting the
informant speak. Even after years of experience, we are humbled by listen-
ing to our own taped interviews in which we cut off informants, or say
something that changes the subject before the informant is ready to end.
We are far better than we were, but our assessment is that every researcher
can improve on their use of silence as a research tool.

The Uh-huh Prompt

The uh-huh prompt is no more sophisticated than using nonintrusive
verbal cues to let the informants and participants know that the researcher
146 Chapter B

is listening. Many of us do say something that sounds like "uh-huh" or

"hmmm-hmmm" or a grunt (Bernard 2006). Or, we use a real word such as
"yes" or "OK" or "really" (when speaking in English, of course). The intent
of the "uh-huh" prompt is to add a verbal component to active listening
that says: "I'm listening," "I'm following you," "I'm with you," "Please go
on." Many of us do this unconsciously when we are concentrating on a
conversation. (It would probably be impossible for Kathleen NOT to give
verbal prompts in any language in which she is working.) If an interview or
conversation is recorded, transcribing the uh-huh prompt can slow down
the transcriptionist (Yow 1994). However, a transcription that detailed
is not necessarily the goal in informal interviewing. The uh-huhs can be
passed over, not transcribed, if they pose a constraint.
The following passage is from a semistructured interview with a woman
in rural Kentucky talking about her childhood and her relationship with
her younger sister. The "Really?" comment by the interviewer is an example
of a word being used as a neutral verbal prompt.

Mrs. W: Yes, but I was older than her. Well, I'm 17 months older than her,
but we started school together. When we got up to third grade, they wanted to
pass me on to the fifth, and I can remember crying. I didn't want to, and my
mom would tell me that I was older and I should ... ifl'd started I'd be in the
fourth (grade) .... I consented. Well, I didn't have much choice, I guess. So I
went into the fifth grade, and left my sister in the third ... and I cried! And we
always took our lunch together. Mom fixed our lunch, in an 8-lb. lard bucket.
That's what we took our lunch in, and although I was the oldest (I love to tell
this on my sister!) ... I was the oldest, but she was always bigger than me, after
we got any size, and she always made me mad! So when it came lunchtime,
she got the lunch bucket (I had to carry it to school!) and I had to carry it home
in the afternoon. But when it came lunchtime, she got the lunch bucket and
she got to eat what she liked best, and I ate what was left!
Q: Really?
Mrs. W: Well, this went on the first year. The second year we had a differ-
ent teacher, and the teacher was kin (he was a cousin of my mother). So,
he realized ... it didn't take him long to realize what my sister was doing
to me .... We started off the second year, and of course, we always had
watermelons and cantaloupes and everything we raised in the garden ...
so my mother came by school and brought us a piece of watermelon for
our lunch. And you know how that would look! Well, you don't ... but I
do! Oh, it would look so good, besides a biscuit and whatever we had, jam
or jelly, that's what we would take, or a biscuit and sausage. Sometimes
my mother would fry Irish potatoes for breakfast and we would take Irish
potatoes on our biscuit, which was real good.

In a later segment of the interview with Mrs. L:

 Informal Interviewing in Participant Observation 147

Q: Now that you have sold the cattle, you have some land which is idle, which
is not being used?
Mrs. L: Yes, too much.
Q: And what are you going to do with it?
Mrs. L: Well, I really don't know ... you don't rent to anybody. You know,
there's nobody who wants to farm anymore. I don't have too much here. I have
about 76 acres here, and then I have some more acreage, oh! it's just about
half a mile from here. And you know, the hay wasn't even cut off of part of
that last year ...
Q: Yes?
Mrs. L: I lost my ... something like 2000 bales of hay, it just wasn't put up.
The people I had rented to, or my son rented to ... they're good people. But
it rained, and their tools were old, and they would break down and this, that
and the other, and they just never did get it done. Now, they weren't liable, but
they just ... just didn't get it done.

In both of the examples above, the researcher is using a single neutral word
to let the informant know that sfhe is listening and is ready for the infor-
mant to continue.
An important caveat in using the "uh-huh" prompt is that the particular
sound used may mean different things in different cultural settings. For ex-
ample, it took Kathleen some time to realize that the "huh-huh" sound (the
one that means "no" in English) is the correct prompt for "yes, continue"
in Ecuador.

Repetition Feedback
Enelow and Swisher (1979) suggest a series of relatively nondirective ways
of providing feedback to informants in order to facilitate further discus-
sion and clarification, but not to direct or lead the conversation. The first
is repetition feedback. Repetition is just that. The researcher repeats the last
word or phrase uttered by the informant. Sometimes the phrase is given a
questioning inflection. The following is an excerpt from a taped conversa-
tion in which the informant is describing breakfasts when he was a child.
The interviewer repeats his last word to encourage him to continue with
the description.

Mr. B: Well, when we was at home, we usually had some kind of meats and
my mother always did fix some potatoes.
Q: Potatoes?
Mr. B: Uh huh. And then biscuits.
148 Chapter 8

And later in the interview:

Mr. B: Yes ... see, they dried them ... called them "shucky beans" ...
Q: Shucky beans?
Mr. B: What they would do, is all these beans had strings on them, and that
string come off of them, you know what I'm talking about, then take twine
and thread and a darning needle, and go right in the middle of these beans
and string them on this string, and get a stringful and hang them up. And they
could dry. (laughs)

And:

Mrs. P: I put them (broccoli seeds) in my tobacco beds, and I put them out
just like I would my cabbage. Of course, they're something you've got to spray
every day. (laughs)
Q: Every day?
Mrs. P: Well, almost. You have to keep after them continuously. There's a little
old white moth ... they're coming to put an egg down and make a worm in
your broccoli. And when I see one, I don't want anymore of it then ... (laughs)

A danger with over use of repetition is the researcher begins to sound like
a parrot. Used appropriately, however, it can facilitate the expansion of an
idea or discussion.

Summary Feedback
Summary feedback is similar to repetition, but the researcher summarizes
the last set of statements articulated by the informant. Again the goal is to
let the informant know that the researcher has heard what was said, and to
encourage the informant to continue and expand on the comments. Sum-
mary feedback also provides a check on the understanding developed by
the researcher. It is an invitation to the informant to clarify any misconcep-
tions held by the researcher.
In the following passage, Mrs. L says she cans a good deal of tomato juice,
but cannot drink it. The researcher is puzzled so she summarizes what she
heard, hoping for clarification:

Mrs. L: Velveeta ... that's not the best, I don't think, to cook with, but ... either
that or chunk cheese, I put it in macaroni or spaghetti and stuff like that. I still
think cheese is great to cook with! There's several things that I buy now that I
don't use to buy. I have plenty of tomato juice for juice. Now that's something
that I can't drink. It gives me this (indigestion) ...
Q: So you have tomato juice put up that you can't drink.
 Informal Interviewing in Participant Observation 149

Mrs. L: I can't drink it very often, although I use it for soups and all that and the
other. I still love cream of tomato soup ... I still love that. It's awfully good!

In this exchange, Mrs. L makes it clear that there are other uses of home
canned tomato juice that the interviewer did not know about.
Summary feedback can be more elaborate. The researcher may take the op-
portunity to summarize a good deal of information to not only prompt the
informant to add to the information, but also to check a series of event. For
example in talking about her life, the interviewer said the following to Mrs. L:

Q: So before your father died your family lived on their own farm. When he
died you were seven years old and your mother took you and your sister and
brother to live with your grandparents. When she remarried, you stayed with
your grandparents on their farm, while your younger brother and sister went
with her and her new husband.
Mrs. L: Yes, I helped my grandmother on the farm until she died. I was 14 and
then I took over the housework for my grandfather.

ASKING QUESTIONS IN INTERVIEWING

Even in conversations, and certainly in informal interviews, the researcher

will occasionally be asking questions. All of us ask questions in normal
conversation. We are interested in knowing more about what our compan-
ions are talking about; we need clarification when we do not understand
a term or a concept; or the conversation has reached a natural conclusion
and the opportunity comes to raise another topic. In conversations and in-
formal interviews researchers, use questions for all of these reasons. Some
techniques for effective use of asking questions follow.

Tell Me More
The ntell me more" question is as simple as saying "Then what happened?"
nWhat did you do, then?" nWhat else?" and "That's interesting, tell me
more." It is one step beyond the uh-huh prompt. The goal is to prompt the
informant to continue with the same issue, not to introduce a new topic.
In a slightly different form it is the "What did you think about that?" ques-
tion. The "tell me more" question is short, succinct, and generally followed
by the use of silence. In the following quotation Mrs. W is talking about
her family when she was a child. She said that they moved frequently and
described a home on the river bottom; the researcher is following up.
Q: When you moved away from the river bottom, where did you go then?
Mrs. W: We went to Monticello. I'm telling you about my home town. That's
where I went to school at. Monticello. And Pleasant View, up above Monticello.
150 Chapter 8

For Clarification
Questions are used to clarify words, ideas, chronologies, in short, anything
that the researcher does not understand. Early in fieldwork, many things
may need clarification. Actually, it is probably a good idea early in field-
work to avoid asking for too much clarification. Asking for clarification
breaks the flow of conversation and can end up in changing topics. Many
things that are unclear or not entirely understood early in fieldwork will
probably become clear just through experience. In the following quotation
the researcher asks what the informant means by "not too good."

Mrs. L: Yes, it's much better ... much better. Or I always thought it was. I made
some. I made about 12 half-gallon jars of kraut. It's not too good. I had some
of it at dinner, and I didn't think it was too good.
Q: What do you mean, it's not too good?
Mrs. L: Well, it ... I just didn't think it had the taste and the crispness that
it ... I like a good crisp kraut, and it looked like this is just not as crisp as I
would like for it to be. But now, I tell you, they was a lot of hot sunshine on
those cabbages, so I laid it to that. Although the ones I used seemed to be very
tender, but now, that sunshine will do something to the cabbage. You know,
the sunshine was unbearable, almost, for a while there, and I didn't get mine
made hardly as early as I should. I don't recall what made me not get it done,
but I didn't, and it's eatable ... but ... it could be better! (laughs)

Naive Questions
A common problem for most people is that they become overzealous in
trying to demonstrate their competence in their own cultural setting or in a
different cultural setting. Rather than asking questions, these people make
statements and then ask the person being interviewed for confirmation.
Thus, they say, "People here make their living from farming, don't they?"
or "Everyone here is Catholic, right?"
We are great advocates of asking dumb questions or naive questions
because, in our experience, some of the most interesting information that
challenges our own assumptions about things have come as a result of
feigning ignorance. During one of Bill's recent projects on shrimp farming
in Mexico, his first evening in the state of Sinaloa he was eating dinner in a
restaurant along the beach. Casually, he asked the woman seating custom-
ers (who was the manager) where they got the shrimp served in the restau-
rant. Although he expected a reply referring to some supplier or place, the
woman replied that "This time of the year they come from the estuaries-or
at least people tell us that they come from the estuaries." Although Bill had
not been in fieldwork mode until that point, he began following up with
 Informal Interviewing in Participant Observation 151

other nai've questions. In the course of a few minutes, among other things
he learned that: ( 1) shrimp come from the high seas, estuaries, or shrimp
farms; (2) all farmed shrimp is exported, not sold locally; (3) there are
different dosed seasons for shrimp from estuaries and from the high seas;
(4) fishing for shrimp during the dosed seasons occurs, but there is little
enforcement; (5) the marketing of shrimp is done by a very few people; and
(6) several people who operated shrimp farms had been killed in the last
few months, probably because of links to drug smuggling.
During the same project, Bill visited a number of different shrimp farms to
talk with managers and owners. One of the topics in which he was interested
was how much the farms were contributing to water pollution in the estuar-
ies along which they were located. With many of these people, he used nai've
questions like: ''What happens to the water that is in the ponds?" "Do you
have to change the water that is in the ponds?" or "Do you put anything in
the ponds to make the shrimp grow faster?" At the time he was asking these
questions, Bill knew enough about shrimp farming to make anyone's eyes
glaze over within three minutes, but his purpose in asking dumb questions
was to get a sense of the variability in technical operations on the farms and
the degree to which those farms might be addressing pollution issues.
Our admonition to all of our students is to not be afraid to ask questions
that may be seen to be nai've or dumb. In our experience, most people
love to demonstrate and share their expertise. If you show yourself to be
an interested "student" by asking questions, people will be patient enough
to provide you with answers. Surprisingly, those answers will often expand
your understandings or your knowledge far beyond what you thought you
already knew.

AVOIDING CONFRONTATION

There are many times in our field research in which we have to bite our
tongues to avoid getting into arguments or confrontations with people
we interview. Invariably, we have found that these instances are generally
with people from the elite or government sector who speak disparagingly
about the characteristics of people in communities we have come to know.
Bill recalls that, early in our field research in Temascalcingo, Mexico, he
was ready to explode one day when a leader of a development project was
talking about how uncooperative, stupid, and ignorant the small farmers
in the valley were.
As much as we might want, in situations like that, to provide our contrary
opinions and perspectives, our general rule is to treat all conversations as
data. That is, we should be active listeners who are recording other people's
152 Chapter 8

perceptions and attitudes, so therefore we should avoid confrontations in

most circumstances. There are times and places to engage in arguments
and battles, but it is not wise to do this in the midst of field research. The
good interviewer will avoid questions and comments that will provoke a
confrontation with an informant.

CHANGING TOPICS

In both conversation and informal interviewing, the time comes when it is

clear that one topic has been exhausted and there is a chance to introduce
a new topic. Again, introducing a topic is something that is used sparingly
in the kinds of interviewing used in participant observation. In more struc-
tured interviewing situations, introducing a new topic is a much more com-
mon occurrence. In changing topics, we believe that the key is to introduce
a new topic with an open-ended question. The "tell me about ... " question
is an effective one. For example, the interviewer can use prompts like, "Tell
me about what is was like growing up." "Tell me about the town." "Tell me
what you think about X project." "Tell me what you do all day." The rules
for asking direct questions in these circumstances include:

• Keep the questions as short as possible.

• Avoid editorializing as an introduction to a question, unless it is neces-
sary. It is better to ask: "What did you do today?" than to say: "I know
that you are a busy person and have a lot of things to do, can you tell
me what you did today?"
• Ask open ended rather than closed ended questions whenever possi-
ble. A closed ended question is one in which the informant can answer
with one word or a phrase. The following are closed ended questions
that are unlikely to elicit much additional information: "Did you plant
tomatoes?" "Did you go to the store today?" More information can be
gained by saying: "Tell me about your garden" or "Tell me about where
you get your food."
• Avoid "multiple-choice" questions. The multiple-choice question is rather
like a dosed ended question in which the informant is given the choices.
"Did you buy the red tomatoes or the yellow ones?" "Did you go to work
today or stay home or go out shopping or work in the garden or ... " The
multiple-choice question often trails off at the end, and the informant
may never be entirely sure when it has ended. Some informants may not
offer up other alternatives to those presented by the interviewer.
• Avoid "Chinese box" questions (questions within questions). An
example of a Chinese box question is: "What time did you leave the
house today and where did you go? Did you go to the senior center?
Did you go to the grocery store?" Chinese box questions are exception-
 Informal Interviewing in Participant Observation 153

ally confusing to the informant. By the end of the question, neither the
researcher nor the informant may remember what was asked.
• Avoid leading questions at ALL COSTS! Leading questions are ques-
tions that suppose or suggest a specific answer. The most blatant types
of leading questions are easy to spot. They often have the "did you/
didn't you" phrase in them: "You went to the senior center today,
didn't you?" "You don't plant a garden anymore, do you?" "You never
smoked cigarettes, did you?" Some leading questions are subtler,
however. We recently heard a tape of an interview of Woody Guthrie
conducted by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. Lomax is talking with
Guthrie about his childhood and asks the question: "Where did you
grow up? On a farm?" Guthrie's reply is "No, we lived in the city."
Many of our informants will correct us when try to lead them, but not
all are as confident as interviewee Woody Guthrie.

To improve interviewing technique, there is no substitute for practicing

research conversations or informal interviews under conditions in which
the interaction can be recorded. While it is helpful just to review the audio
recordings alone, it is even more effective to do so with an experienced col-
league. It can be a painful experience, but one that is very rewarding.

TALKING ABOUT SENSITIVE SUBJECTS

In the somewhat more natural settings in which conversations and infor-

mal interviewing used as part of participant observation take place, trying
to pursue a topic that is very sensitive to an informant can be problemati-
cal. What is common is that the researcher creates discomfort, either be-
cause sfhe wants more detail than the informant is ready to share, or because
sfhe unknowingly commits a blunder with a comment or question intended
only to show participation in the conversation. The quotation from Whyte's
key informant cited earlier in this chapter was prompted by a question
Whyte posed during a conversation with several people who were involved
in organized gambling (Whyte and Whyte 1984). He casually noted that
the police were probably paid off. He reports saying this only to contribute
to the conversation. The man with whom he was speaking denied that any
police were involved and immediately changed the subject. Apparently
talking about gambling was not a problem, but bribing police was. Whyte
believes that he would have lost important contacts in the community if his
sponsor, Doc, had not had such a strong position in the group and been
willing to direct him in appropriate behavior. Hence Doc was willing to tell
him to listen rather than talk about things he knows little about.
In more structured interviewing, in which the interviewer is trying to
raise the same set of questions with a number of people, the problem of
154 Chapter 8

pursuing sensitive topics is a common one. For example, in a variety of

research projects in Mexico, Honduras, and Ecuador, we and our students
have carried out basic demographic surveys in small communities. As part
of determining fertility, infant mortality, and other demographic indica-
tors, we ask women how many children they have had, whether any of their
children have died, and the age at which they died. The death of a child is
obviously a painful subject to discuss and we and our students have several
times stumbled into very emotional situations dealing with the health and
death of children. Researchers doing social research must be prepared to
deal with emotion and tears.
As important as dealing with subjects that prove to be sensitive to the
informant is the problem of dealing with subjects that are sensitive to
the researcher. It is not uncommon for informants and participants to
talk about things that are very uncomfortable for the researcher. Bourgois
(1995, 1996) writes about several instances in which he was made un-
comfortable or even appalled by the conversation in which he was a part
in El Barrio. In one case, the men with whom he was hanging out began to
talk about the way they treated a kid with a physical disability when they
were in school. Bourgois, whose son suffers from cerebral palsy began to
weep. His reaction certainly had an impact on the flow of the conversa-
tion after that point.
In working with medical students over a number of years, Kathleen
came to realize that many "bad interviews" were very frequently a result
of the sensitivities of the medical students carrying out the interviews, not
the willingness of the patients to share their experiences and thoughts.
In one segment of the interviewing course, students, after practicing with
each other and with actors playing the role of patients, were assigned an
interview with a patient in the hospital. Students were to talk with patients
about the chief complaints that brought them to the hospital, and conduct
a social history. Segments of the audiotaped interviews were replayed and
critiqued in small groups of students. Students were asked to characterize
their impressions of the interview before replaying it for their colleagues.
One young woman came into class saying: "This was a terrible interview.
I couldn't get her to talk about anything." Review of the tape, however,
revealed that it was the student who changed the subject every time the
patient tried to talk about the problem that brought her to the hospital. In
this case, the woman had just had surgery for a particularly serious cancer
and clearly was interested in talking about it. After Kathleen pointed out
several places where the student had cut off the patient and changed the
subject, the student blurted out: "Well, I don't like to talk about cancer.
It scares me." (This is not an uncommon response, cancer scares a lot of
people.) Kathleen suggested that the student find someone with whom she
could talk about her problem of talking about cancer. "Oh, no," she said,
"When I'm really a doctor I'll be able to talk about it." Unfortunately for the
 Informal Interviewing in Participant Observation 155

student, getting the degree or even the grant does not magically make it easy
for researchers to talk about subjects sensitive to them. It is the researcher's
responsibility to deal with hisfher own sensitivities. Sometimes they crop
up when we don't even expect it.
In another instance, a medical student was assigned to interview a man
who had attempted suicide with a shotgun, but had survived in relatively
good condition. The student came to class angry. He felt this had been
a difficult interview and that he had gotten little information. In fact,
this was probably not a good patient to assign, but when he was asked if
he would consent to be interviewed, the man had been eager to talk to
a student and to talk about his condition. In fact, his interest in talking
about what brought him to this act was evident on the tape. The student,
however, continually changed the topic and avoided any discussion of the
suicide attempt. In the debriefing discussion, the student acknowledged
that he had changed the subject. The reason was, he said, was that he had
no empathy or respect for the patient. The patient was clearly a failure.
He could not even kill himself successfully. Ironically, the student said he
would have had more sympathy and respect for the man if he succeeded
in the suicide.
As these examples show, and as we have emphasized earlier, we are con-
tinually amazed with how willing people are to share sensitive information.
For example, in research on women's social power in Ecuador, Kathleen
and her colleagues became interested in learning about violence against
women by their male partners. This was a topic they approached gingerly
because they felt that it might be difficult for the women to talk about it. In
fact, it was difficult for the women, but it was also clear that it was in many
ways cathartic for the women to discuss their situations. After Kathleen and
her colleagues got beyond their own reticence to raise an issue we thought
would be sensitive, they found that many women in rural Ecuador were
very interested in talking about their experiences.

CONCLUDING AN INTERVIEW

Finally, active listening takes a good deal of concentration. It is tiring and

most of us cannot sustain the heightened awareness it requires indefinitely.
This is true of the people we interview as well as the person doing the inter-
viewing. When we do use survey instruments, for example, our general rule
is that anything much more than an hour is difficult for our informants to
bear. With participant observation and informal interviewing, longer con-
versations can be usually be sustained but there does come a point at which
the quality of information being obtained diminishes or the researcher is
just tired, or there is so much in the researcher's head that it will never be
remembered for the field notes.
156 Chapter 8

It is better to know when to "switch off" the high level of attention

needed in active listening, or end the conversation rather than waste time
after the researcher's (or informant's) attention begins to stray. When ter-
minating conversation or interview, it is important to let the person know
how much we enjoyed talking with them and how much we appreciated
their time. We should typically indicate that we hope to continue the
conversation another time. Learning the proper etiquette for leave-taking,
the appropriate phrases and behaviors, is among the first things that one
should try to learn when working in any setting.3
The good participant observer should know and observe the skills con-
nected with good interviewing. In this chapter, we have reviewed the vari-
ous kinds of interviews, emphasizing that different kinds of interviews are
appropriate for answering different kinds of questions. We have indicated
that there are many circumstances and questions for which informal inter-
viewing and participant observation are particularly appropriate.
Being a good interviewer requires practicing the skills of active listening
and sensitive silence. Prompts and several kinds of feedback can be used
to encourage the informant to elaborate on, and extend, the information
they are conveying. Informal interviewing also requires good techniques for
asking questions. A good interviewer will ask questions in such a way as to
be nondirective concerning the answers. Asking naive questions, clarifying
questions, and simple questions in nonconfrontational ways is important
in eliciting information. We have to be prepared emotionally to deal with
sensitive subjects, and to know when and how to conclude an interview.

NOTES

1. The quotations used in this chapter are taken from taped interviews and con-
versations carried out as part of the project, Nutritional Strategies of Older Adults
in Rural Kentucky.
2. In chapter 11 we discuss the ethical issues involved in personal sharing infor-
mation in the research setting. We believe the researcher should be willing to share
information honestly when it is asked for. It is part of being honest, developing
trust and is a form of reciprocity. However, the researcher does not need to insert
personal information or opinions, when they are not asked for. After all, the goal is
to understand the participants' opinions.
3. Bill has occasional periods, especially during sabbatical years, when he does
a lot of consulting. Although most of this is done in Latin America, the appropri-
ate form of saying goodbye is different in different countries or different regions
of countries. Saying goodbye to female friends in most Spanish-speaking countries
of Latin America requires one kiss on the right cheek; in Brazil it requires a kiss on
each side. In rural regions, handshakes among men are usually elaborated in differ-
ent ways. Bill is typically flummoxed the first day or two until he gets his bearings
about the local custom.
 Writing Field Notes

The primary method of capturing data from participant observation and

informal interviewing is by writing field notes. While researchers can au-
dio- or videotape more formal interviews and events in order to record
words and behaviors for later analysis, and record more formally the re-
sults of response to formal elicitation, time allocation, input and output of
energy, and so forth, the writing of field notes is virtually the only way for
the researcher to record the observation of day to day events and behavior,
overheard conversations, and informal interviews that are the primary
materials of participant observation. A useful maxim that we have always
used in training students is that: "If you didn't write it down in your field
notes, then it didn't happen" (at least so far as being data for analysis is con-
cerned). This chapter will consider the most important aspects of efficiently
and effectively writing field notes. Observation is not data unless it is recorded;
and your brain is a poor recording device.

HISTORY

Until recently, relatively little had been written about the nature of field
notes and how researchers record observations. For example, the sixth
and most recent edition of Notes and Queries on Anthropology (Seligman
1951:66-69), a book that for many years served as the major methodologi-
cal guide for doing anthropological research, devotes only 1.5 pages to a
discussion of" descriptive notes" as one of four essential types of documen-
tation. (The other three are maps, plans, and diagrams; texts; and genea-
logical and census data.) In the discussion, Notes and Queries suggested that

157
158 Chapter 9

there are three kinds of notes. Its categories, which are still relevant today,
include: ( 1) records of events observed and information given (based on re-
searcher interviews or conversations with participants as events take place);
(2) records of prolonged activities and ceremonies (in which interview is
not feasible); and (3) a set of chronological, daily notes, which the com-
mittee called a journal, but that is distinct from the personal diary that a
number of ethnographers keep (e.g., Malinowski 1967). Pelto (1970) and
Pelto and Pelto (1978) provided approximately two pages of discussion of
field notes in each edition of their book on Anthropological Research. Most of
this space is devoted to examples of the level of detail (high) that they see
as desirable in recording field notes. Field notes, like much of the art and
practice of participant observation, have been mysterious, with few models
for the new practitioner (Sanjek 1990a).
A recent edited collection addresses issues about field notes in more de-
tail (Sanjek 1990c). In this volume, Jean Jackson (1990) summarized the
responses that a sample of 70 fieldworkers, mosdy anthropologists, gave to
a series of questions about their relationships with their field notes. One of
Sanjek's own contributions to the collection (1990b) reviews the historical
changes in the nature of participant observation and field notes. The reader
is encouraged to refer to Sanjek's volume for the best compilation of papers
regarding field notes and a number of examples of field notes. Emerson,
Fretz, and Shaw (1995) provide a useful book length discussion of writing,
managing, and analyzing field notes.
Malinowski is not only often credited with developing the method of
participant observation, but also the closely related method of recording
information in chronologically organized field notes. Before Malinowski,
field notes tended to be based on detailed and orderly interviews of infor-
mants conducted and recorded topically. When the primary activity shifted
from collecting texts from informants to participating in daily life, the re-
cording of observation got messier.
Experience and the literature suggest that there are several important
points about field notes and their relationship to the participant observa-
tion method. The first is that observations are not data unless they are
recorded in some fashion for further analysis. Even though it seems after
a few months in the field that common events and their variations will
remain indelibly etched in the researcher's mind for all time, memory is un-
fortunately more fleeting and less trustworthy than that. We lose the detail
of observations and conversation all too quickly. The admonition in Notes
and Queries that "it is unwise to trust to memory; notes should be written
as soon as possible" (Seligman 1951:45), is still relevant today.
Participant observation is an iterative process, and, as we have noted, part
of what occurs is the development of a tacit understanding of meanings,
events and contexts by the researcher. Sanjek ( 1990b) notes that pioneering
 Writing Field Notes 159

researchers like Malinowski and Mead knew this. They continually read
and reread field notes, searching for things they did not understand, or on
which they felt they had incomplete information (what Agar, 1986, refers
to as nbreakdowns"), so as to direct the flow of subsequent conversations
or interviews. Mead and Malinowski recorded both observations and reflec-
tions on their fieldwork experience in field notes and personal diaries. If the
researcher's daily reactions to events and contexts are not recorded, it will
be virtually impossible to reconstruct the development of understanding,
and to be able to review the growing relationship between the researcher
and study participants in a manner that allows for reflexivity at the end of
the process.
The field researcher comes to understand others' ways by becoming part of
their lives and by learning to interpret and experience events much as they
do. It is critical to document closely these subtle processes of learning and
resocialization as they occur; continuing time in the field tends to dilute the
insights generated by initial contact with an unknown way of life. (Emerson,
Fretz, and Shaw 1995:13)

The second important point is that field notes are simultaneously data
and analysis. By this, we mean that they should be the careful record of
observation, conversation, and informal interview carried out on a day by
day basis by the researcher. At the same time, field notes are a product, con-
structed by the researcher. The researcher decides what goes into the field
notes, the level of detail to include, how much context to include, whether
exact conversations are recorded or just summaries, etc. (Clifford 1990;
Emerson et al. 1995; LeCompte and Schensul 1999). Field notes are thus
the first (or perhaps second, or third) step in the process of analysis. This
inherent contradiction of being both data and analysis that is embodied in
field notes is part and parcel of the continuing discussions surrounding the
nature of anthropological inquiry and the nature of ethnography.
We believe that few anthropologists really ever believed that their ob-
servations were unbiased, or that eliminating bias was even possible or
desirable in research. However, debates over the last two decades have
made this point even more salient. Field notes are at least one more step
removed from objective observation than the nonobjective observation in
the first place. They are a construction of the ethnographer and are part of
the process of analysis. As one of Jackson's ethnographer respondents said
about field notes: nEach anthropologist knows it is dialectic. The informant
creates it; you create it together. There must be a tremendous sense of re-
sponsibility in it, that is, a sense of political history, one versionn (Jackson
1990:14).
Clifford notes that the view of the field note as npure inscription" -that
is, pure recording-cannot be sustained (Clifford 1990). Speaking of
160 Chapter 9

description (thick or otherwise) he writes: "Ethnography cannot, in prac-

tice, maintain a constant descriptive relationship to cultural phenomena. It
can maintain such a relationship only to what is produced in field notes"
(Clifford 1990:68).
Finally, the writing of field notes brings to the fore the inherent contra-
diction and ethical dilemma of participant observation for many fieldwork-
ers. Jackson notes:

The anthropological fieldworker frequently worries about intellectual exploi-

tation. Having material in one's head is somehow less guilt-inducing than
having it on paper. Some of this may be the two-hat problem: one is in some
ways a friend of the natives, yet one is also a student of them, and one cannot
wear both hats simultaneously. Writing field notes can make representing the
contradictions in this balancing act more difficult. (1990:18)

It is undeniable that the writing of field notes is a central activity of the

method of participant observation. Learning how to effectively write and
analyze field notes may differ some with different theoretical approaches,
but it is always done.

KINDS OF FIELD NOTES

There are several types and formats for notes taken during fieldwork, and
any number of ways of keeping notes and managing them. Researchers jot
down words and phrases, even whole sentences in a notebook during the
course of a day or event; they write fuller more detailed notes during more
quiet time, reflecting on the day's events; they review their notes regularly
and write notes on notes; they keep a diary; they keep a calendar or log of
events, listing activities in which they participated, events they observed,
and people with whom they spoke. They even have some "notes" in their
heads that never actually get written down. All of these acts of recording
sum up to the body of stuff we call field notes.
There are also several "systems" for keeping and managing field notes
(Bernard 2006; Emerson et al. 1995; Mead 1969 [1930); Sanjek 1990b),
and researchers following different theoretical traditions approach and
value field notes differently. All of the systems share a few basic elements
(Sanjek 1990a).

Jot Notes
Jot notes (Bernard 2006; Emerson et al. 1995) or scratch notes (Sanjek
1990a) are the words, phrases, or sentences that are recorded during the
course of a day's events as primarily aids to memory. Most of us record them
 Writing Field Notes 161

in as small a notebook as is feasible given the accuracy of the memory of the

researcher (or his or her propensity to lose small things). Those with quite
good memories can rely more on single words and short phrases, and hence,
use smaller notebooks (LeCompte and Schensul 1999). Our jot notebooks
have gotten somewhat larger as time goes on. Kathleen used to use one that
was approximately 2" x 3 ". She later moved to a notebook the size of a 3" x
5" note card, and now uses a stenographer's pad. Bill increasingly uses a legal
pad. The jot notebook and a pen or pencil are always with the researcher.
Taking good jot notes is the first step to recording the detail that enhances
the accuracy and the richness of observed events and activities. Jot notes may
also include sketch maps, diagrams, and logs of days' events.
In Figure 9.1, we have included sets of jot notes for two days of work in
Ecuador in 1998. At first glance, they are probably unintelligible to anyone
but the writer. The first set was taken while attending a community meet-
ing and includes short phrases describing the several items on the agenda.
They contain the names of the officers of the association that sponsored
the meeting. They include a small sketch map of the seating of men and
women in the room and a count of the times men and women spoke in
the meeting (in this project we were interested in male and female decision
making in households and community meetings). The notes are dated.
The second set was taken during a day of touring and meeting with the of-
ficials of several agencies that were to collaborate in a series of health fairs
we sponsored for the communities in which we were working. Again, they
include names and one or two word notes on the key issues discussed.
How much gets jotted down depends on the quality of the memory of
the researcher and the circumstances under which sfhe is working. When
in doubt, jot it down. All numbers that have any significance should be re-
corded. Lists of items of relevance (or even the seemingly irrelevant), such
as those used in an activity, or for sale in the market, or seen in a kitchen,
should be noted. Text or comments that the researcher will want to repro-
duce verbatim should be recorded verbatim in jot notes. Local names and
phrases, names of participants in events, and the names of people spoken
to during the course of a day should be recorded. Words, phrases, or sen-
tences that will provide enough contexts for the researcher to recall events
and discussion should be noted. All entries should be dated and, if pos-
sible, the time noted.
Keeping even a small notebook dose at hand can be a challenge. Kath-
leen now generally travels with a "fanny pack" or backpack, or big pockets
in which we can fit a notebook, pen (and the other necessities such as a roll
of toilet paper, bottle of water, etc.). Phyllis Kelly, working with Mazahua
women in Temascalcingo, adopted their habit of wearing an apron with
big pockets for all activities, and kept her notebook in the pockets. Powder-
maker used a large purse to store her notebook (Bernard 2006).
Figure 9.1: Jot notes for two days of interviewing in Ecuador, 1998.
 Writing Field Notes 163

The writing implement can be a problem. Bernard (2006) reports that

William Sturtevant used stubby little pencils, which were easily concealed.
We had on the job training in fieldwork technique from Bert Pelto, who,
at that time, used a felt-tip pen. We have found, however, that felt-tip pens
run badly when wet, and pencils are not much better. Soggy notebooks
are not an uncommon event. Dentan (1970) recounts the effect on his
notebook when the canoe in which he was traveling sank in a river in Ma-
laysia. Waterproof ballpoint pens seem to work best for us but our tropical
botanist daughter, who works primarily in rainforests, takes all of her field
notes in moisture proof notebooks with a grease pen, not a bad idea in
tropical forests.
Whether public note taking of jot notes (or longer transcriptural notes)
has an impact on the flow of participant observation is a question that
has been answered in a number of different ways by researchers. With
respect to the impact of note taking during events, Notes and Queries on
Anthropology suggests, "The investigator must sense the native attitude to
note-taking in public. May peoples do not object to it, simply regarding it
as one of the European's unaccountable habits" (Seligman 1951:45). This
is still good advice.
On the other hand, the writers of Notes and Queries indicated that some
people may become suspicious when the ethnographer takes notes, and a
few people who are "otherwise friendly may never tolerate the practice."
Jackson (1990) reports that a number of the ethnographers she interviewed
found that taking field notes in front of participants was uncomfortable
and objectifying. However, others found that participants were insulted
when notes were not taken, suggesting that what they had to say was not
important enough to record. Freilich (1970:193) found that pulling out a
notebook in bars in Brooklyn stopped conversation. Whyte (Whyte and
Whyte 1984) went to relatively great lengths to avoid taking notes in front
of participants in his research in Comerville. To gain accurate maps of in-
teraction in a men's club, he would take trips to the bathroom or home in
order to record events.
Philippe Bourgois (1995, 1996), however, openly taped both interviews
and conversations as he hung out with crack dealers in El Barrio in East
Harlem. Participants in his study even joked about "how the book was
coming" (1995:27), an experience many of us have had with participants,
who may even be anxious to see the finished work. Again, one of the
strengths of using participant observation as a method is that the researcher
is accepted as a participant in the setting. Taking notes will often serve to
highlight the differentness of the researcher. On the other hand, our infor-
mants should know that we are also in the role of researcher and most of
us have limits to our memories.
164 Chapter 9

Finally, like some of the problems in interviewing concerning sensitive

topics, a good deal of the success of overt note taking will depend on the
discomfort of the researcher. If the researcher is very uncomfortable, then
the discomfort will be transmitted to participants. Sometimes we are more
uncomfortable with the process than our informants are.
In chapter 11, we discuss some of the challenges of dealing ethically with
informed consent in participant observation. Occasionally taking jot notes
overtly can serve as a reminder to people that research is occurring during
informal interactions. The answer to the question, "How overt should I be
in note taking?" is one that is relative to each research setting and each re-
searcher. Whether jot notes are taken overtly, or are recorded out of sight of
informants, they must be recorded as soon as possible (if simultaneously is
not possible). When we say as soon as possible, we mean within minutes.
Some researchers are successfully able to audio or video record naturally
occurring conversations and events (see Bourgois 1995). Recordings can
be transcribed, or they can be summarized in field notes. Clearly, record-
ing events and conversations provides a highly detailed set of observations.
The use of recording is limited by its effect on situations. In our experience,
recording can be more threatening than note taking. However, we have seen
this tactic used effectively. One of our Ecuadorian colleagues always kept a
tape recorder in view and running, with little impact on the fieldwork. While
we always try to record semistructured and structured interviews, we find
that we are sometimes uncomfortable ourselves with recording less formal
interactions and activities, and we often avoid it. However, it may be our dis-
comfort that limits our use of recorders, not the concern of the participants.
Back in the day when recording was done with rather large tape record-
ers the issue of conspicuousness was much greater. As tape recorders got
smaller and then very small digital voice recorders with excellent built in
microphones became cheaper and more available, the ability to have a
small inconspicuous device recording events and conversations became
more feasible. Even good MP3 players with an external microphone can
be successfully used to record. Several of our colleagues record video with
either "flip" cameras or conventional digital cameras set on video and
then strip the audio portion off electronically for transcription (more
on transcription in chapter 10). We prefer a small audio voice recorder
with a built-in stereo microphone. We use an external microphone with
a noise dampening feature when we are at events with background noise
and want to capture conversations with a small number of people. We are
always careful to request permission to record; however, we find that the
participants in our research seem to feel more comfortable with the current
smaller devices and the quite familiar MP3 players. They tend to forget that
the recording device is there.
 Writing Field Notes 165

Expanded Notes: Field Notes Proper

Bernard (2006) identifies three different kinds of expanded field notes:
descriptive (or ethnographic) notes; notes on methods; and notes that
discuss issues or represent the next level of analysis (meta-notes or analytic
notes). We will come back to the second two later after discussing what
most anthropologists commonly think of as field notes. As Sanjek (1990a)
points out, the practice of recording chronologically organized descriptive
field notes was one of the innovations developed by Malinowski as he
developed the participant observation approach. The descriptive, detailed
chronologically organized field notes are as important to the method of
participant observation as are participating and observing.
The expansion of jot notes into complete field notes is a painstaking,
time consuming activity. In general, we budget at least an hour of note
writing for every two hours engaged in fieldwork. In fact, the time budget
is often closer to one-to-one, fieldwork to field notes. We have heard other
researchers report that they spend several hours of work on field notes for
every hour in the field. Because the goals in writing field notes are detail
and completeness, there can be (and is) a wide variation in the dedication
of a researcher in writing them. It is the detail and completeness of the
record that provide the richness and texture of the written product. Aneeta
Minocha (1979:213) writes:
During my talks I scribbled key words on a small notebook. Later I wrote ex-
tensive reports of my conversations, and also recorded my explanations and
interpretations as they occurred to me at the time. I also recorded the contexts
in which particular conversation took place, as well as the general physical and
emotional condition of the informants, their appearance and behavior, and
the gestures they used. Usually it took me three to four hours to put on paper
five to six hours of field work. It was because of such immediate recording of
my field experiences that I was able to recreate the atmosphere in which each
conversation or event took place. Even now, as I write, I can vividly feel the
presence of the participants.
Minocha's comments highlight several key points concerning the record-
ing of field notes. The first is that the translation of jot notes into field notes
should take place as soon as possible after the events take place. The notes
get "cold" and detail is lost the longer the interval between jotting and writ-
ing. What seemed clear with only a few key words an hour after the event
or conversation is much less clear a week later.
Second, the level of detail to which the recorder should aspire is high. It
should include description of the physical context, the people involved, as
much of their behavior and nonverbal communication as possible, and in
words that are as close as possible to the words used by the participants.
166 Chapter 9

Indeed, verbatim quotes should be included to the extent to which the re-
searcher has jotted them down or can accurately remember them. Specific
words, special language, terms, and vocabulary should be recorded.
Third, impressions, thoughts, concerns, explanations should be recorded.
With this last point, as we will discuss below, there are differing opinions
as to whether these observations and self-reflection should be recorded
along with the detail of observation, or recorded separately in a journal
or as analytic notes. Finally, we applaud that the detailed record made by
Minocha does indeed allow her to recapture "vividly" the presence of the
participants, and her description of her notes suggests that she is able to
articulate a good deal of "tacit" knowledge in written form. But we guess
that her field notes also act as prompt for memories not written down (see
"Headnotes" below). The extent to which Minocha is able to invoke that
presence for her readers is likely a combination of the detail of field notes
with the tacit understanding held in headnotes.
The quality of field notes relies on both the accuracy of the description
(of course, passing through the lens of the particular observer) and the level
of detail (Schensul et al. 1999). We have discussed the issues of accuracy
and objectivity in the recording of observations in chapter 3. To state the
main point again, the record of observations (field notes) should be as ac-
curate, complete, detailed, and objective as possible. When the researcher
comes to understand that his/her description of events or conversations are
likely to be biased in some way, that should be noted in the field notes.
When a point is speculative that should be noted in the field notes or
placed in a separate document or file as a memo or meta-note (see below).
However, no matter how closely the description of an event or conversation
corresponds to the actual event, field notes are not the event.
Indeed, field notes are more accurately treated as a level of analysis. The
event or interactions have taken place within the presence of a specific ob-
server, so there is an observer effect on the event. They have been observed
by a specific observer, who always brings subtle personal and theoretical
biases to bear on the observation, and they are recorded at some later time.
Even when the time difference is small, say several hours, the observer, now
recorder, has already begun to evaluate and integrate the observations into
the whole fabric of the fieldwork experience. Emerson et al. note that the
writer of field notes is creating a "version of the world" even at the point
of writing field notes (Emerson et al. 1995:66). As Jackson's (1990) re-
spondent said: "I am a field note." Jackson further notes that the researcher
creates field notes, and, in some sense, the field notes create the researcher.
The act of attempting an accurate and objective record makes the observer
a researcher.
Field notes are better if the researcher has taken the time and introspec-
tion to anticipate the impact of personal characteristics and theoretical
 Writing Field Notes 167

approaches on the record. They may not be more accurate, but the direc-
tion of the inaccuracies can be assessed by the researcher and others. As
we noted in chapter 4, all observation (in natural science, quantitative
social science, and participant observation) is biased in some ways. All
conclusions include interpretation and often speculation. All this said, the
self-reflexive observer can produce a record that is accurate enough. In team
research, we are often struck by how similar are the descriptions of the same
event in the field notes of different researchers even though observers tend
to focus on different aspects of the event.
Field notes are more accurate, and certainly richer the more detailed
that they are. Schensul et al. (1999) remind the field note writer to record
behaviors, "behaviorally rather than in terms of what they mean to the
observer"; descriptions of people in as much detail as possible, including
what they are wearing, what they are carrying, what their demeanor is like;
and to record the physical environment "as if through the lens of a camera"
(Schensul et al. 1999:115). It is probably impossible to have too much
detail in field notes. The field note writer should record sufficient detail
to bring the scene to life both in the field notes and in subsequent write-
ups. Emerson et al. call this "creating scenes on the page" (Emerson et al.
1995:66-69). One of Jackson's (1990) respondents talks about the prob-
lems with notes that are not detailed enough: "I went back last year and
they were crappy. I didn't have in them what I remembered, in my head, of
his behavior, what he looked like" (27).
Although another respondent wrote:
What the field is, is interesting. In Africa I [initially] wrote down everything
I saw or thought, whether I understood it, thought it significant or not-300
photographs of trees full of bats. How people drove on the left side of the
road .... Having sent [my advisor] back all that crap, he didn't say a thing. (27)

Both comments appear to be the reflections of experienced fieldworkers

looking back on their first efforts. With experience, researchers do come to
understand what can probably be left out of the written account. In addi-
tion, as a particular piece of fieldwork progresses, information that is well
known will probably not be recorded over, and over, again. However, we
would prefer the new researcher to err on the side of too much, rather than
too little detail.
To give some idea of the difference between detailed and less detailed
accounts, Pelto and Pelto (1978) provided a set of examples of brief and
extended descriptions of events. Sanjek (1990c) reproduced several sets of
field notes in his volume, Field Notes. Emerson et al. (1995) have a number
of examples of good field notes in their volume devoted to field notes. We
have included several examples of field notes from fieldwork in which we
have been involved in the appendix. These examples include notes from
168 Chapter 9

research in Kentucky and Ecuador, and from a short-term consultancy that

Bill did in Mexico. Because they are from three individuals, they give some
sense of the individuality of field notes produced by different researchers
as well as illustrating differences in the level of detail included. In part, the
level of detail results from the distinct kinds of research projects illustrated.
Native fieldworkers (engaged in autoethnography) may have a particularly
difficult time in recording a sufficient level of detail. Many events and activi-
ties that would be novel, and provide insight, are so commonplace to the
native researcher that they are not recorded. While the native researcher has a
depth of understanding and knowledge others may never achieve, they also
bring the biases of their particular place in a well-established society and can
mistake "conventional wisdom" for data. When we can get students working
under these conditions to step back and observe and record with new eyes,
they often develop completely new insights into the situation.

Methodological Notes
Bernard suggests keeping a set of notes that document the methods that are
used in the project. Methodological notes can contain information on new
ways to do things discovered by the researcher, in addition to what methods
were chosen, on what basis they were chosen, how they were implemented,
and what the outcome or problems with the methods were. Methodological
notes can be kept with descriptive field notes, in separate files, or in the log.
Methodological notes provide an important record of choices made that will
be an aid in analysis and interpretation. They can also be easily transformed
into the "methods section" of the report or a methodological paper. What we
are calling methodological notes here are included in the notion of "audit
trail," which is characteristic of the tracking of analysis in qualitative research
in the health sciences. We will return to the audit trail in chapter 10.

Diaries and Journals

Journals and diaries are written documents that record the researcher's
personal reactions and concerns throughout the course of fieldwork San-
jek (1990b) and Bernard (2006) refer to the more personal account of the
researcher's thoughts, concerns, and frustrations as a diary. Perhaps the
most famous (or infamous) published ethnographer's diary is Malinowski's
(1967). Published a number of years after Malinowski's death, translated
from the Polish, and edited by his widow, A Diary in the Strict Sense of the
Term provides a unique insight into the daily life of the researcher, his frus-
trations, his frequent illnesses, his relationships with the Trobriand Island-
ers, and his frank dislike of many of them. While the diary has often been
cited for its discussion of Malinowski's rather limited sex life and frustration
 Writing Field Notes 169

with the Trobrianders, it is most remarkable for its view of the ethnogra-
pher and his role in the village. It puts a personal face on the life of the lone
researcher in a field site far from home, particularly in terms of the ways in
which he coped with illness, depression, and loneliness.
Mead (1970b, 1977) kept a diary, but also wrote long letters to people at
home that contained a good deal of self reflection that might be included
in a diary. Her diary and letters also included materials that might be
headnotes for a less prolific letter writer. Mead used her letters to others as
material for understanding her own relationship to various field sites and
peoples (e.g., Mead 1970b). Boas did not keep a diary, but while on Baffin
Island, wrote long letters to his fiancee, even though he had no way to send
them. The letters served the role of a diary.
While Malinowski's Diary is a valuable chronicle for understanding
fieldwork, and should be read by new fieldworkers, it is not clear that Ma-
linowski would have wanted his diary to be published. The diary or similar
document is a place in which the researcher can vent frustration and record
personal reactions to the field situation, successes, and failures. It probably
works best if the writer intends it to be a completely personal record. One of
the most important functions of the diary is provide a private outlet for the
researcher. However, diaries are also part of the fieldwork record. Otten berg
(1990) notes that some of his headnotes would have ended up in a diary,
if he had kept one, because at the time he did not see these reflections as
a legitimate part of the n objective" field note record. However, diaries are
also part of the research record and some contemporary ethnographers use
the diary as tool in developing a self-reflexive account.
Now to 'fess up, we do not keep diaries in the field. While we believe that
keeping a diary can be important for both personal and analytic reasons,
neither of us has felt that we had the time to keep a separate diary. Some of
what would ordinarily go into a diary is recorded as part of our field notes.
The advent of computers has made it easier to manage written records that
contain several "genres" of field recording in a single document or file.
Miller, whose notes are included in section 1 of the appendix, includes
diary-type materials in her field notes. Should it become necessary, the
contemporary ethnographer can nsanitize" their field notes by expunging
personal or other details. Although it was once common for anthropolo-
gists to deposit copies of their field notes in libraries for consultation by
other researchers, this practice is unfortunately being lost.

Logs
Journals (Sanjek 1990b) or logs (Bernard 2006) are chronologically orga-
nized records that provide a calendar of events, thoughts on fieldwork, fi-
nancial accounts, and other matters. Sanjek refers to the journal as providing
170 Chapter 9

a "key to the information in field notes and records" (1990b:108). Bernard

suggests keeping the log in a large lined notebook (even if the field notes
and diary are recorded electronically), devoting two facing pages to each
day. On the right-hand page the researcher will keep track of where sfhe
goes, the events observed, people with whom sfhe has spoken, meal times,
weather conditions, expenditures, and so on. On the left-hand side of the
double page, the researcher begins to record unanswered questions and
hypotheses, and the things to do and people to interview to answer them.
While Bernard appears to be committed to the paper log, the log or journal
can also be kept quite easily in electronic form using one of several calen-
dar/daybook programs that allow for extensive daily notes.
Either the diary or more likely the journal may also be the place in which
the researcher records, or at least indexes, thoughts and ideas taken from
reading or notes or references to other documents, such as official records
and local histories. Sometimes meta-notes or methodological notes (see be-
low) are recorded in the journal. They can then become part of the audit trail.

Meta-notes/Analytic Notes
Meta-notes or analytic notes are those notes that represent some level
of inference or analysis. Some are generated during the recording of ex-
panded notes, others are written upon further reflection on events and
the notes that record them. They include comments on notes, summary of
the evidence for a particular argument collected to that point, preliminary
interpretations, hypotheses, and questions for further research. Fieldwork-
ers writing field notes often find that they are already making inferences.
Pelto and Pelto (1978), Schensul et al. (1999), and Emerson et al. (1995)
all argue that the inclusion of even low level summarization and inference
should be kept out of descriptive field notes. We agree. Summarization, in-
ference, and new hypotheses form part of the body of analytic or meta-notes
that are central to the enterprise, but sufficiently different from the more
descriptive materials that should be the stuff of field notes that they should
be recorded differently. As we note below, the use of computers to record
field notes makes this separation easier as speculation and inference can be
recorded on separate files, or put in memos attached to a field note file.
Researchers should be reading their own field notes, and commenting
on them in the field (while there is still an opportunity to fill in gaps, etc.).
These reflections are included in meta-notes and represent an intermediate
stage in analysis. They are clearly analysis, even interpretation. But they are
preliminary and incomplete, as the researcher is still in the field and still
collecting information. While in some sense, field notes become fixed at
the moment at which the researcher completes an entry; meta-notes can be
mutable and temporary. As more information is collected, understandings
 Writing Field Notes 171

and interpretations shift and change (like headnotes), and the meta-notes
are expanded, amended, superseded. Meta-notes contribute to the planning
of the next stages of research, and as chronicles of insights developed while
in the field. Just as we forget the details of events after time, we also forget
the moments of insight we have in the field. Later, meta-notes become the
focus of analysis, and analytic notes and memos become critical in the
development of coding schemes (Bernard and Ryan 2009; Saldana 2009).
In olden times (precomputer) meta-notes were recorded as a separate
set of notes. They might even have been incorporated in the journal. This
approach is still used, even common, although the documents are now
frequently separate text files. However, the availability of programs for
the electronic management of textual data makes it possible to record and
organize meta-notes within these programs. Most available programs al-
low the researcher to attach memos to documents, such as field notes and
transcripts. Shorter comments and reflections on notes can be organized in
memos and indexed for easy retrieval. Keeping and dating meta-notes also
allows for the construction of an intellectual history of the stages of analysis
and interpretation-the audit trail.

Headnotes
Finally, some materials never get written down. In some cases these are
the tacit understandings and impressions that are difficult to record. (But
that should be recorded if one is "setting the scene" in one's field notes.)
In other cases they are just things that don't get written down. Headnotes
(Ottenberg 1990; Sanjek 1990b) refer to this type of information that is "in
the mind, the memories of ... field research" (Ottenberg 1990) and not
written down. All researchers have headnotes. Sometimes researchers have
to rely exclusively on headnotes when writing because they have lost their
written field notes. Cautionary tales of the loss of years of field notes in the
Sepik River or on the voyage back home have become part of the lore used
in training new researchers.
Losing one's field notes is one of the chief fears of researchers. The
importance of field notes to researchers is clear in the ways in which
they prioritize them. When fire threatened the village in which David
Maybury-Lewis was working, he grabbed his notebooks and pencils; Pia
Maybury-Lewis grabbed the camera (Maybury-Lewis 1965; Sanjek 1990e).
In fieldwork in Ecuador, both of the graduate student ethnographers, liv-
ing in two different hamlets, experienced a moderately strong earthquake,
which shook the whole region. Each made the same decision: they grabbed
the field notes and the computer (with the hard drive archives of field
notes) as they ran from the houses in which they were living, leaving be-
hind other personal goods.
172 Chapter 9

For some, the fear becomes reality. Srinivas (1976) lost all of his field
notes collected and processed over 18 years of work in Rampura, India in a
fire in his office at Stanford University. He wrote the book The Remembered
Village completely from headnotes. Leach (1954) lost a good deal of his
notes and a manuscript as a result of enemy action in Burma. His ethnogra-
phy Political Systems of Highland Burma was in part rewritten from memory
and other materials he had gathered (Sanjek 1990e). Losing field notes is
one of the great fears of researchers and many of us take precautions not to
have all of the copies of notes in one place, and in these days, not have all
of the electronic copies in one place either. Most of us hope never to have
to rely on headnotes exclusively for our reporting of research results.
However, there is a way in which we all use headnotes. Tacit knowledge,
the things we come to know without even knowing that we know them, the
knowledge that is hard to put into words, often exists only as headnotes.
No matter how diligent we are about writing up field notes, things we know
and remember, are never really recorded. Ottenberg (1990) writes:

As I collected my written notes, there were many more impressions, scenes,

experiences than I wrote down or could possibly have recorded .... But the
notes are also in my head. I remember many things, and some I include when
I write even though I cannot find them in my field notes. (144)

Ottenberg also points out an interesting relationship between headnotes

and written field notes. While we may reassess the meaning of field notes
over time, as our experience grows and our theoretical perspective matures,
the notes themselves remain unchanging. Headnotes, however, change and
mature with us. Otten berg describes his view of the Afiqpo, developed in
the field, as based on democracy and much less devious than his wife's view
of them. With time and experience with university politics, he came to see
the Afiqpo as less democratic, and more manipulative. He notes that as his
theoretical views matured, so did his headnotes (and his reading of his field
notes to some extent) concerning the Afiqpo.

the words in my written notes stay the same ... the notes have not changed.
But my interpretations of them have as my headnotes have altered. My head-
notes and my field notes are in constant dialogue, and in this sense the field
experience does not stop. Things that I once read in my field notes in one way,
I now read in another. Evidence that I thought was excellent, I now question. I
don't believe that I am more objective now than then, only that my interpreta-
tions are more accurate. (146)

Otten berg notes that some of the impressions (headnotes) that he did
not record in written form could have been recorded in a diary or per-
sonal journal. He reports that he was dedicated at the time, however, to
nobjectivityn in his field notes, which he interpreted as keeping himself
 Writing Field Notes 173

out of the fieldwork record, and he did not keep a diary or journal. Even
if the researcher keeps a journal, or incorporates journal-type entries in
field notes (see below), there are still understandings that are hard to put
into words, but form part of the equipment with which we interpret our
recorded "data." It is also important to point out that Otten berg does not
indicate that he is repudiating his "data," but he interprets them differently,
in a sense reanalyzing them over time.
Understanding that reinterpretation and reanalysis can and will take
place over time suggests that an even greater attention should be paid to
the capture of detailed field notes that will stand up to those activities. As
one ofJackson's (1990) respondents wrote:

Are memories field notes? I use them that way, even though they aren't the
same kind of evidence. It took awhile for me to be able to rely on my memory.
But I had to, since the idea of what I was doing had changed, and I had memo-
ries but no notes. I had to say, ''Well, I saw that happen." I am a field note. {21)

In the sample field notes contained in the appendix, section 1, we have

included a description of a party that was attended by one of the project
ethnographers, Loren Miller, who worked with Kathleen in Manabf, Ec-
uador. In her description, Miller includes so much detail and describes
her own reactions-material that could be included in a diary-that she
captures part of the spirit and essence that often does not get recorded, but
exists only in headnotes. We think that while headnotes will always be the
only way some information exists before write-up, attention to recording
rich field notes and keeping a diary can capture some of the feeling of the
tacit knowledge that is so hard to verbalize.

FIELD NOTES IN VIRTUAL RESEARCH

Research in virtual or online settings has the distinct advantage that much
of the text generated through interaction is recorded electronically and
archived. This is true whether the research is in a virtual world setting
(Boellstorff 2010; Guimaraes 2005) or is based on participating in and
observing online chat groups, list serves, and blogs (Constable 2003; Hine
2000; Kozinets 2010). In some sense "nothing escapes the panoptic gaze"
(Stone 1995:243) of the computer. This is a terrible temptation to let the
technology do the recording. However, online researchers argue strongly
that online participant observers need to write field notes in much the same
way in which face-to-face researchers do. For Kozinets {2010), the role of
field notes as a first level of analysis, and especially field notes that capture
the researcher's description of her role and response to the field site, is criti-
cal in the process of online ethnography, or "netnography" in his terms. He
174 Chapter 9

reminds the online researcher that the researcher IS a participant observer

and is making decisions and interacting in the research setting in ways
that are not fundamentally different than in face-to-face research. Since he
acknowledges that much of the text of interaction is capture, Kozinets fo-
cuses on the need to keep reflexive notes that explore the interaction from
the point of view of the observer. Other researchers (e.g., Boellstorff 20 10;
Constable 2003; Hine 2000) discuss their approaches to recording field
notes in virtual research in very similar terms to the ways in which face-to-
face researchers do.

HOW TO RECORD

First, we cannot overemphasize the need to budget enough time to record

sufficiently detailed field notes. Participating in the community on a 24/7
basis will do the researcher little good if there is no time to record observa-
tions, keep a diary, and reflect and write on what is being observed. The
researcher needs a place to which sfhe can retreat to write. It is better to
have a place with sufficient light at night (since field note writing is often
an end-of-the-day activity). Researchers in the contemporary world still
sometimes conduct research in settings in which electricity is not available.
Here the recording of field notes may be virtually indistinguishable from
the conditions Margaret Mead encountered in New Guinea or Malinowski
found in the Trobriands. One of our students working on an atoll in Mela-
nesia, for example, spent the last year without access to electricity. However,
if possible, it is preferable if the researcher can find accommodations with
access to electricity both for adequate light in the evenings and for the use
of the now ubiquitous personal computer. 1
In our very first field experience in Temascalcingo, Mexico in 1970,
personal computers were still the stuff of science fiction (even Captain
James Tiberius Kirk didn't have a personal computer). In fact, we didn't
even have a portable manual typewriter. Our field notes were hand writ-
ten in notebooks in the fashion used for the first century of professional
anthropological fieldwork. By our second field trip in 1973, we owned a
portable manual typewriter and typed our field notes on Indecks brand
cards-cards about the size and consistency of 5" x 8" note cards, or a half
sheet of standard typing paper, with two rows of holes punched around
the perimeter. We made two rather poor carbon copies on half sheets of
plain typing paper behind the cards (so that they could be stored in differ-
ent places). We diligently used these cards in Mexico as well as in research
we did in southern Honduras in the early 1980s. The cards were "coded"
by punching out the holes such that when a "knitting needle" was inserted
into a particular hole in a stack of cards, and shaken, the "coded" cards
 Writing Field Notes 175

would fall to the floor. You could search for two codes simultaneously by
using two knitting needles.
By the 1980s, in research in Mexico and Ecuador, we could get access to
computers in the field, either using the newly available nluggable" comput-
ers, or renting computers in-country. In addition, it was possible to find
accommodations with electricity. We happily shifted to the electronic cap-
ture of field notes. However, the coding of notes was not much different,
except that we could use the searching features of the available word pro-
cessing programs to assist in locating text and codes. Much of the coding,
however, was still done on the hard copies of notes. By the time we were
involved in fieldwork in Kentucky in the late 1980s, the first-generation
Ethnograph program was available and the process of coding and retrieval
of data became electronically based for us. Over the last decade, the number
of programs for assisting with the coding and retrieval of textual data has
burgeoned. We find that the ease of management of textual data through
the use of computer programs is so compelling that we recommend the
computerization of all kinds of field notes.
Even if the researcher eschews the more sophisticated programs, even us-
ing the features available on most word processors is better than punching
holes in cards. Kathleen uses the NVivo program for coding field notes. A
number of our colleagues have switched to the program ATLAS.ti. As we
noted above, some of our colleagues work in research settings in which the
use of electronic capture of field notes is not feasible. When good quality
typed notes can be produced, the notes can be scanned into a computer
file. When the only option is handwritten notes, we strongly suggest that
the researcher budget time or money for the transcription of notes either
during the fieldwork or upon return.
As suggested earlier, computer-assisted management of field notes has
one large drawback. One of the most important activities in the analysis
of field notes and transcripts is reading and rereading the materials. To the
extent that computerization allows the researcher to bypass frequent re-
reading of notes, it can limit the process of analysis. Because it has become
easy to retrieve materials without rereading, this does not mean that the
researcher can get away without doing it.
We are often asked about audio recording (dictating) field notes. Our ad-
vice is that this is fine way to capture a good deal of detail in a short period
of time. It takes much less time, initially, to describe events verbally than to
do so in written form. There are times driving or walking to and from places
when notes can be dictated. However, we have found that dictating field
notes only works effectively if the researcher has someone to transcribe the
recordings. Material stored in audio files is hard to access effectively. While
the files can be marked and coded electronically, and the marks recorded in
a program such as NVivo or ATLAS.ti, recorded field notes are most easily
176 Chapter 9

used if they have been transcribed. There is a great temptation to assign

the transcription of material on tape a low priority (after all, it is already
recorded and won't go away like your memory will). 2 We find that voice
recognition software is still not quite good enough to eliminate a lot of ed-
iting of the text files it produces, but the technology is improving rapidly.
We anticipate that in the near future audio recording will be good enough
and voice recognition software powerful enough to turn voice into text with
little loss of time in editing, when the resources for electronic capture of
data (electricity) are available.
In the study of older adults in Kentucky in which Kathleen participated,
however, there were a number of hours of driving between sites and be-
tween Lexington and the study communities. Furthermore, we had suf-
ficient grant support for transcription. In this case, we often dictated field
notes while driving. We have also used the taping of a running description
of a community or an area while walking or driving as an aid to memory
in the writing up of field notes. In this case, our goal is not to transcribe a
tape, but to use the taped comments to create a summary of the material
in field notes.
Using a computer to capture field notes has one further advantage we
should mention. It is very easy to either keep several files open at the same
time, or to enter a stream of material that covers several genres (e.g., diary,
field notes, meta-notes, methodological notes) and separate them out into
distinct documents later. In the days of typewriters, there was much more
of a barrier to shifting gears in the middle of a recording session. Even with
jotting notes as reminders of what should go into the other document we
believe that many ideas were forgotten, at least temporarily.
A final note on field notes: participant observation can be a very stress-
ful experience (i.e., culture shock). It is sometimes comforting and helpful
in assuaging guilt on those days when we just need to be out of the scene
to say to ourselves: "Well today I MUST stay in and catch up on my field
notes." And, as it is almost always true, it is the perfect excuse. However,
do note that it is for just this reason that Agar (1996) is critical of time
spent in recording field notes, time that he sees as more profitably spent in
interviewing.

RESEARCH INTEGRITY: WHO OWNS THE FIELD NOTES

One of the consequences of keeping written field notes as compared with

headnotes is that they can be accessed by others. Some researchers, who
recorded relatively few written notes, appear to regret that their data will
die with them (Jackson 1990). Some researchers provide for the curation or
management of their notes after their deaths. Others appear to want these
 Writing Field Notes 177

data to remain out the hands of others. However, it is possible for field
notes to forcibly leave the control of the researcher. They can be subpoe-
naed, for example, and it does not appear that any existing laws protecting
confidentiality apply to the researcher-informant relationship. In some
cases in which agencies or other organizations contract for research the con-
tracting organization may claim ownership of all data including field notes.
Recent approaches to research integrity have made the format and avail-
ability of field notes a more problematic issue than in the past. For those
of us in academic settings it now appears that for many American universi-
ties, all data collected while affiliated with the institution, including field
notes, are deemed to be the property of the institution. The University of
Pittsburgh policies are not different from many other university policies.
The policy states that all "recorded data" (including "notebooks, printouts,
computer disks, slides, negatives, films, scans images, autoradiograms,
electrophysical recordings, gels, blots, spectra ... ") are property of the
university, and can be made available for review by other researchers if the
researcher is accused of research misconduct. The University of Pittsburgh
requires that all data be archived for a minimum of five years, and that all
data be available to the university. In the event that a researcher leaves the
university, the university still owns the data generated by researcher carried
out while the researcher was at the university. While the researcher can take
the data, the university retains right of access. While the rules surrounding
challenges to research integrity were developed with the quantitative data
of the lab sciences, epidemiology, clinical trials, psychology, and survey
research in mind, it appears that they can be applied to all phases of field
notes (jot notes, field notes, logs, maps, etc.) as well. In addition, the policy
appears to apply to students as well as faculty researchers.
While we have not heard of any instance in which a university has exer-
cised its right to access to field notes, researchers should be aware that it is
possible and know the research integrity policies of their institutions. Ap-
propriate steps should be taken to protect the anonymity of informants. It
is in part for this reason that we suggest that researchers with data captured
electronically change the names of individuals, or assign them numeri-
cal codes, create a single identification key at some point in the analysis
process, and then destroy materials that have the original names included.
This chapter has focused on the various methods of recording data from
informal interviews and participant observation. Generically, these can be
labeled as field notes, although we reviewed a number of different kinds
of notes. The critical point to emphasize is that field notes are essential to
qualitative, ethnographic research. As we indicated in the introduction, if
we don't record observations, conversations, events, and impressions in
our field notes, then it is difficult to document that these actually occurred.
Field notes are simultaneously both data and analysis. In this chapter, we
178 Chapter 9

have focused on recording of field notes as data. The chapter that follows
focuses on the next steps in the analysis of field notes.

NOTES

1. It is also becoming economically and practically feasible to use solar power

for computers in the field.
2. We still have a few audiotaped notes from 1973 hanging around that were
never transcribed. They resurface, un-analyzed, in the same Pampers box, every time
we move. They represent data that were never fully incorporated into our writing.
 ~to~
Analyzing Field Notes

The goal of all data analysis is the summarization of large quantities of

data into understandable information from which well-supported and well-
argued conclusions are drawn. In other words, this is a process of reviewing,
summarizing, cross-checking, looking for patterns, and drawing conclusions
(Bernard and Ryan 2009; LeCompte and Schensul 1999; Wolcott 1994).
LeCompte and Schensul (1999) agree with Michael Patton (1987) that

analysis does three things:

It brings order to the piles of data [in this case, field notes) that an ethnog-
rapher has accumulated.
It turns big piles of data into smaller piles of crunched or summarized data.
It permits the ethnographer to discover patterns and themes in the data to
link with other patterns and themes. (LeCompte and Schensul1999:3)

Like much of the rest of the activities related to participant observation,

the analysis of field notes is an iterative process. The fundamental tech-
niques are reading, thinking, and writing; and rereading, rethinking, and re-
writing. Frankly, there is no substitute for reading and rereading field notes
and transcripts, each time with a particular question in mind. Despite sev-
eral recent, quite good discussions of coding qualitative data (e.g., Bernard
and Ryan 2009; Saldana 2009), of all of the somewhat mystical activities
associated with the method of participant observation, analysis of data is
the most mysterious. In this case we think it is for good reason. While one
aspect of analysis is the logical, sometimes tedious, building of descriptions
and arguments by reviewing and organizing materials into categories and
themes, some of the connections between observations and the insights
that form part of the process of analysis take place subconsciously. What

179
180 Chapter 10

we experience is a "hunch," an "aha! or "eureka!" moment, an insight

11

into connections among various events. In a flash, things make sense, or,
in a flash, what we thought seemed straightforward just yesterday becomes
crooked and we see a new configuration. One of the important points we
wish to make in this chapter is that behind the flashes of insight is the care-
ful categorization, organization, summarization, and review of materials.
Once an insight surfaces, it should be treated like a hypothesis with a return
to the data in order to build the dear and logical argument to support it,
often with recategorization, organization, and review.

PROCESS OF DATA ANALYSIS

The process 1 of analysis of qualitative data, including field notes, interview

transcripts, and documents is not fundamentally different from the analy-
sis of data from surveys, experiments, and formal elicitation, although the
specific techniques used may be different. Experiencing flashes of insight,
developing hunches, leaping to conclusions, and amassing documentation
to support the argument characterize all scholarly research endeavors. The
goal of analysis is to develop a well-supported argument that adds to the
understanding of a phenomenon, whether the understanding is phrased
in descriptive, interpretive, or explanatory terms. Survey researchers cap-
ture data on questionnaire forms or interview schedules; code data using
categories created by the researcher; enter the data into computerized data
bases; decide what questions will be asked of the data, and what ways of
asking those questions (statistics) are most appropriate to the objectives of
the research and the data; ask the computer to perform the calculations;
examine the results and interpret them; and build an argument and body of
evidence to support their conclusions. There are three sets of activities tak-
ing place in this process (Miles and Huberman 1994a): data reduction (focus
on specific questions, coding, preliminary analysis into scales and indices);
data display (tables and statistical tests); and interpretation and verification
(getting hunches, leaping to conclusions, building the argument). The same
activities of analysis apply equally to both quantitative and qualitative data,
including field notes. However, the specific techniques applied may be
somewhat different.

MANAGING QUALITATIVE DATA

Although new researchers often fear they will not get "enough data for 11

their study, the real problem with the management of textual data in
field notes, transcripts, and documents is that it can quickly mount up to
 Analyzing Field Notes 181

phenomenal levels. It is truly amazing to the new researcher how quickly

the piles of text can get away from you. It is not hard to amass literally thou-
sands of pages of field notes and interview transcripts. The wise researcher
develops a strategy for dealing with these documents before beginning
collection. The use of computers to record and organize data has made the
management of data much easier.
As we noted above, we suggest that even researchers who have to record
notes by hand should arrange to transcribe materials into electronic files.
There are a number of programs available for computer-assisted qualita-
tive data analysis (CAQDAS, pronounced "cactus"). The program that the
researcher chooses should reflect his/her theoretical orientation, the kinds
of data that s/he has, the degree to which s/he intends to use "memo-ing"
features for tracking intermediate stages of analysis, and the degree of flex-
ibility in indexing, coding, and moving text from different types of files s/
he wishes to have. Several reviews of the features of programs are available
(e.g., Lewins and Silver 2007). The extremely useful website of the Com-
puter Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Networking Project (caqdas.soc.
surrey.ac.uk/) summarizes information from Lewins and Silver and several
other sources and compares common software programs (CAQDAS 2010).
The CAQDAS Networking Project site also reviews several program for
working with audio and visual files. The program that a researcher chooses
may also be influenced by cost and availability. All of the commonly used
programs we know of have advantages and limitations. Several allow free
trials of the software for limited periods of time. Check out which ones will
work for your style. Whatever program or approach to data management
you choose, keep in mind that the programs help you organize data. They
do not "analyze" the data. Your brain does that (through reading, coding,
writing, rereading, recoding, rewriting, and developing insights).

DATA REDUCfiON

As we noted above, Miles and Huberman (1994a, 1994b) suggest that all
data analysis includes three fundamental activities: data reduction, data
display, and interpretation and verification. Further, all three activities are
iterative. The analyst is constantly moving among the three activities during
analysis. In some cases it continues after publication as new insights surface
for the researcher.
Data reduction refers to "the process of selecting, focusing, simplifying,
abstracting, and transforming the data that appear in written-up field
notes" (Miles and Huberman 1994a:10). In some sense the process of data
reduction begins long before data collection begins, even before fieldwork
begins. The theoretical approach taken by the researcher influences the
182 Chapter 10

kinds of phenomena that are deemed important to the enterprise. The

researcher focuses on a particular set of issues and places others in a lower
priority. The process of choosing a specific question to study, in a particular
place, developing a conceptual framework, using a particular design, limits
the data that will be collected. Choices made about what events to observe,
what activities in which to participate, and with whom to speak limit the
amount and content of data that will be collected and is part of the process
of data reduction.
It is for this reason that a carefully thought out and justified research
design is essential to a good project. Analysis is not only planned for
before data collection begins, the analysis itself has already begun by
the time data collection begins. The development of a formal research
proposal both allows the researcher to construct a coherent approach to
a particular problem making explicit the particular theoretical and design
choices and allows others to judge the extent to which the decisions made
by the researcher before the project has begun are feasible, justified, and
likely to move the field of scholarship forward. (Now, it is true that in
ethnographic fieldwork the issues to be examined are often fairly broadly
defined, and in the real world of community based ethnographic research
the research questions change in the field. However, the universe of pos-
sible data to be collected is always limited by the time the researcher
leaves for the field.)
Once in the field, the researcher continues to make decisions about who,
what, when, and where to observe and participate. Phenomena not origi-
nally included in the design may be added. In the process of participant
observation especially, researchers discover new angles to the research ques-
tion and design in the field. Some phenomena identified beforehand may
tum out to be impossible to include, or just not very interesting. While this
process is also true of all other forms of research, it is explicitly built into
the method of participant observation. These kinds of decisions and how
the researcher arrived at them should be recorded in methodological notes
as the research progresses.
Data reduction also takes place during the act of recording field notes.
The observer reduces the observed phenomena to a finite number of pages
of field notes. Even at the highest level of detail, it is not possible to capture
the actual event on paper. Furthermore, consciously or unconsciously the
researcher makes a series of decisions about what to report and how to re-
port it. The researcher consciously or unconsciously includes some aspects
of phenomena, and reports these aspects in a particular way. For this rea-
son, we believe it is important for the researchers to be conscious of the fact
that they are reducing data at the point of writing field notes and reflexive
about their approach to the data. 2 As we noted in the previous chapter,
we treat field notes both as a product of the researcher and as data. The
 Analyzing Field Notes 183

self-reflexive researcher has some notion of what his/her particular biases

and emphases in recording will be.
Once field notes (as well as other textual data) are recorded, the process
of analysis becomes more formal. Thousands of pages of text must again
be reduced to manageable descriptions of patterns of activities, ideas, and
behavior, the exploration of meaning interpreted, and written up. There are
two approaches to reducing the data in field notes with the production of a
well-supported written summary argument in mind-indexing and coding.
We use the term indexing to refer to the use of "etic" or a priori catego-
ries drawn from the initial theoretical framework and applied to the text
in order to aid in the retrieval of material for further analysis. What we
mean by indexing is very close to the use of "descriptive codes" discussed
by Miles and Huberman (1994a). We use the term coding to refer to the
development of categories that emerge from the data (ernie) as a result of
reviewing the data for inherent concepts and patterns. Some writers refer to
these as themes (see Bernard and Ryan 2009). Miles and Huberman's no-
tion of "pattern" codes is also similar. In coding, the researcher is often at-
tempting to identify themes that emerge directly from the observations and
conversations captured in field notes. At the point at which categories and
codes are developed, the researcher is reducing data to ideas and concepts
and looking for patterns. While indexing is a step in data reduction, it is
an activity that draws on a priori and design issues established early in the
development of a project even if they are modified as the project continues.
It is responsive to the initial theoretical approach that guides the fieldwork.
For us, "coding" is more closely tied to the development of new theo-
retical propositions, understanding of meanings, or patterns and ideas that
emerge in the process of data analysis. In part it is a process of abstracting
and interpreting ideas contained in the data themselves. It is closer to the
notions contained in the grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss
1967; Strauss and Corbin 1990, 1998). While we believe that these are
two distinct intellectual activities, we do not want to draw too strong a line
between them. In practice both indexing and coding take place simultane-
ously and in similar ways as the researcher is reviewing field notes. Finally,
researchers may also want to establish index entries for the characteristics
of the people, places, and event included in field notes. Bernard and Ryan
call these structural codes (2009). Indexing for characteristics allows for the
retrieval of text associated with different categories and codes sorting by
characteristics such as gender, age, and occupation.
Both indexing and coding are, in essence, the attaching of names or labels
on pieces of text describing events and incidents, parts of conversations,
words, sentences, or phrases recorded in field notes (Strauss and Corbin
1990, 1998). The labels refer to a more abstract concept, or a hypothesized
pattern for which the piece of text is an example. Attaching labels draws
184 Chapter 10

us into the next level of conceptual abstraction and summarization. It also

physically organizes materials that can be marshaled to support arguments
in the interpretation and writing phases.

Approaches to Indexing
Traditional ethnographic field notes, aimed at a description of a particular
"culture," "society," or community, are often indexed following the catego-
ries included in the Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM)-a set of categories
developed to index ethnographic accounts for the Human Relations Area
Files (Human Relations Area Files Inc. 2000, 2010). They are available
online (www.yale.edufhraf/) with operational definitions ofthe codes and
direct references to coded text in ethnographies. When we were beginning
fieldwork in Temascalcingo, Mexico, we started with the categories of the
OCM, which we further refined with subcategories to fit the particular set-
ting in which we were working. The OCM provides coding for the categories
of social life that have traditionally been included in ethnographic descrip-
tion: history, demography, agriculture, exchange, material culture, housing,
marriage, kinship, sickness, death, sexuality, religion, etc. It represents a set
of etic categories developed to allow for comparisons among descriptions
of diverse cultural systems. The OCM is a good starting point for the parts
of field notes that deal with descriptions of cultural systems. When the
ethnographer anticipates writing a description of family structure, marriage
rules, and so forth, using the Outline can be effective. However, while the
OCM can be presented as an atheoreticallist of categories, no list of catego-
ries is atheoretical. The OCM reflects a particular approach to description
that emphasizes a view of cultures as composed of a number of identifiable
subsystems that can be compared one with the other. It assumes that there
are universally applicable categories (etic) that can make such comparison
feasible. While we don't think this is a particular problem for organizing
materials for most holistic descriptive studies, the researcher should be
aware of the inherent bias in the materials. As less of the work of qualitative
researchers and even ethnographers is conceived of as broadly descriptive
of whole cultures, the types of categories of interest for indexing field notes
have become more specialized and focused on the particular problem at
hand, and the OCM less applicable for many researchers. Bernard and Ryan
{2009) discuss several different approaches to coding, with examples from
research coming from several different theoretical perspectives.
Under any circumstance, one of the first activities of indexing and cod-
ing textual data such as field notes is to establish a codebook. Codebooks
are documents that become part of the analytical record and the audit trail.
They include the codes (labels) that are assigned to the categories and ideas
for which the text is coded, the conceptual definitions of the codes, and
 Analyzing Field Notes 185

the operational definitions of the codes. By conceptual definition we mean

just that. What is the underlying concept that is being identified? It can be
a social institution (marriage), an activity (cooking), an idea (machismo),
or anything else. But the conceptual definition should be as clear as the
researcher can make it. The operational definition refers to the specific
situation under which the label will be attached to a section of text. What
characteristics of text will result in the attachment of the code? Sometimes
this is pretty straightforward. In other cases, especially as themes emerge
from the data, both the conceptual definition and the operational defini-
tions for codes shift over time, and the researcher may have to revisit codes
and text several times as the codebook is built and rebuilt over time. Most
of the CAQDAS programs allow for the evolution of codebooks through the
use of memos and a log of the revisions of both conceptual and operational
definitions. These also become part of the audit trail.
In our study of the nutritional strategies of older adults in rural Kentucky,
part of our interest at the outset of the project was to describe the particular
pathways that older adults used to procure food, and the resources they
needed to use particular pathways. Our interests then were much narrower
and in greater depth. Our preliminary indexing system included categories
for the venue in which the observations or activities took place; pathways
offood procurement (we called them nutritional strategies); food preserva-
tion; food consumption; food preferences; preparation of specific foods,
etc. Part of the codebook used to index the field notes and interview tran-
scripts is reproduced in figure 10.1. There are several points that we would
like to illustrate with this list.
The listing is hierarchically arranged. While not all indexing and coding
schemes are hierarchical, creating hierarchies where they seemed appropri-
ate, here, was part of our further organizing, conceptualizing, summarizing,
and, in the end, analyzing these data. We were continually looking to see
where new information fit, both in the set of hierarchies and in our con-
ceptual framework.
We started with a preliminary list drawn from our general knowledge of
food acquisition in rural Kentucky, some came from our theoretical notions
regarding the strategic nature of food getting and consumption, the exis-
tence of alternate pathways and how to access them; some came from exist-
ing literature on the rural South; and some from our previous experience
in Kentucky. However, in the course of the project we identified a number
of types of crops, gardening techniques, food preservation techniques, and
programs that we had not known about. The list of categories grew as we
progressed, and we occasionally had to go back and review previously in-
dexed materials and reindex them. We also moved items around the catego-
ries when it seemed to us that they fit better under another heading. (How
did we know they nfit bettern in one place as compared with the other? This
186 Chapter 10

Figure 1 0.1. Selected indexing codes from the study of nutritional strategies of older
adults in two Kentucky counties.
1. Venues in which the observation or activity took place
1.1 Senior center
1.2 Senior picnic
1.3 Informant's office
1.4 Informant's home
1.5 Store
1.6 Church supper
1.7 Homemakers club meeting
1.8 Restaurant

2. Nutritional Strategies
2.1 Food production
2.1.1 food crop information on field crops grown at least in part for
food, such as corn, wheat, cornfield beans, orchards
2.1.2 garden information on garden crops such as sweet corn, fresh
vegetables, tomatoes, beans, cabbage, greens, etc.
2.1.3 milk information on milk and other dairy products
especially for home consumption
2.1.4 eggs egg production especially for home consumption;
information on laying hens
2.1.5 livestock production and slaughter of all animals
2.1.6 huntfish information on hunting and fishing for food
2.1.7 gathering information on gathering wild plant materials for
food or medicinal purposes
2.2 Food purchasing
2.2.1 fpwhere information on where food is purchased including
what is purchased
2.2.2 small store information on shopping in small neighborhood
country stores
2.2.3 supermkt information on shopping in supermarkets in the
county or outside of the county
2.2.4 delivery information on the delivery of groceries
2.2.5 restaurant information on food taken in restaurants, or on
restaurants in the county

2.3 Food gifts information on food obtained as gifts or sharing with

friends and relatives

2.4 Food programs

2.4.1 seniormeals meals at the senior center
2.4.2 foodstamp information on the availability and use of the food
stamp program by older adults
2.4.3 commodity information on the availability and use of foods from
the food commodity program
2.4.4 otherpgrms information on other programs that relate to food
distribution
 Analyzing Field Notes 187

2.5 Food preservation

2.5.1 canning information on and observation of canning and
jarring foods
2.5.2 drying information on and observation of drying foods
(meat, beans, apples, etc.)
1.5.3 curing information on and observation of curing foods with
salt or sugar, including making sauerkraut
1.5.4 smoking information on and observation of smoking foods,
usually pork
1.5.5 sorghum information on and observation of making sorghum
molasses
1.5.6 sulphur information on and observation of sulphuring apples
1.5.7 porkpresrv information on and observation of preserving pork
products
1.5.8 freezing freezing foods
1.5.9 rootceller information on and observation of making root
cellars and keeping food in them
1.5.1 0 holing information on and observation of "holing" foods,
that is, putting food in holes in the field in order to
keep them over the winter
1.5.11 storepit information on and observation of the construction
and use of pits for keeping potatoes and other foods
1.5.12 meatstore information on and observation of the storage
of meats
1.5.13 miscstore information on and observation of other methods of
storage, including storage on the cellar floor, in the
attic, in the barn, etc.
2.6 Food-related equipment
1 .6.1 stoveoven availability and use of stoves or ovens
1.6.2 microwave availability or use of microwave ovens
1.6.3 refridge availability and use of refrigerator
1.6.4 freezer availability and use of freezer
1.6.5 presscanner availability and use of pressure canner

Food Ideology
2.7 beliefs information on beliefs about food
2.8 healthyfood information on what foods are considered healthy
and the relationships between food and health
2.9 preference information on food preferences and preferred foods
2.1 0 fknowledge information on knowledge about food and where it
is acquired
2.11 statusfood foods associated with particular statuses (e.g., low
class; white trash; country foods)
3. County Information
3.1 employment employment in the county; jobs, industries, etc.
3.2 agriculture agriculture in the county
(Continued)
188 Chapter 10

Figure 1 0.1. Selected indexing codes from the study of nutritional strategies of older
adults in two Kentucky counties. (Continued)
3.3 mining mining in the county
3.4 transportation transportation available in the county
3.5 churches churches and religions in the county
3.6 restaurants restaurants used by county residents
3.7 extension Agricultural Extension Service
3.8 homemakers Homemakers Clubs

4. Health Issues
4.1 doctors
4.2 hospitals
4.3 medicines

was part of our insight from listening and reviewing the data.) We elimi-
nated some categories as we found they did not fit or were not important.
Even if they were added after the initial round of indexing, the categories
we used were drawn from our original conceptual framework and were
conceived of as mainly descriptive of the various pathways and experiences
around them. In other words, we were still in indexing mode here, not yet
identifying themes and developing codes for them.
Even though the categories were pretty straightforward and inherently
meaningful to us at the time we developed them, we wrote brief conceptual
definitions of the codes. Each code is, in fact, a label (Bernard and Ryan
2009; Miles and Huberman 1994a) for an idea or concept that characterizes
a number of pieces of text that have something (meaning) in common. Part
of the process of analysis is making those concepts explicit and develop-
ing a set of rules for applying them to pieces of text. Many times, as in our
example here, the conceptual and operational definitions are fairly obvi-
ous and easily understood. However, even when they are not particularly
conceptually complex, several years later they may not be as immediately
comprehensible as they had been at the outset. Even if it seems pretty obvi-
ous at the time, it is wise to write operational and conceptual definitions of
categories and codes. Again, this is part of the summarizing and conceptu-
alizing of the materials-that is, analysis. Computer assisted coding makes
this a good deal easier. Definitions are stored with the codes and retrieved
at any point.
We used words or phrases as labels. In part, this is a logistical device; it is
easier to remember the meaning of a real word name than it is to remember
what a number means. Also, it is part of the analysis. Naming the categories
makes us articulate the commonalties and patterns that tie words, phrases,
and sentences together and ties them more dearly into the original concep-
tual framework, and keeps us thinking about connections and abstractions.
 Analyzing Field Notes 189

Finally, making the initial list and then expanding it (and contracting it,
in some places, where we saw new connections) as we continued through
the project formed an important part of the analysis. We fleshed out and
concretized our conceptual framework. We recategorized ideas and topics.
We adjusted our ideas about the salience of particular activities and path-
ways as we gained a better understanding of how people managed food
resources. Managing the list itself was a conceptually based analytic activity.
Once the researcher begins to develop a set of categories for indexing text,
it is quite easy to develop literally hundreds of them.

Coding for Themes

In addition to the a priori categories in which we were interested as a result
of our particular theoretical approach and the design of the project, we were
also looking for understandings and interpretations that arose from the ma-
terials as a result of the interaction of the ideas and concerns of the partici-
pants (older adults in rural settings) and the researchers. 3 As we talked with
people and read and reread our materials, several sets of patterned responses
that seemed to capture the concerns of the participants emerged. These
represented both values that seemed to influence the lives of participants
and the participants' characterizations of how their lives were organized
and influenced. Identifying these themes and coding the materials for them
is another type of data analysis. This is not a priori in the sense that, even
though we expect themes and patterns of thought and concern to emerge,
we usually don't know what they will be like. It is in this type of looking
for patterns and developing codes that we discover the mechanisms as
viewed by the participants. It is part of what Strauss and others (Glaser and
Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1990, 1998) refer to as the development of
grounded theory. It is the source of new hypotheses and a better understand-
ing of the phenomenon from the point of view of the participants.
Coding for themes takes place iteratively as well. The analyst reads and
rereads notes and interview transcripts on the lookout for recurring ideas
and patterns of concepts. Gradually (or quickly in a "eureka" moment), the
analyst begins to abstract a number of ideas and words contained in text
into a single concept or a small set of related concepts (they might reflect
the participants' view of internal relationships for example). In practice,
the words of a particular informant or the description of a particular event
provides an idea about at set of ideas. It is tentatively named and the analyst
then goes back to the data to see if it can be applied to other individuals
and events. This becomes a "theme," an idea that characterizes and ties
together materials from different people or people in different settings. Ala-
bel is created and pieces of text that appear to reflect that idea are coded and
reviewed, and rereviewed. The ability to attach memos (meta-notes) to text,
190 Chapter 10

including codes allows for easy retrieval of materials on the evolution of

codes. It becomes part of the audit trail, but is also part of the analysis itself.
The theme of n a woman has to feed her family" came initially from an
interview with Mrs. L, a woman who was describing how throughout her life
she was in charge of the cows and chickens and managed her garden in order
to be able to feed her family. She negotiated with her husband to grind some
of the com he grew in the fields into meal for the kitchen. She described
how she sold eggs and butter and used the money to buy sugar, flour, and
other goods that were not produced on the farm. Then she talked of how
her husband had the responsibility to produce tobacco and com to pay the
mortgage and buy clothes. It was her responsibility to provide the food. We
had been thinking of the farm as an enterprise in which the farmer (read
nman") took the primary responsibility for production and the nfarm wife"
maintained the household, cared for children, and provided some labor on
the farm. After reviewing materials collected from Mrs. L, we returned to
our notes and transcripts looking for other instances in which women were
responsible for providing food, as well as preserving it and cooking it.
The development of codes follows a path of organization, abstraction,
review, and frequently, further abstraction and organization (Bernard and
Ryan 2009; Saldana 2009; Strauss and Corbin 1990, 1998). A series of
pieces of text are reduced to a few central concepts. However, the richness
of the original text is not lost either. The central goal of coding is to make
it easier to return to the original text in ways appropriate for building an
argument and presenting it to others in as rich a form as possible to do effi-
ciently and effectively. This may seem like the mysterious part, and in part it
is. It is the analyst's mind and nothing else that makes the connections and
sees the patterns. However, it is the reviewing and comparing of materials
and writing explicit definitions that make it work. There is nothing mysteri-
ous about reading, and thinking, and making meta-notes.
The process of creating the code name is also part of the analysis. A code
name can reflect what the analyst sees as the central concept. One frequently
sees code names that come directly from the words of participants-in vivo
codes (Glaser 1978; Strauss 1987; Strauss and Corbin 1990, 1998). Kathleen
{K. M. DeWalt 1977) used the term nthe illnesses no longer understand"
to refer to an idea expressed by a number of informants that the illnesses
that afflicted people had changed such that they no longer "understood"
traditional herbal remedies, but now only responded to biomedical drugs.
For Bourgois {1995), the concept of nrespect" and the search for respect
became the organizing theme of his ethnographic study of crack dealers
in New York. In our study of nutrition of older adults another common
theme was the value placed on self-reliance, which we coded as nwe have
to make it on our own." Figure 10.2 has codes for several of the themes we
identified in this project.
 Analyzing Field Notes 191

Figure 10.2. Themes emerging from the study of nutritional strategies of older adults
in two Kentucky counties.
T1 A woman has to feed her family Statements and materials pertaining to the
role of the woman as the food provider
for the family. Includes the idea that it is
the woman's job to provide food for her
family through direct food production
or using "butter and egg money" to buy
staples.
T2 We have to make it on our own Statements and materials pertaining to the
value placed on self-sufficiency, people
should produce their own food, home
produced food is better.
T3 The younger generation doesn't know Statements and materials about the
how to make it on their own concern expressed that the "younger
generation" has lost the skills to make it
on their own. Less self-sufficient.
T4 Men are helpless Statements and materials pertaining to the
notion that men, especially widowers,
can't take care of themselves. That men
are not supposed to be able to cook or
garden.
TS Lard is fattening, Crisco is not Statements and materials expressing the
notion that margarine and vegetable
shortening are less "fattening" than lard
and butter. Also includes the ways in
which people have changed their diet as a
result of this belief.
T6 "I don't hardly eat what I used to" Comments on changes in appetite with
aging. Belief that appetite has declined.
T7 "Hardly worth cooking for myself" Comments that cooking for oneself alone
is not worth the effort.

In the development of codes for themes, writing and documenting the

operational and conceptual definitions for codes is even more critical for
analysis. It is the definition that contains the essence of the meaning of the
theme; it is a critical part of the analysis.
When is the development and application of indices and coding over?
Probably never. As Ottenberg (1990) has observed, ideas and concepts re-
lated to a particular piece of fieldwork continue to develop even after publi-
cation of the materials takes place. However, at some point, either the time
runs out (the paper is due, the publisher's deadline has arrived) or more
properly the analyst comes to see that sfhe is experiencing "diminishing
192 Chapter 10

returns" -not many new ideas are coming to the fore-and the analyst
starts to write. The bulk of coding is probably over (for the moment). Typi-
cally, though, we find that we continue to go back to text and "code" during
the writing process. Again, as we will note again later, all of these activi-
ties are iterative and the analysis that can only take place as the researcher
writes the argument sometimes requires a return to the data, even recoding
materials.
Finally, again, the goal of data reduction is to take a large amount of tex-
tual data: written summaries of observations and conversations, and iden-
tify and describe patterns of activities, behavior and ideas; and describe the
range of variation in these phenomena. The identification and application
of codes and indices are one of the ways in which we organize data in order
to find patterns, identify diversity, and develop descriptions.

Coding for Characteristics

If the analyst is using a computer-assisted approach to indexing and cod-
ing, it is easy, and a good idea, to code field notes for the characteristics
of the venue, the people involved in the activity (age, gender, status, etc.),
the type of activity (e.g., conversation, interview, observation, participa-
tion), and any other characteristics that will make it easier to sort materials
later. Bernard and Ryan call this "structural coding" (Bernard and Ryan
2009:76). It is extremely easy to do with computerized qualitative data
analysis programs. Because in the study of older adults we had some initial
hypotheses regarding gender differences, differences between people who
lived in town as compared with the unincorporated areas of the counties,
and between people from different counties, we also coded field notes for
the characteristics of people and areas where that was possible and appro-
priate. In this particular project there were three ethnographers, and, as we
were using computer assisted coding (primitive as it was in 1990), we also
coded whole field note entries for the ethnographer who wrote them, and
the county in which she was working. This allowed us to sort text retrieved
from the notes by ethnographer, county, and so forth, to aid in data display
and to allow us to compare across venue and person.

Managing Coding and Indexing

The physical act of coding and indexing can be carried out in a number of
ways. In the days of handwritten or typed notes, categories and codes were
noted in the margins of notes. Researchers often made several carbon cop-
ies of field notes. The pages of notes could either be kept in chronological
order and shuffled through each time the analyst was looking for a code or
s/he could make multiple copies and file them by codes. If a page of notes
 Analyzing Field Notes 193

had several codes, it would end up copied into several folders. Alternatively,
the analyst could cut up pages into pieces of text and file them that way.
With multiple copies of notes, cross-coded text could be placed in different
folders for major codes and categories for retrieval. Here, keeping a log of
the notes and the codes assigned for a particular set of notes made retrieval
more efficient. One of the variations in this procedure was the one we em-
ployed in our early fieldwork Using cards with holes in the perimeter al-
lowed us to code and retrieve text with specific codes (mainly based on the
Outline of Cultural Materials) a bit more easily than shifting through pages
of field notes. In our earlier work, the advent of Indecks cards allowed for
limited cross coding and retrieval by punching out holes in the margins of
cards and using needles to hold back the pages that did not contain data
with a certain code.
Now most researchers code and retrieve data using one of the CAQDAS
programs noted above. In the current versions of these programs, indexing
and coding take place on the screen by blocking chunks of text and attach-
ing categories and codes to them. The analyst can attach codes and create
new ones simultaneously. Pieces of text are automatically retrieved when
the analyst uses the program to search on the codes and categories. We have
been longtime users of NUD*ISf, and now NVivo. Figure 10.3 contains
output of the NVivo coding of a section of text from the field notes found
in the appendix.

Word Searches
CAQDAS programs also allow for searches for particular words or phrases.
This has several advantages for the field note writer and analyst. First of
all, when writing field notes the writer can imbed words or phrases in the
notes to assist in word searches. Alternatively, the analyst can search on
particular words and phrases that are likely to be near text with informa-
tion of interest. In the study of older adults, we were able to speed up some
parts of indexing by searching on the names of particular foods and on
the word "garden." In research in Ecuador we used the term "machismo"
enough that we can identify most of the text that refers to the concept as
it is understood by Manabas in our field notes. Carrying out word searches
can be a useful, quick, but not foolproof, first step to indexing and coding.
We recommend word searches only for analysts who know their text well.
First of all, unless the field note writer is careful when writing notes to use
words that can serve as objects of searches, a word search may not yield
all of the appropriate pieces of text. For example, it was easy to search on
"green beans" and "canning" to find references to putting up green beans,
but not possible to know what to search for to look for the idea that women
are the food providers in rural Kentucky. Perhaps, more importantly, there
194 Chapter 10

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e.bouttheirhusballds. We had a 1.5 or eo min. talk about en inmmiage. How~Roa bed
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she a!ld he haw seellycome t!lllldmtallliiJI6s. Now when she cbsn't want tl 'llaw Jelaci.ones;
he \1dl11111il she cbs. She S&JIIIIbat ifhe ever lftllltd tl go tl another woman she I101Ild say.
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oDe. Broken him in. Oot him t11111dmte.Ni her e.littlt. She cbsn't Rill to haw tl go tluough
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Rose. bpi illsiltuatiDglhllt lhe libd sex. J-le11eo. 1-!Jll J11111 t1 be moze collllidemte of
I
her she said when she 81arted b 'cuiduse' (teke caze ofhemelf: 111e bi.J:Ihcontml) with what!
thillk.she eX}ie.ined ee l1le rh)thm method. She gaw me a fairlydellliled expanalilm ofwben

I
- ni aDd 1lllllfe times b haw sex. She Aid that she got Jngllllllsewml times UliJ16 Ibis
methld, bcsthea- tizneswbe!IJ11&11aid, Oh Idon't caa. Ha \ftll\'tat Ill ee cautiow or
thollghtf\llasshe zeptdillg the 111111i1erof chihen theymighthava. SheAideometimes he just
didn't want to ~~~tar a condom at cllulgelous times or her didn't want b lftit. But she Aid that he
has lee.med patim;e. She \liOn't ever let him lab adYanlage of her she Aid. She's had tiD 1111JCh
experina. I eeMd them what lbt a woman ell if she wan1ll b haw sex and her men cllesn't?
Doeuhelbn:e himorgooutlcoltillc forsomeonenewm? Theylngh. Rolt.18J111110,no.
1 - •JII•he WD11ldn't go fore.nolllermanbczadultuyis uin. lln'tituin wbeu manclles
it, I eek? Well, theysay. 'El hollim hace Jo que desea.' The man gets to ell what he wants.
But wi.thJ-alld11Ja11,JQ11116tellsme, they haw arriwdat e.p».ntwbeze theyatpeeteach
othar aDd~~ go with anyone else.
The light is so pettywbere Roa lis aDd I teD beri want blab berpw;,to. 11111 ee I am about t1
click it she opemberlegs wide ina ldlymiiCOw gestw. alldscmmswith laughter. She and
J - think its hyllericalalldtheybothwant tllab pw;,msor 01llllelws in eo~
co~ p!litions. I -p.Juua's pw;,b while she is lavghq hJIIIIericllly: They laugh ewn
balder at that. A. if it thea is eomelhill6 risq1lli ebout her leaghillg 'llllConlmD.~ lettmg 1cose
perhapt. Then tbeysemm, atd,auatd,au. Juana tebstbe camematdlthowherhowb do
it aDd as I go tl crouch cllwn at the hillside aDd gather the botbm of my elms togelller, she -P'

Figure 10.3: NVivo coding of a section of text.

is a strong temptation to use word searches rather than read field notes and
examine text in its original context. Again, the REAL analysis takes place as
the analyst reads through materials in context in a thoughtful and question-
ing way. Pulling out 33 chunks of text that contain the word "bean" is not
a substitute for examining and reexamining the text in context.
To be clear, what the CAQDAS programs do is ensure that the researcher
makes the categories and codes explicit, assist in the management of co-
debooks and indexing systems, and streamline the retrieval of text. The
programs do not find patterns, provide insights, or "build theory." These
are the activities of analysis that take place in the mind of the researcher.
 Analyzing Field Notes 195

II
it With wllo bows what exposed. Tbayeruptinpaels ofle.uglderudlam~ ilo bczl
t.lllt.lilllt amazedet tbtse 're•Mid' WOIIIIl\ ~it up deep in tlle finest Dill 1110 OM will
fbdus.
We talbd aboutlliiUIIwommnlatioDshipiDIDft gemUly. J-saJIS lbat she lnlly~M~Iks at
opan collllllunict.tion with her husballd ud her children. She t.hft,s tells them she Willis them
to tell her iftheyue in 11M with so1111011e. Aid ifshe cen help ill allY Will' or give advice, she
will.

1 - tells ualbat Clm. &piiiOza, fiolll Glla}'llquil, muried t1 a IMII tumed Evugelill, his j1llt
fiMilysepuatedmm him. She ilokajob inafe.ctnyend!Ms withiiDIIlelliilillgs. She his
Wiq rights tl her son everr-Jr.mi. Tba breakup wu aablt e111011gh. end tlle door ill open
if she Wll1llt tlrtlllm. AlldcOII\IIllfl:om Catholiciem. J-saJIS lbat Clm.ill thinkiDg about
goil!gto ~to. She doem't Willi! t1 stayiiiOua)'llqUil. Roa cen't believe tba!CIIIIIIItfther
111111, J-onlyjustfblmdoutftom L~ajiNitzday: I don'tk1110whowthe E~Jino='s Ael
about it. I wmder aloudhowC!aa lilelsaboutleaYiDgaiiiOtherofherchildml. J-•:lll that
when C1art had tmiso1 with P1111o !be coupe had lived tlgetber 6 mos But it didn't work olll.
TbanClaralltDWd with babyMarMo! to Quit~, wilert she worked as a mOlina homa. Manso!
bumedherselfbadlyendit WIISdiftbllt for Clara to take cart ofber tbere. Ma!isollmllback
1mne tlliw with ber gralldpanlllll ill La Colonia. Paulo never mllyrecopiad Mlrisol as his
child- I think her , _ it &Jilma.
Mariso1 boVIll he it her birth father bill !beydon't bave anykird of special relelioNI:Iip. She j111t
cOIIIi.clers him like 'anyothar guyill the slleet.' When Clm. married !be cumllllseparated
husbard, ud Wll1lltd to tab Mlritol with her t1 Oua}'llqui~ her OWII part IIlii \1~0\~ldn't let her.
'Theyhldgron acc111tomed to raisiDg Marisol.' Tbaywouldn'tgive herupud Mlritolcalls
them, her grtlldpuelllt, mom aDd dad.

r
As...., Wlllbd out of the plallla, I tried to get Rosa b talkalittlt bit more about hernlalio!IWp
with her husballd. She tlld me lbat 'llilenshe was~ endDe'lftymmied, she DtW ~
aboutanythillg. •x orotherwilla. She lww how to cook end iron. She ~~eveupob with herOWII
kidsabolllsex. Blll1he endJ-said lbat they«<waJII talbdamollgSt tbewelws, in groups of
womell,aboutanykirdof•nallhillg. Alld1110wRosa aidherkidfendshe art more opan. I
asked Rosa wllatsbe collliders herhiiSblmd, ie it he aftiand, her best tiierd. She seidclaro lbat
he is a~~ amigo, billa parlic1llar killdbcz he lives inmyhollle. I Mid, oh. 'Elesllll puticulu.'
We«<llaughedendshe seidiiiO,IIIOiaparticulube- he ill the only 0118 whoshaJeS mybed.
So I asked, lliOle lib a socia, end she agrted.
We passed two lillla girls upina!Deand.luanacalledolll t1 them, 'pajuos!' aDd aid time,
'whydoll't}'OUfab a}ilotoof tbtse pee»us little birds.' O~~tofthamdidn'twalllherp.:m
taken aDd Juana bpi coaxiDg her »look et !be camera with stlries of wi~hesalld bigger birde.
1 - Will acting so neely. ltwu rtally:IIOIIItthiDg.

Figure 10.3: NVivo coding of a section of text. (Continued)

CAQDAS programs are not unlike the programs for the statistical analysis
of data that perform the calculations for the tests designed by the researcher
and provide summaries for data display. Even in statistical analysis using
packaged programs, the researcher decides what data will be used, designs
the coding scheme, codes data, chooses the specific tests to be used on the
basis of theoretical and conceptual decisions made early in the project,
reviews the data displays, and draws conclusions and interprets the data.
A final note on indexing and coding of participant observation materi-
als: because of the nature of field notes, as summaries of the experiences
in which the researcher has engaged during a particular day, indexing is
probably going to be more important than coding in the analysis of field
notes. Coding is a more common activity when the researcher is working
with interview transcripts and other documents. Coding and indexing can
196 Chapter 10

(and should be) fun. Perhaps not as much fun as doing the participating
and observing in the first place, but the process of reviewing and abstracting
is intellectually rewarding. Developing and applying categories and codes is
not an aid to analysis, it is analysis. It is the principal tool we use to build
theories and arguments drawn from our data.

DATA DISPlAY

The second kind of activity involved in analysis is the display of data. Orga-
nizing and presenting data visually in an effective format allows the analyst
to review a large amount of data efficiently, make comparisons, summarize
patterns, draw conclusions, and present an effective argument. It is also the
way in which the data supporting arguments will be presented to a wider
audience in written reports and publications. The researcher could review
all the field notes in chronological order, anytime sfhe wants to write an ar-
gument and include all of the field notes (or transcripts, etc.) as appendices
to the written product, but this is not very efficient or effective. There are a
number of more efficient and effective ways to display data from field notes
for further analysis and presentation. In general, the researcher uses direct
quotations from notes or transcripts, development of vignettes or cases
drawn from the data, tables, matrices, or flow charts to aid in organizing
materials and developing conclusions.

Quotes
When coded textual materials are retrieved, either as slips of paper (ouch!)
or as text on a computer screen, they are quotations. Pieces of material from
field notes are quotations from the text created by the researcher or, when the
researcher has captured conversations verbatim, the words of participants and
informants. When the analyst retrieves text associated with particular codes,
the first display the analyst looks at is a series of quotes, all of which have
been assigned to the same categories and code(s). Sometimes this is as far as
data display will go. Depending on the amount of material, the researcher
may be able to see patterns and draw conclusions from organized pieces of
text. The materials are summarized in written form and the researcher may re-
produce a series of representative quotations to illustrate a summary concept
or conclusion. Using quotations is more effective if they are drawn from the
words of participants. Hamilton (1998) has very effectively used the quotes
of informants in her work in highland Ecuador. She writes that:

In my attempt to identify relevant behavior and discover its meanings . . .

I found that the most reliable information often emerged from sustained
 Analyzing Field Notes 197

observation and from thematic conversational currents that reappear through-

out the course of personal relationships. Rather than abstract this informa-
tion, I have attempted to place readers literally on the scene to experience
concretely, as I did, the interplay of cooperation and conflict within marital
partnerships; the balance of power between women and men in household,
kin group, and community; the valuation of women in these groups; and the
perpetual constructing of valuation from material and ideational bases. In
framing narrative passages that are relevant to gender-and-development policy
issues, I have allowed a great deal of space for my informants to express them-
selves and for the unfolding of daily life. (Hamilton 1998:32)

She quotes extensively from her informants, but puts these into a context
that explores the issues in which she was interested. Philippe Bourgois
(1995} also uses extensive quotations from informants very effectively to
support his arguments.
Quoting passages of field notes in publications is rarely seen, unless the
notes include verbatim quotations from informants. Field notes, as we have
noted, are themselves already several levels of analysis removed from the
events. Just writing them up as descriptive passages is usually sufficient.
Quoting one's own unpublished writing is not particularly effective.

Vignettes and Cases

A less direct, more abstracted way of presenting data is to develop vignettes
or cases drawn from descriptions found in field notes. In the case of using
vignettes or cases in analysis and presentation, the analyst builds a descrip-
tion of an event, activity, or person drawing the description directly from
field notes (or other materials if other methods are also used). For example,
sample 1 in the appendix contains a description of a dance. There are sev-
eral descriptions of events in these notes that could be used as vignettes
illustrating the relationships between men and women in the community.
In sample 2, the description of a meal served at Mrs. L's house could be
reproduced as a vignette in an ethnography.
Researchers frequently use descriptions of individuals and households
drawn from a variety of materials to summarize common features and illus-
trate variation within communities. When coupled with survey data, cases
or vignettes can be selected to flesh out or illustrate the variation found in
quantitative data. Vignettes or cases are built by reviewing all of the mate-
rial regarding a particular event, activity, or individual, listing it in a table,
and then writing a summary description.
Studies of legal systems frequently include detailed descriptions of cases
as their outcomes drawn from observation and documentation. Bailey's
classic study of political activity and change in a region of India uses cases
to build much of the argument. He reported that "whenever possible I have
198 Chapter 10

tried to present a case or a dispute, and to use it as a text, to comment upon

it, and from the commentary to extract regularity and structure" (Bailey
1960:15). From Bailey's perspective, the advantage ofthis method is that
"it allows the reader some kind of check on these abstractions, not by the
test of internal consistency only, but also by relating the analysis to what
goes on" (1960:15).
Bourgois (1995) builds his argument principally on the basis of case
studies of individuals, vignettes, and quotations drawn from transcripts of
audiotaped interactions (both informal and more structured interviews).
In describing how young people are pulled in drug dealing, he draws on
several years of observation of a young man he calls Junior:

Candy's son Junior was the first boy I watched graduate into crack dealer sta-
tus. When I first asked him at age thirteen what he wanted to be when he grew
up, he answered that he wanted to have "cars, girls, and gold chains-but no
drugs; a big roll [of money], and rings on all my fingers." In one of those con-
versations Junior even dreamed out loud of wanting to be a ·cop."
As the years progressed, Junior became increasingly involved in Game
Room activities. Literally, before he knew it, he became a bona fide drug
courier. He thought of it as simply "running errands." Junior was more than
eager to be helpful, and Primo would send him to pick up ten-dollar packets
of powder cocaine from around the corner, or to fetch cans of beer from the
bodega two doors down .... Before his sixteenth birthday he was filling in
for Caesar as a lookout.... Soon Ray promoted him to working ... as a
permanent lookout on weekends .... Although Junior had dropped out of
school, by this time ... he was a strict teetotaler.... By the time I left New
York, Junior had begun dabbling in substance abuse, primarily smoking
marijuana. (265-67)

Bourgois's description of Junior's progression into drug dealing provides

a rich template for understanding the process for many young men and
women in El Barrio. He is then able to contrast Junior's case with several
others that share similarities and show some differences, to illustrate both
the commonalties and the variations in the process.

Tables and Matrices

Tables and matrices are developed from the descriptions in field notes ar-
ranged into cells and categories. For example, in the study of older adults
we were interested in differences between men and women. We were able
to summarize our observations of men and women by creating a table with
columns for men and women, with the rows representing various catego-
ries, such as attitudes and work associate with gardening, food preservation,
and transportation.
 Analyzing Field Notes 199

In work that Bill and others have done, they essentially constructed a
series of categories relating to development among indigenous people in
Latin America. From accounts of other researchers' experiences with these
development projects, counts were made of those characteristics of projects
that made them successful or unsuccessful (Roper, Frechione, and DeWalt
1997). In this case, the "field notes" being analyzed were actual published
descriptions.
CAQDAS programs can generate summaries of codes and indices and
the connection among them, including what codes occur together and how
often. When the researcher includes characteristic (structural) codes, the
occurrence of themes can easily be cross-tabulated by the characteristics
of the venue, time, community, and the individuals with whom the re-
searcher has spoken. Coding summaries are very helpful in the generation
of hypotheses.

Charts
For activities and events, a time sequence flow chart that presents the tasks
involved in a particular activity can be constructed. In our study of women's
cassava processing cooperatives in Ecuador, we know that men and wom-
en's associations processed cassava into different products that required dif-
fering amounts of labor. We also knew that men and women had different
goals for their associations. Men said that they wanted a market for their
cassava and women wanted opportunities for wage labor. The differences
between the kinds of activities carried out by men and women in cassava
processing became very clear when we mapped what we had learned of the
two processes into a flow chart, which can be found in Figure 10.4 (Poats
and DeWalt 1999).
Time flow charts are also useful ways of presenting local histories and life
histories. Reviewing our own notes over ten years and listening to women
talk about their view of the history of the association we were able to de-
velop a chart of the history of the association (Figure 10.5). Reviewing this
chart, we would like to make several points:

• Each of the "phase names" is actually a code for a theme that was ab-
stracted from our notes and conversations and seems to characterize
the phase of development with which it is associated.
• The events listed under each phase are abstracted from a large amount
of material on the activities taking place at each time period. Materi-
als were drawn from observational field notes over a decade, but also
from association documents and oral history accounts collected from
members and consultants. We coded text for time and activity, and
organized the material by retrieving text associated with them.
200 Chapter 10

CASSAVA FLOUR-Men CASSAVA STARCH-Women

Harvest roots Harvest roots

Jj. Jj.
Transport (truck) Transport (truck/ animal)
Jj. Jj.
Receive roots, weight and pay Receive roots, weigh and pay
Jj. Jj.
Slice ("picadora") Peel
Jj. Jj.
Jj. Grate
Jj. Jj.
Jj. Wash
Jj. Jj.
Jj.
Jj. Stir
Jj.
Jj.
Jj. Sediment tanks
Jj.
Jj.
De-water
Spread on cement floor Jj.
Jj.
Remove in layers
Rake and dU (two days) Jj.
Spread and crumble
Sack Jj.
u Dry (one day)
Weight and record Jj.
Jj.
Store Sack
Jj. Jj.
Transport to Union Weight and record
Jj.
Jj.
Sell Store
Jj.
Transport to Union
Jj.
Sell
Figure 10.4: Comparison of processing steps for preparation of cassava flour and cas-
sava starch.

• The flow chart provides a visual representation of the process for a

reader. However, more importantly, the process of abstracting the
materials into a chart helped us to see connections between different
kinds of data, come to grips with contradictory materials, and place the
materials in an overall analytical framework. The act of building the
chart was part of the analysis.
 Analyzing Field Notes 201

Figure 10.5. Phases of development of the San Vicente Women's Cassava Processing
Association.
Phase 1: Organizing the Group
• Started with banana flour-small scale supported by Ministry of Agriculture
• External motivation by other women's groups and donors
• Membership: 45 women w/ little experience
• Members were older women, single mothers, daughters
• Organizationally was successful
• Economically was a failure-no market, credit, or income

Phase II: joining the Cassava Union

• Half of members drop out

• Cassava union accepts women's petition to join
• Members make decision to process starch-requires adaptation of family-based
production to a micro-enterprise
• Production was profitable
• Had difficulty in interactions with "socios" (men) in Union and technical team
• Had perfunctory participation as recipients, not decision-makers

Phase Ill: Disenchantment

• New industrial starch market volume up, quality down

• Union shifts away from consumption market to industrial
• Decrease in income/profits for women
• Men's associations begin to process starch and flour
• Women participate in identifying possible solutions to problem

Phase IV: The Pilot Plant

• Women received funding to develop a "pilot plant" for technified cassava starch
production
• Objective: increase scale while maintaining quality (value per unit) and absorbing labor
• Members take on role of researchers in collaboration with local university students
and faculty
• Year of learning-low profit but high interaction with Union leaders and outsiders
• learning experience concentrated in leaders

Phase V: Scaling Up

• Starch demand increases

• Union economic difficulties
• External technical assistance ends
• Indonesia dumps cassava pellets in Columbia and destroys Ecuador market
• Women seek their own technical assistance and win prize and funds to invest
• leadership changes-some of the long-term early leaders are replaced

Phase VI: Going It Alone

• Direct marketing independent of Union
• New projects and participants
• Re-shaping the Union
202 Chapter 10

Decision Modeling
Creating formal models of decision-making processes abstracted from field
notes and transcripts represents a specific use of the flow chart approach
(Bernard 2006; Bernard and Ryan 2009; Gladwin 1989; Miles and Huber-
man 1994a; Werner and Schoepfle 1987b). In decision modeling, events
are organized by the choices that must be made and the conditions that
appear to affect those choices.
Young (1980), for example, drew on field notes and formal elicitation
to construct a diagram of the factors he viewed as affecting the particular
choices residents of the community of Pitacuaro made as they sought to al-
leviate illness. In developing an understanding of how decisions are made,
constructing the model from observation, interview, and formal elicitation
is usually only the first step. Initial decision-making models are better seen
as hypotheses that need to be tested using data collected from a represen-
tative sample of informants engaged in really making the decisions. After
developing the model, Young observed all of the health decisions for a
sample of households over the course of several months to see if the case
studies observed fit the model.
Figure 10.6 presents a combination of case study and decision flow chart.
In a study of the factors that affect the ways in which mothers of young chil-
dren make decisions about what foods to serve, carried out in a rural county
in Kentucky, we interviewed a sample of mothers. Figure 10.6 is a decision
flow chart drawn from an interview with a single family. In chart form, it
depicts the factors that appear to influence this mother. From the chart,
we see that her concerns include trying to meet the food preferences of her
husband and children, concerns with the healthfulness of their diet, and
concerns over the cost of food and maintaining a budget. This particular
chart can be compared with causal flow charts drawn from other families.
It is a causal flow chart drawn from a single case.

INTERPRETATION AND VERIFICATION

The third process in analysis of data is interpretation and verification. It re-

fers to the development of ideas about how things are patterned, how they
fit together, what they mean, and what causes them (description, interpreta-
tion, explanation), and then returning to the data to verify that those ideas
are valid, given the data available. Drawing conclusions and attempting to
verify them takes place at every stage of the research process. It begins when
research begins. Early in the research process the researcher begins to have
ideas (hunches) about how things fit together, what is important, what
things mean. In participant observation, by its nature iterative, hunches
become hypotheses for verification and even further investigation while
 Analyzing Field Notes 203

placating husband is importan\ .

lat•ooh~-·•~•

i
/ / 12% milk meat and potatoes are served

health and diet are related~ilk Is healthy milk is served

don't vegetables are healthY----;> vegetables are served

eat at greasy pia
applesauce and macaroni and
cheese are served

convenience~eatout T
taste is lmportan~ I
snacks children like sldedishes, such as
/ m7acaonl and heese, applesauce

placating children is importan

Figure 10.6: Decision model of meal decision making.

the researcher is still in the field. Researchers change research questions and
design throughout the project in response to ideas and hunches developed.
Developing new categories and codes for coding and indexing field notes is
part of the process and also begins early, as new ideas and concepts surface,
become clearer and can be supported by observation and texts.
Every new hunch or leap must be treated like a hypothesis. As ideas
about meaning, cause, connection, and patterns develop/emerge, they are
treated with skepticism (Miles and Huberman 1994a). They are also treated
reflexively, with the analyst examining his/her ideas, not only against the
materials sfhe has collected and recorded, but also against his/her possible
bias in both data collection and interpretation. While still in the field, this
may be a prod to look for outlying cases that do not fit as neatly with the
preliminary conclusions, or to expand the range of informants outside of
the researcher's initial circle.
Where do hunches come from? Early in the research process, they
come from theory. Most of us begin with research questions and hypoth-
eses drawn from theory and previous research. Later, they come from
the research experience and then from reading and rereading notes and
204 Chapter 10

transcripts. Researchers begin to see (or think they see) patterns and con-
nections early in the research process and they continue to look for these
patterns throughout the research process.
Hunches also come from the process of the constant validity check, or
in Agar's (1986) term, "breakdowns." In talking about breakdowns, Agar
is referring to those experiences in which the participant observer sud-
denly realizes that something is not what sfhe expected. They are different
from the expectations that the researcher brings from his/her own cultural
background, or they are different from the model of the context that the
researcher has been developing. A bit like a paradigm shift in the Kuhnian
sense (Kuhn 1962), the breakdown experience requires the development
of a new view of the phenomenon. "Expectations are not met; something
does not make sense; one's assumption of perfect coherence is violated"
(Agar 1986:20).
In Agar's approach, the process of developing ideas and testing them
against experience is a process of developing interpretive or explanatory
schema, experiencing breakdowns and seeking new resolutions which re-
sult in the development of new schema. One of the dilemmas he and others
note is that when a resolution is reached, the issue tends to be relegated to
the "solved" pile, and our consciousness moves on to another issue.
As fieldwork progresses the ethnographer becomes less reflective about
earlier encounters. The informants may also become less informative be-
cause they assume the ethnographer knows more. To continue the process
of revising the conceptual landscape, every researcher has to continue to
try to see the world with new eyes. In part, this is accomplished by con-
tinually going back to questions and trying to fit in new information, and
again, looking for people and activities that are likely to challenge the
conclusions.
Researchers like Mead routinely reviewed their field notes and other
materials in the field looking for outstanding questions, inconsistencies,
and breakdowns. We believe that there is no reason NOT to begin to code
and index materials while in the midst of field research. The process of
developing and assigning codes and categories is also part of the process of
developing preliminary conclusions.
There are a number of caveats, however. As we noted above, it is com-
mon to lay aside a conclusion once it is developed and go on to newer ideas
without continually reexamining the first one. However, continual reexami-
nation is an essential component of checking one's conclusions against the
real world data. First conclusions, often reached early, can be hard to throw
away in the face of new and contradictory data. Bernard (1995) cautions:

Early in fieldwork, eagerness and observer expectations can lead to seeing

patterns that aren't there. If you are highly self-critical, then as fieldwork
 Analyzing Field Notes 205

progresses your tendency to see patterns everywhere will diminish. But the
problem can also get worse as research progresses if you accept uncritically
the folk analyses of articulate and prestigious informants. (361)

He goes on to suggest a strategy he calls the "constant validity check,"

which relies on continually moving back and forth between ernie and etic
thinking, critically examining the researcher's conclusions in light of local
understandings and local understanding in light of the overall data. It in-
cludes five elements:

1. Watching for disagreements among knowledgeable informants;

2. Checking informant accuracy whenever possible by checking against
more objective data (logs, texts, records) and other informants'
narratives;
3. Welcoming evidence that does not fit the pattern or the hypothesis in
order to assess intracultural variation, identify "holes" in the data, and
ultimately reformulate hypotheses;
4. Continuing to look for alternate explanations for observations, espe-
cially ones that seem to contradict "common wisdom"; and
5. Trying to fit negative cases into theory and hypotheses by reexamining
and reformulating theory. (This usually requires reexamining the data
to "test" the new hypotheses.)

During data collection, it implies that the researcher is continually look-

ing for materials that challenge as well as support preliminary hypotheses
and early conclusions. After data collection has ended, it means carefully
considering all of the collected materials and building an argument that
accounts for the greatest part of them. It also implies the continual reflex-
ive examination of the researcher's original ideas, probable biases, and the
limitations placed on comprehensive data collection by the characteristics
of the researcher.

AUDIT TRAILS

The concept of the audit trail has become popular in writing about the
analysis of qualitative data in several disciplines, especially in educational
and health related research. It apparently entered the literature on qualita-
tive research methods through the writing of Guba and Lincoln (Cutcliffe
and McKenna 2004). They were concerned about the issue of "confirm-
ability" in qualitative research. Their concern included a desire to reduce
the amount of observer/researcher bias in research. In order to assess con-
firmability and the extent of observer bias they argued that a third party
206 Chapter 10

should be able to examine the data and the ways in which it was analyzed
in order to:

ascertain whether the findings are grounded in the data-a matter easily de-
termined if appropriate audit trail linkages have been established ... reach a
judgment about whether inferences based on the data are logical, looking care-
fully at analytical techniques used, appropriateness of category labels, quality
of interpretations ... the auditor will wish to make an assessment of the degree
and incidence of inquirer bias. (Lincoln and Guba 1985:323)

An audit trail is a detailed description of the research design, data, codes,

coding strategies, changes in codes, and application of codes to text, which
would allow a third party to make an assessment. The Robert Wood John-
son Foundation ( 2010) has been promoting the development of audit trails
for qualitative research in health. They define an audit trail as "a transparent
description of the research steps taken from the start of a research project to
the development and reporting of findings. These are records that are kept
regarding what was done in an investigation." Audit trails are roadmaps to
all of the decisions made in collecting and coding textual materials.
The inclusion of an audit trail has become standard practice in propos-
als for qualitative research in health disciplines. In part we believe it is the
result of a need to assure confirmability to review panel members in fund-
ing agencies who are unfamiliar with evaluating research that proposes
qualitative research methods. Cutcliffe and McKenna (2004} suggest that
the adoption of audit trails in nursing research may have come from a kind
of "physics envy" in nursing. Just as nursing research began to come into
its own, it also began to incorporate more qualitative research methods.
"In the middle of this paradigmatic struggle, some qualitative research-
ers sought to convince their quantitatively oriented peers of the value of
qualitative methods" (Cutcliffe and McKenna 2004:129}. They argue that
rather than trying to eliminate bias from research, which we have argued is
impossible, that researchers should acknowledge their biases. Cutcliffe and
McKenna conclude that the use of audit trails, especially by expert qualita-
tive researchers, may be an "exaggeration of the case for method" (126} in
nursing research.
We actually take a middle ground here. We agree with Cutcliffe and
McKenna that the detailed audit trail called for by the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation and others is an overformalization of a process and
method that contains many tacit subjective elements. We know that all re-
search is biased, and attempting to establish a highly formalized approach
to documenting analysis seems to us to deflect attention from the very na-
ture of qualitative research as an approach that relies on intersubjectivity for
its strengths. However, several of the steps in data analysis that we and other
researchers recommend do regularize the way in which we, as qualitative
 Analyzing Field Notes 207

researchers, approach our data. We strongly recommend formal analysis of

textual materials, including the development of codes and codebooks with
conceptual and operational definitions, which are updated regularly. We
recommend the tracking of updating. We recommend the keeping of meta-
notes, whether this is done in a type of field note file or using the memo
feature of the programs for the analysis of qualitative data that document
ideas, hypotheses, changes in coding procedures, etc. All of these are ele-
ments of audit trails. We also see the usefulness of record keeping when
more than one researcher and/ or coder is working with data.
In the analysis of qualitative data, the development of an audit trail
is sometimes related to the establishment of interrater reliability in the
coding and analysis of textual data. In chapter 7 we discussed the issues
of reliability and validity in participant observation research. While there
are issues of reliability in the over design of research, in the collection of
materials and the writing of field notes, there is an additional and some-
what separable issue related to the analysis of field notes. Once notes are
recorded and codes established with both conceptual and operational
definitions, different coders using the same codebook and the same set of
data should be able to attach the same codes to the same pieces of text and
come to the same conclusions about the data. One can compare the coding
of two or more coders and calculate the extent to which they agree. This
is a measure of "interrater reliability." While solo researchers rarely have
a second or third person code their data to establish interrater reliability,
projects with multiple researchers and multiple sets of data often do so. In
the Two County Project in Kentucky there were three researchers contribut-
ing field notes to the project. In this project we did hire coders who worked
from our established codebooks, and we did examine interrater reliability
by double coding samples of the field notes. The calculation of interrater
reliability is also more common in health related research. Again, it is, in
part, the result of the need to provide a more detailed description of how
qualitative research will take place and how the reliability (and hence the
validity) of a set of methods will be established when seeking funding
from agencies more used to assessing proposals using only quantitative
data. The examination of interrater reliability in the coding of textual data
has a long history and should be considered even when a solo researcher
is conducting research.

WRITING UP

When does the process of drawing conclusions and verifying them end?
Again, the real answer is probably never, but at some point there are fewer
new "breakdowns," the data support the conclusions, or the remaining
208 Chapter 10

questions are either not so important or will form the basis of the next
research project. Now is the time for writing up.
The goal of all research is reporting results. That is, writing the arguments
and presenting the supporting materials to the best of the researcher's
ability, in ways that respond to theoretical and practical concerns of the
researcher and the discipline. In fact, a good deal of analysis takes place
during the writing process. It is in the building and supporting of written
arguments that much of the organization of materials takes place. So, at
what point should writing begin? Wolcott (1999) says "it is never too early
to begin writing" (200). Wolcott has presented an excellent summary of
four possible indicators for when to start writing. Because he says this far
better than we could summarize, we have quoted his four indicators ver-
batim. He writes:

It is time to start writing if you have not begun to write, yet you feel that you
are not learning anything sufficiently new to warrant the time you are invest-
ing. Start writing up what you already know. Such writing should not only test
the depth of your knowledge but should also help you to identify areas requir-
ing attention or warranting study in greater depth. That is also why writing is
best initiated while you are in the field or still have easy access to it.
It is time to start writing if you have not begun to write but you realize that
you will never get it all and the possibility has crossed your mind that you may
now be using fieldwork as an excuse for not writing. You would be better off to
begin making sense of data already gathered than to bank on suddenly becom-
ing a more astute fieldworker. If you are serious about turning to writing, this
very moment is the time to begin, not tomorrow or the day after that.
It is time to start writing if you have not begun to write, but you have
convinced yourself that after attending "only a couple more" big events, or
investigating "only a couple more" major topics, you will begin. If you feel that
you are that close to getting started, then there must be certain topics about
which you are already well informed. Start by addressing those "comfortable"
topics, rather than putting the writing task off for a few more days (or weeks,
or months). Remember that the point at which you begin organizing and
writing need not mark the end of fieldwork. Far more likely, turning attention
to organizing and writing may help you focus your fieldwork efforts during
whatever time remains.
It is time to start writing if you have not begun to write, yet you realize that
you are now at the midpoint of the total time you have allocated for complet-
ing the study. (Wolcott 1999:199-200)

Years ago, Rosalie Wax offered cogent counsel about apportioning time for
writing in Doing Fieldwork: Warnings and Advice (1971 ):

It is a horrid but inescapable fact that it usually takes more time to organize,
write, and present material than it takes to gather it.... The sensible researcher
 Analyzing Field Notes 209

will allow as much free time to write his (sic) report as he spent in the field. If
he is really astute and can get away with it, he will allow himself more. (45)

Some researchers do feel that it is hard, in fact almost impossible, to

start writing in the field (e.g., Ottenberg 1990). They feel too dose to the
material, too enmeshed in the scene to step back and take a more objective
stance. We believe that reestablishing an objective stance is one of the rea-
sons to begin writing. Part of what Wolcott and Wax mean when they talk
of writing and organizing is to begin the process of analysis. In our terms,
we call this coding, displaying, and interpreting data. When possible we
begin the process of writing as we begin to develop codes for themes, index
categories and sort by characteristics, develop preliminary ideas and conclu-
sions and fit pieces of data together. We take advantage of the closeness of
the field to begin this process, and fill in gaps. However, even when writing
begins while fieldwork is still underway, the bulk of writing will take place
after the researcher leaves the field. For the final analyses, it probably is nec-
essary to have the added objectivity of being away from the field in order to
finish analysis and write the most objective and balanced account possible.
Writing up materials, whether the write-up takes the form of conven-
tional published books and articles, or reports to those who commissioned
research, is not only important to the development of one's career as a
professional, but is also part of the ethical conduct of research. When we
bother people for information (and they agree to be bothered), we are
also making the commitment to make that information available to the
scholarly and policy communities. We told our informants we would do
this, we promised the granting organization we would publish, we own our
employer a report, so we have an obligation to do so responsibly.
We have emphasized in this chapter that, as with many of the other ac-
tivities related to participant observation, the analysis of field notes is an
iterative process. We find ourselves constantly reading and rereading our
field notes. Each time we do so, we find new themes, new questions, and
we are reminded of events, places, and perspectives. In addition to empha-
sizing the constant rereading of field notes, this chapter has also presented
a number of methods for helping to organize, categorize, and review field
notes. Just as with any other type of data analysis, three sets of activities oc-
cur in analyzing field notes-data reduction, data display, and conclusion
drawing and verification. We have presented various schemes for indexing
and coding field notes so that data retrieval is easier and quicker. We then
moved on to means by which field notes can be used to further analyze
data. We provided examples of using data displays, using quotes, present-
ing cases, and decision modeling. All of these are means to take the data
from participant observation and to begin to put it into a published format.
We have also discussed very formal ways of documenting analytic decisions
210 Chapter 10

in the development of audit trails. In the next, and last, chapter we will
again examine and expand on some of the critical ethical issues related to
participant observation.

NOTES

1. The analysis of interview transcripts and other documents follows the same
three kinds of activities, and is similar to the analysis of f!eld notes. In this discus-
sion we will emphasize those aspects of analysis that are more closely linked to
field notes.
2. It is for this reason that we also believe it is important to audiotape and tran-
scribe interviews, even informal interviews if at all possible. While the act of inter-
viewing also is an act of data reduction, as the researcher is always influencing the
content and flow of the interaction, it is preferable to capture people's real words,
rather than recording the researcher's further reduced summary of the interaction.
3. For us, thematic codes are codes for ideas that come more directly from our
observations and the words of our informants. For Bernard and Ryan (2009) the-
matic codes include both of the activities we call indexing and thematic coding.
 ~11~
Ethical Concerns in
Participant Observation

Ethical considerations span the life of every ethnographic research project.

Researchers must be aware of the ethical considerations of research from
the point at which they choose the question to be asked, through the choice
of a population in which to study it, the methods to be used to collect data,
the recruitment of informants, and publication. Fluehr-Lobban (1998)
reviewed the overall ethical issues relating to ethnographic research, and
that publication is recommended to the reader. In addition, the American
Anthropological Association and the American Sociological Association
both have comprehensive statements concerning the code of conduct for
research, including qualitative and participant observation research (Ameri-
can Anthropological Association 2009; American Sociological Association
1999). The full text of both of these statements can be found on the cited
web pages.
Both the AAA and ASA codes use as their starting point the principle that
the researcher must respect the rights, lives, attitudes, and opinions of the
people they are studying. The AAA code makes it clear that the safety of
people with whom the researcher is working has the highest priority, su-
perseding any scientific goals. Codes of professional ethics not only point
to the need to protect the rights of subjects, but also the reputation of the
profession as a whole, and, for anthropologists, access to field settings by
other anthropologists.
There are a number of specific issues in conducting ethical research using
participant observation and we will discuss those that we feel are central to
the method. The issues we want to address here are 1) the need for compe-
tency; 2) the meaning of informed consent; 3) protection of confidentiality;
4) maintaining relationships; and 5) ethical publication.

211
212 Chapter 11

NEED FOR COMPETENCY

The ethical conduct of research (American Anthropological Association

2009; American Sociological Association 1997; Fluehr-Lobban 1998) re-
quires that the researcher be sufficiently trained to carry out research not
only ethically, but also competently. At the most basic level, the idea here
is that we should not be pestering people with badly designed or poorly
carried out research. As we will note below, a researcher has a responsibility
to publish the results of research, and those publications should be accurate
and fair. It seems axiomatic that badly done research is unlikely to be ac-
curate. When participant observation is used as a method, and even more
so when it is the principal method, the considerations of competence are
heightened because the researcher is the primary research instrument. As
Fluehr-Lobban, speaking to anthropologists, specifically, notes:

If an anthropologist has had little or poor training for the field, it will be
difficult for him or her to resolve the everyday dilemmas that are part of
the practice of the discipline. For example, the anthropologist may not have
been well prepared as to the social and political environments of the people
to be studied. Or the anthropologist may receive funding from a public or
private foundation without having fully considered the conflicting demands
and responsibilities between funder and people studied. During the research,
when the field situation changes and the anthropologist's position becomes
ambiguous, the art of negotiating and repositioning oneself resolves to ethical
principles and choices. ( 1998:173)

Competency for ethical research has several components. The first is to

obtain adequate training before beginning an independent research project.
At a minimum, before undertaking unsupervised or minimally supervised
research an individual should

• Know how to formulate a worthwhile question;

• Know how to design an effective project, understand research meth-
ods, and know how to implement them effectively; and
• Be able to analyze and interpret the data collected.

For the use of participant observation as a method of research, this also

means knowing how to enter a new setting and develop effective field re-
lationships. As we noted when discussing the method, it also means being
attentive to the situation, knowing when to step back a bit, and how to
listen; and, finally, how to leave the setting in such a way that subsequent
researchers would find a receptive community.
Ideally, new researchers should have the opportunity to carry out research
under supervision in order to get their research skills to the level at which they
 Ethical Concerns in Participant Observation 213

can carry out a project competently (and, hence, ethically) without supervi-
sion. For those using participant observation, this means practicing getting into
settings, participating and observing, and recording field notes under circum-
stances in which the new researcher can talk about problems and concerns,
discuss ethical issues, and have their field notes reviewed. For those who train
new researchers, this means not tossing a new investigator into a setting with-
out adequate training and backup. It is not only bad practice to inflict an inad-
equately trained neophyte on a community, but also it puts the researcher,
the community, and the discipline in jeopardy. The professional codes of
both the AAA and the ASA recognize this as an important ethical concern.
Second, the researcher should have considered the basic principles con-
cerning the conduct of ethical research before beginning the project. When
choices have to be made, there is often little time or resources available to
carry out an in-depth analysis of ethics from scratch in the field (American
Anthropological Association 2009). As Fluehr-Lobban points out, "matters
of ethics are an ordinary, not extraordinary" part of the research experience
(1998:173}. Working knowledge of ethical principles and how to apply
them is as fundamental as theory and methods. They need to be considered
in design. Researchers need to spend time reviewing professional codes of
ethics, developing an internalized sense of the meaning of protection of
human subjects, and considering alternative strategies for addressing some
of the more common ethical questions that arise in fieldwork. Again, it is
the responsibility for those who train new researchers to make such training
available in a meaningful way.
Third, in order to be a competent researcher, the participant observer
should have prepared him/herself to anticipate as much of the specific so-
cial and political issues that might arise in any particular research setting.
Seasoned researchers returning to research sites draw on their previous
experience. For the new researcher or an experienced researcher moving
to a new site, this means reviewing previous research and other materials
available about the site and similar sites. In general, we do this routinely as
part of our scholarly preparation for research but we believe it is useful to
stress there is an ethical as well as scholarly imperative to understand the
field site as well as possible before getting there.
Finally, we will say it again: there is no substitute for feeling and showing
respect for the people with whom the investigator is working. Participant
observation works best when there is true rapport between the researcher
and members of the community. The code of ethics of the ASA and the
AAA both include the basic principle that researchers must "respect the
rights, dignity, and worth of all people" (American Sociological Associa-
tion 1999:4). A researcher who truly respects the people with whom s/he
is working is more likely to participate in the research context in a way that
maximizes the success of the project as a well-done piece of research.
214 Chapter 11

THE MEANING OF INFORMED CONSENT

IN PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

Participant observation as a method raises the greatest number of ethi-

cal questions with respect to informed consent and the right of people to
choose to participate in research of any of the methods usually applied in
fieldwork. While it may be clear to most individuals who are being inter-
viewed using structured interview schedules, or whose interviews are being
recorded in some way, that the information resulting from these activities
will be used in the research carried out by the fieldworker, the activities car-
ried out during participant observation are less clearly so. The fieldworker
is traveling alongside community members, participating in events, work,
leisure activities, hanging out. Community companions will probably not
be fully aware that the fieldworker will faithfully record an account of these
events as soon as possible and that this will form a set of data for analysis.
Even if a fieldworker makes it clear that sfhe will "write a book" or report
on his or her experiences, informants may not realize that what they share as
"gossip" during informal conversations may form part of this report. Field-
workers rarely recite their informed consent script during an afternoon's
conversations carried while swinging in hammocks, or while drinking a beer
in the bar after a day's work, or while in bed with a lover. In fact, if infor-
mants were always consciously aware of our activities as ethnographers, the
information we acquire would be less rich. We want people to forget, for a
time at least, that we are outsiders. We want to develop sufficient rapport
and to have them become so comfortable with us as community participants
that they will trust us and share insights and information that only insiders
would know. We regard this as the strength of our method. It also requires
that we assume an extra burden for protecting our research participants. For
this reason Lugosi (2006) argues that ethnographic research is always in a
luminal state between overt and covert research.
Punch ( 1994) agues, quoting Ditton ( 1977), that participant observation
is inevitably unethical "by virtue of being interactionally deceitful" (Ditton
1977:10). That is, it is by its nature deceptive. We have all been impressed
by the degree to which our informants will suspend a conversation or
interaction to remind us that the topic about which they are speaking is
important, and to make sure that we will put it "in the book." But it is more
often the case that the informants "forget" that casual interactions may
form part of the data to be used in analysis. However, we would character-
ize participant observation as ethically challenging rather than suggesting
that participant observation is inherently unethical. We believe that we can
conduct participant observation ethically and within the guidelines fol-
lowed by most Institutional Review Boards for the Protection of Human
Subjects (IRBs).
 Ethical Concerns in Participant Observation 215

Respect for persons requires that subjects, to the degree that they are ca-
pable, be given the opportunity to choose what shall or shall not happen to
them. This opportunity is provided when adequate standards for informed
consent are satisfied. The 1991 version of Title 45 Part 46 of the Code of
Federal Regulations defines informed consent as "the knowing consent of
and individual, or a legally authorized representative, able to exercise free
power of choice without undue inducement or any element of force, fraud,
deceit, duress, or other form of constraint or coercion" (Code of Federal
Regulations 1991).'
The basic concept is that people have the right to freely choose whether
to participate in a research project or not. In order to make that decision,
they need to have a reasonable understanding of both the risks and the
benefits of participating in the research project. In addition, as we will note
below, people have a right to privacy.
The most fundamental principle, then, is that people have a right to know
that they are the subjects of a research project. In participant observation we
actually hope that at some moments the research nature of the relationship
can be made less explicit. However, as we have noted in previous chapters,
we feel that there are important ethical considerations when the researcher
takes on a covert role. Again, people have a right to know they are being
studied, and they must have the right to refuse to participate. The notion of
"informed consent" was added to the AAA code of ethics in 1995 (American
Anthropological Association 2009; Fluehr-Lobban 1998). We believe this to
be true even when the researcher is committed to complete anonymity of the
people with whom sfhe is working. This is not to say that in research there
is no ethical wiggle room. The nonparticipating observer, standing on the
street comer anonymously observing, does not have to wear a sign saying,
"Be informed! I am a researcher." Observation in public places is generally
not thought to be covered under informed consent. Observational research
in educational settings is not usually considered to require consent.
Similarly, when a person responds to a questionnaire or formal inter-
view, he or she is generally thought to be aware that they are participating
in research. Respondents know that they do not have to answer questions,
whether or not they are asked to sign a consent form or consent is obtained
verbally. Under the Title 45, Part 46 of the Code of Federal Regulations
( 2009 ), research with minimal or no harm and for which the data collected
cannot be connected to identifiable individuals is eligible for a waiver of
informed consent.
In fact, at several different institutions, we have found that getting ap-
proval to use structured and semistructured interviewing using a spoken
script and verbal consent has not been problematic. However, neither of
these situations characterizes participant observation. Here the "interviews"
are more like conversations. Even when individuals are in public places,
216 Chapter 11

research participants are likely to view the nature of the interactions be-
tween themselves and the researcher as private. The Code of Ethics of the
American Anthropological Association directly addresses informed consent
within the context of ethnographic research:
4. Anthropological researchers should obtain in advance the informed consent
of persons being studied, providing information owning or controlling access
to material being studied, or otherwise identified as having interests which
might be impacted by the research. It is understood that the degree and breadth
of informed consent required will depend on the nature of the project and may
be affected by requirement of other codes, laws, and ethics of the country or
community in which the research is pursued. Further, it is understood that the
informed consent process is dynamic and continuous; the process should be
initiated in the project design and continue through implementation by way of
dialogue and negotiation with those being studied. Researchers are responsible
for identifying and complying with the various informed consent codes, laws
and regulations affecting their projects. Informed consent, for the purposes of
this code, does not necessarily imply or require a particular written or signed
form. It is the quality of the consent, not the format, that is relevant.
5. Anthropological researchers who have developed close and enduring re-
lationships (i.e., covenantal relationships) with either individual persons pro-
viding information or with hosts must adhere to the obligations of openness
and informed consent, while carefully and respectfully negotiating the limits
of the relationship. (American Anthropological Association 2009:3)

Fluehr-Lobban (1994, 1998) following the AAA code of ethics, also ar-
gues that the spirit of informed consent can be met without the mechanis-
tic, formalist approach of getting a signed consent form from informants
during ongoing fieldwork. However, this dynamic, nonformal approach to
the spirit of informed consent places a heavier burden on the researcher to
be relatively sophisticated about analyzing situations and arriving at ethical
decisions about how research will be carried out in any particular setting.
It also raises the risk of a paternalistic approach to protecting the rights of
our informants. There can be a tendency to argue that the risks to commu-
nities and individuals are so small as to be negligible, and that the nature
of the relationships built up during participant observation are inherently
nonexploitative. Further, we can sometimes truthfully argue that obtaining
informed consent is a barrier between the researcher and the community.
There is a danger that we might take the position that we know the com-
munity so well, that we know what's best for our informants; further that
we can protect their rights, without full disclosure of the research. We feel
that this is a hang-over of the old "my village" thinking of colonialist social
science (Fluehr-Lobban 1994, 1998; Harding 1998). We certainly know
naive and not-so-naive researchers (see Whyte and Whyte 1984) who did
not anticipate the problems to be experienced by the people with whom
 Ethical Concerns in Participant Observation 217

they worked after the materials were published. We also know that some
informants and research communities cannot themselves anticipate the
potential consequences of publication as well as the researcher.
In chapter 2, in the section on getting into a research setting, we dis-
cussed the need to make research goals clear to the community and to
obtain community permission to carry out research. This is clearly the
first step. However, we feel that the researcher should occasionally remind
people of the research nature of the relationships. Taking notes in public at
least some of the time may be a way to do this. Some researchers routinely
audiotape interactions, even when they are informal and on the street. The
researcher also needs to be continually aware of the ethical implications of
what he or she is hearing and taking notes on.
The principal of informed consent not only includes disclosure of the
goals of research, but also the honest assessment of the researcher as to the
risks and benefits of the research to the people participating in it. How do we
assess risks and benefits? The issue of benefits is, perhaps, the easier one to
address. In general, in basic ethnographic research, the benefits to individuals
and even specific communities are minimal. The main benefits accrue to the
discipline and to the investigator. Our usual answer to people when they ask
about the benefit to them, and they do ask, is that essentially there is none.
We will tell their story as fairly and accurately as we can, but no material gain
is likely to come from this research. However, the benefits are also generally
not zero. We have noted that people generally like telling their stories. They
often like having someone interested enough in their lives and their commu-
nities to spend significant time participating, observing, and listening. Just as
we have heard anthropologists talk about "my village," we have heard people
in some communities talking about "our anthropologist."
In some applied research settings there is the potential for direct benefit.
The community will be included in a project, or specific resources will be
made available, or the community can use the analyzed data group to its
advantage. However, many case studies of programs or evaluations will have
a much more important benefit for the design of future projects than to the
participants in the current research. Under any circumstance, the potential
benefits, or lack of them, should be clearly articulated to participants.
The risks of participating in research are a bit harder to assess; but the
researcher has the responsibility to the best of his/her ability and knowl-
edge to assess the potential risk. In general, in participant observation risks
are also minimal. We are not "doing" anything to people in the way that
a medical researcher, for example, might. We see the potential risks as ( 1)
stress related to discussion of difficult or sensitive topics, (2) failure to pro-
tect confidentiality with respect to sensitive information, (3) disclosure of
illegal activity or sensitive information to authorities, and (4) unanticipated
results of publication.
218 Chapter 11

All forms of interviewing have the potential for resulting in the experience
of stress by informants, especially when the topics being investigated are sen-
sitive. While fieldwork may include formal interviewing and questionnaire
use, in ninterviewing" in participant observation the researcher is usually
following the lead of informants and engaging in a more conversational ap-
proach. The researcher does have the obligation to judge whether any par-
ticular line of conversation is causing discomfort or stress, but in general, our
informants just stop talking about subjects they do not care to share.
Failure to protect confidentiality is very serious and we will discuss it
in more detail below. However, breaches of confidentiality can be inad-
vertent when the researcher is ngossiping" with informants. Individuals
can be harmed by the disclosure of sensitive information, even when the
researcher does not actually name them in a conversation.
During the process of debriefing (for example, reporting at a national or-
ganization about the results of research) and publication, a researcher can
disclose information that causes the intervention of local and extra-local
authorities in a community or group. The researcher may not anticipate the
negative impact of information. However, again this is an issue that needs
careful consideration. The researcher needs to make the likely venues and
types of publication known to the participant in research. Some researchers
share materials with their communities before publication.
A final note about informed consent: it is often the case that participants
in our research do not really understand all the potential for harm their
participation might carry even when we explain it. There is a large literature
from clinical research that shows that participants in clinical trials often
minimize the risks of participation, even when the process of informed
consent lists all of the potential risks in detail. One of the classic ethics
cases provided by the American Anthropological Association tells the story
of a researcher whose participants did not think it was important to use
pseudonyms for the community or the individuals. They wanted people
to know who they were! While the risks are usually mostly at the level of
possible embarrassment, it may still be incumbent on the researcher to pro-
tect identities even when permission is given to use names of people and
places, if sfhe does not feel the participants can assess the full risk While
this sounds paternalistic, we would argue that it is wiser to err on the side
of confidentiality (see below).

RIGHT TO PRIVACY

In addition to informed consent, federal guidelines for research with hu-

man subjects also recognize the primacy of the right to privacy of partici-
pants in research. This means that every effort possible must be made to
 Ethical Concerns in Participant Observation 219

protect the anonymity of people and sometimes of communities if they so

desire. The Code of Ethics of the AAA says:

Anthropological researchers must determine in advance whether their hosts/

providers of information wish to remain anonymous or receive recognition,
and make every effort to comply with those wishes. Researchers must present
to their research participants the possible impacts of the choices, and make
clear that despite their best efforts, anonymity may be compromised or rec-
ognition fail to materialize. (American Anthropological Association 2009:4)

The code recognizes that anonymity can always potentially be compro-

mised. Confidentiality is important at several levels. At the community
level, the researcher often has information about people that the partici-
pants do not want shared with their neighbors. It is critical that researchers
do not share information or gossip with community members, even when
their informants are sharing gossip, or asking for some. We spoke of the
need to maintain confidentiality for the sake of rapport. There is also an
ethical imperative to do so.
Sometimes breaches of confidentiality are inadvertent. Recently a rela-
tively young researcher, working in an indigenous community in the Andes,
inadvertently compromised one of his informants with another community
member. In this cultural setting, information about household resources
and possessions is carefully guarded. People, in fact, attempt to deceive their
neighbors about their possessions. The researcher was living with a family of
informants in an urban setting. In the process of testing video equipment,
and with the family's permission, he videotaped their farm, located some
miles outside of town. The tape included views of their small sheep flock and
dairy herd. Several weeks later he was testing out video replay equipment in
another household and inadvertently popped the tape into the video play
back machine in a neighbor's home. The neighbor became very interested in
the tape, making comments about the size of the flock and herd and the size
of the farm. He would not allow the researcher to remove the tape until it was
finished. This was bad enough, but when the researcher returned to the home
in which he was staying, his host noticed the tape and asked if the neighbors
had seen it. The researcher acknowledged that they had. His host essentially
threw him and his possessions out of the house for what he perceived to be
a breach of confidentiality, effectively ending their relationship.

ETHICAL CONDUCf OF PARTICIPANT

OBSERVATION IN ONLINE SETIINGS

The conduct of research in online settings, whether the research is carried

out with CMC or as an avatar in a virtual world or MMORPG raises some
220 Chapter 11

of the same ethical issues regarding research as conventional face-to-face re-

search; and some different ones. Researchers debate whether news groups,
list serves, chat rooms, blogs and such are "public" places for which the
participants might expect that their communication would be observed;
whether the communications posted on the internet can be quoted directly;
whether the online personas should be protected; and to what extent in-
formed consent should be sought and how to do so (e.g., C. Allen 1996;
Boehlefeld 1996; Boellstorff2010; Constable 2003; Hine 2000; King 1996;
Reid 1996; Sanders 2005; Thomas 1996; Waskul 1996).
Sanders (2005) conducted a study of the online sex industry in Britain.
As part of the research she "lurked" covertly on several message boards
used to connect sex workers with clients. She argues that revealing her
presence would have altered the behavior of the participants and provoked
hostility toward her. She also believed from observing the message boards
that participants knew that "outsiders" were observing the site. She further
argues that the anonymity of the Internet on such sites, on which most
participants use pseudonyms, is already protected. The issue for Sanders
arises when the researcher wishes to quote CMC without the authors' per-
mission. Constable (2003), on the other hand, was overt about the nature
of her research when participating in CMC. She was also careful to request
permission for direct quotes from CMC sites.
Boellstorff (2010) was completely open with other participants in Second
Life about his role as a researcher. He even had an online informed consent
form and used pseudonyms for the avatars with whom he interacted, even
though, even he acknowledges that to some extent, he was protecting the
confidentially of fictional characters, who might actually be controlled by
someone with a different gender, ethnicity, and experience than the avatar,
and, even, might be controlled by more than one person. Reid (1996) re-
views the concerns with informed consent on the internet and concludes
that they are quite similar to those raised for non-internet-based research,
with the caveat that internet participants may be even more likely to under-
estimate the potential harm to themselves with publication.
Hine (2000) argues strongly that researchers conducting research with
CMC need to be full participants in order to truly understand the nature
of the phenomenon they are investigating. Being a full participant for Hine
means being overt about the research role. She writes:

To participate in a newsgroup without revealing one's role as a researcher

would, as in all cases of covert ethnography, pose a considerable ethical prob-
lem. Arguing that online interactions are sufficiently real to provide a context
for an ethnographic study has an ethical corollary: online interactions are suf-
ficiently real for participants to feel that they have been harmed or their privacy
infringed by researchers. (Hine 2000:23)
 Ethical Concerns in Participant Observation 221

While a number of writers suggest that the internet is a public place, it

seems to us that we should carefully consider the ethical issues related to
observing CMC as a lurker and participating in MMORPGs as a covert re-
searcher. There is an ethical gray area here that will receive continued exam-
ination over the next few years. For us, these kinds of research activities are
more similar to conventional, face-to-face research than they are different.
The issue of downloading archived CMC materials for analysis in order to
quote directly from CMC (which can be construed as published material)
without attribution or citation is a problem, and requesting permission to
quote would inevitably bring to light the research role (Hine 2000).

ETHICAL PUBLICATION

Decisions about what to publish, and how to publish, are also ethical
choices. Whyte (Whyte and Whyte 1984) reminds us that once published,
much of our work can be put to unintended use. That is, although we are
interested in research questions for scientific and/or humanistic purposes,
others may find the studies of use for other purposes. The lines between
intended and unintended uses can, of course, sometimes become blurred.
It has been alleged, for example, that some of the early research of an-
thropologists was done in the service of colonialism (Magubane 1971). In
addition, during the days of the Cold War, there were many concerns that
village studies being done by anthropologists could be used for counterin-
surgency purposes (I. Horowitz 1967).
It is possible that, keeping in mind the primary priority of not harming
participants in research, researchers might make the decision not to publish
some of the data they have collected. We have often, for example, become
privy to illegal activities of some individuals in communities in which we
have worked. We are careful to never write about these activities in a way
that could be tied back to any one individual, and generally do not include
these activities in our publications unless the information is directly rel-
evant to the research question.
Ethical publication should respect the general principal of doing no
harm to our research subjects. In general, by maintaining anonymity of
the people we study we are able to manage this fairly well. We do recall,
however, reading an ethnography of a community near one in which we
did research in which we were surprised to find a photograph with a cap-
tion that read something like: The Nastiest Woman in the Community. (For
obvious reasons, we will keep the name of the ethnographer anonymous.)
It is important to emphasize that ethical questions surround not only
the published information we provide but also relate to our field notes.
222 Chapter 11

We would like to comment on two issues. First is the ethical question con-
cerning the public taking of notes. Taking notes openly, at least part of the
time, reinforces for participants that what is being done is research. The
participants in Bourgois's crack research knew he was "writing a book," and
his open taping of interviews and even conversations on the street made it
clear to participants what was on the record and off. In fact, they sometimes
suggested that he tum on his recorder when he turned it off. For us, openly
taking notes, or taping events, alleviates some of the concern that partici-
pants lose awareness that they are participating in research.
The second issue has to do with preserving anonymity for participants
identified in field notes. Not only is there the potential that can field notes
can be subpoenaed, governmental funding organizations such as National
Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health are becoming increas-
ingly concerned with research integrity and falsification of data in funded
research. They are demanding that primary data be available for review by
others. Universities such as our own have developed policies concerning
research integrity of nonfunded, as well as funded, research in which data,
including field notes, would be available for inspection by review boards
should allegations of a breach of research integrity be alleged.
Anthropologists have on occasion gone to jail to protect the identities
of their informants. However, some concern with the protection of the
identity of informants in field notes can help to alleviate these problems.
While most internal review boards for the use of human subjects require
that all questionnaires and transcribed interview data be stored without
names, field notes have always constituted a gray area. With computeriza-
tion, however, it becomes relatively easy to assign code names or numbers
to participants and use these from the outset or use the global search and
replace facilities of word processing programs to expurgate real names from
field notes. The research integrity policy statement for the University of
Pittsburgh, for example, now suggests that real names be expurgated from
field notes against the possibility that they will be requested by others.

RElATIONSHIPS

Relationships developed in the field also present ethical dilemmas. Ethnog-

raphers actively attempt to become accepted into the research community, to
develop close relationships, and to identify with the group they are studying.
Although some anthropologists do continue to return again and again to the
same research communities (see Foster et al. 1979), relationships with com-
munities and people are almost always much more transient (Punch 1994).
While many informants become true friends, such friendships are difficult to
maintain when the anthropologist is thousands of miles away.
 Ethical Concerns in Participant Observation 223

Anthropologists need to be aware of the implications of relationships

and obligations that they incur in the field. Many anthropologists, for ex-
ample, enter into fictive kinship relationships in order to find a place in a
community. Katherine Lutz (1988) became a ndaughter" to fit into Ifaluk
society. She discussed the benefits and costs to her research of this rela-
tionship. Assuming this kind of relationship has a number of implications
and adds a series of responsibilities for the anthropologists, these should
be carefully considered before the identity is accepted. Becky Ross, whose
story forms one of the ethical case studies published by the AAA (Cassell
and Jacobs 1997), was nadopted" into a family as a daughter and grand-
daughter. When it became necessary to assume the responsibilities of a true
granddaughter and care for an elderly ngrandfather" she did it, at personal
expense (loss of precious field time), until the biological grandchildren
were available to take over.
Like many other anthropologists who have worked in Latin America, we
have been asked on many occasions to become godparents for children of
people with whom we have worked. Godparenthood in Latin America has
been extended to many occasions, so that there are godparents chosen for
confirmation, fifteenth birthdays of girls (an important coming of age cel-
ebration in many communities), marriages, school graduations, and so on.
We considered being asked to be a godparent for any of these occasions to
be an honor and a sign of our acceptance in the community. We also have
come to realize, however, that it also implies a certain level of continuing
responsibility to these children and their families. This is particularly the
case when asked to be a godparent for baptism. Although we have made
good efforts to maintain godparent relationships begun during our field
research in Temascalcingo, over time it has become more and more dif-
ficult to do so. In subsequent research, we have generally declined to take
on the role of godparent because we know that we will be unable to fulfill
the obligations implied.
Even when the relationship is not intimate or familial, it may present
ethical dilemmas. As part of research with older adults in rural settings in
Kentucky, one of the places Kathleen and her collaborators nhung out"
in order to get a better understanding of the problems confronting older
adults was the senior citizens' centers. Here they chatted with the program
participants, rode the transportation vans, and ate the meals provided by
the centers. All of the participants and the program staff knew that the
researchers were studying food and nutrition problems in the communi-
ties. When the regional senior picnic was planned for a recreation area
near Central County, the researchers were invited to attend and arrived
with the participants from the Central County Senior Center. They ate box
lunches, participated in the auction for such goodies as fried apple pies
and home canned vegetables and pickles. Much of the afternoon was spent
224 Chapter 11

in competitions among senior citizens, including walking races, baking

contests, and other activities. One of the contests was an extemporaneous
speaking contest. Judging was to focus on originality and eloquence of in-
dividuals who were given a topic on which to speak. However, there were
no obviously unbiased potential judges. Most of the people at the picnic
were participants or staff of individual centers. Kathleen and one of her
collaborators were asked to be judges. Although protesting that they might
be biased toward the contestant from Central County, they agreed. During
the introduction of judges, the Central County Senior Center Director intro-
duced Kathleen and her co-researcher by saying: ni would like to introduce
two people to whom we have become very close over the past few months."
Kathleen's heart sank because she realized that the project was nearing its
end and that she was not prepared to maintain a long-term relationship
with the center and participants after the project was over. Realizing the
implied commitment to the community in the director's words, she began
to develop a plan to put more distance between herself and the residents of
the center. Avenarius (Johnson, Avenarius, and Weatherford 2006) found
that after taking a particularly active role in the Chinese community, it was
quite difficult to "leave the field" at the end of the research period.
Over the years we have developed strong personal relationships in dif-
ferent places and with different people. While we have tried to return as
often as possible to communities we have studied to let individuals know
we still think of them, this has not always been possible. Good intentions
to correspond have rarely been possible to maintain. Whenever possible,
we do make short visits to the communities in which we have worked
previously. For both of us and for the people with whom we worked, these
visits are always bittersweet. We, and they, realize that the daily interactions
we once shared are not likely to occur again. The message is that while the
fieldworker is almost always transient, we must recognize that this tran-
sience may not be the expectation of those individuals who become our
informants.

ETHICS AND THE LIMITS TO PARTICIPATION

Another issue relates to the nlimits to participation" that we have discussed

in previous chapters. That is, to what extent should a researcher intervene
in a situation in which their own ethical and moral codes are challenged?
We noted that Good, while working with the Yanomama, chose at one
point not to intervene in a rape and in a second instance did so. Scheper-
Hughes chose to virtually kidnap a young man from njail" in order to get
him to medical treatment after he had been punished by the community
in which he lived. In research with the Northern Kayapo of Brazil in 1976,
 Ethical Concerns in Participant Observation 225

at that time still a group of seminomadic horticulturists, members of the

biomedical team with whom Kathleen was working were asked to provide
a humane (medical) way to end the life of four-year-old child profoundly
affected by Down's Syndrome. The physicians declined, even though they
knew that the now again pregnant mother could not carry both a new in-
fant and a disabled four-year-old with her. They also knew that infanticide
was acceptable for severely handicapped children in that culture and the
most likely outcome of their refusal would be that the child's life would be
ended in a more painful manner.
There are no easy answers to these kinds of dilemmas. In fact, many eth-
nographic researchers believe strongly in some level of relativism in values
and culture and, concomitantly, in some level of ethical relativism. And, as
we have emphasized earlier in this book, we believe that the effective use
of participant observation requires that researchers respect the culture and
values of the communities in which they work Researchers have to arrive
at solutions through a process of careful thought and the weighing of the
values of noninterference in community culture and values, and personal
ethics. We believe that the researchers will have to live with themselves
longer than with the study community.
Romantic relationships with our informants is another extraordinarily
gray area in terms of the limits to participation. As we have emphasized
earlier, because of the generally large differences in power, status, wealth,
etc. of anthropological researchers and people in the communities they
study, we do not believe that it is wise to enter into such relationships. The
potential for exploitation is much too great.
The number of potential ethical dilemmas in doing field research is large.
Review of the case studies and commentary by professional anthropologists
available on the ethics page of the web site of the American Anthropologi-
cal Association (American Anthropological Association 2009) can help in
thinking through some of these issues, but the choice of action ultimately
has to be that of the researcher.
Our discussion of ethics in doing participant observation has been in-
tended to alert the researcher to the kinds of issues he or she might face. By
no means have we tried to provide a prescription for solving every ethical
dilemma, a task that would in any case be impossible. The AAA Code of
Ethics makes it clear that no researchers can anticipate all of the possible
ethical dilemmas that might arise, and that the key is to be trained suffi-
ciently in ethics to be able to work through those that do arise.
Instead we have emphasized the need for competency of the researcher,
being as well-prepared as you can be before beginning a study. This, of
course, includes thinking through some of the potential ethical dilemmas
that might arise. Among the most important concerns for someone doing
participant observation is what we have called the meaning of informed
226 Chapter 11

consent. As we have indicated, this does not mean that we have to inform
everyone with whom we speak that we are doing research. We should,
however, not engage in covert research and take every opportunity to re-
mind the community and the people in the community that we are doing
research.
In terms of protection of confidentiality of the people we study, we
need to be sensitive to the issue both in terms of maintaining confidences
in the field as well as in our published materials and unpublished notes.
Being alert to the kinds of problems and issues that might arise in terms
of maintaining confidentiality is critical. Ethical publication, in particular,
means that we need to attend to both the potential uses and abuses of our
research results.
We close with a discussion of the ethical difficulties that arise from enter-
ing into and maintaining relationships. Participant observation is a method
that opens up great potential for building strong and intense relationships
while doing research. Just as we have to be conscious of appropriate ways of
entering the field, we also must pay attention to leaving research communi-
ties. Once again, the principle of doing no harm is a good one to follow.

NOTE

1. A more comprehensive discussion of informed consent in the 2009 Code of

Federal Regulations expands the basic definition into a number of components. The
fundamental issues in informed consent are that the participants know:

• they are subjects of research, what the general aims of the research are, and
what research methods will be used;
• what, if any, are the risks of participating in the research;
• what, if any, are the benefits of participating in research;
• that they are not obliged in any way to participate and can end their partici-
pation at any time;
• that the information collected about them is confidential and the researcher
will take actions to ensure confidentiality and anonymity.

All of this must be in understandable language.

 Appendix:
Sample Field Notes
from Three Projects

SAMPLE FIELD NOTES 1

The first set of sample field notes 1 are drawn from the study women's social
power and economic strategies in Manabi, Ecuador. They are the work of
ethnographer Loren Miller. Here she reports on a single day of fieldwork in
one of the four study communities. There are several points we would like
to illustrate with these notes.

1. The discussion of sex and marriage related in the first part of these
notes was experienced during a walk to visit the cassava processing
plant. The ethnographer did not anticipate this particular discussion
at this time and did not have her notebook handy.
2. The level of detail recorded regarding the conversation, the actions
of the women, their reactions to each other, and their behavior and
nonverbal communication allows the ethnographer, and even the
noninvolved reader, to evaluate the meaning of the event.
3. In the description of the dance in the community of La Villa, Miller
records a detailed description of the venue, the people who are there,
the ways in which people are dressed, and the activities that take
place. Even a reader who has not observed the event can derive a feel-
ing of immediacy and "being there" from the description. Certainly,
it will evoke a dear memory for the ethnographer herself. If this event
is important in building an argument later, the description in the field
notes will need little editing.
4. Miller describes her role in the event, as well. Later she may use this
information to understand how her presence influenced the particular

227
228 Appendix

way in which the events unfolded. She records the reaction to her
outfit, especially her shoes, in such a way as to highlight the expecta-
tions people from the community have for appropriate dress for these
events.
5. Miller mixes different types of notes in her field notes. While most
of the text is descriptive, she includes some passages that could have
been included in a diary, and she has inserted analytic notes in the
text, as well. She could have put these different types of note in dif-
ferent files, but she can sort them out later should she choose to. Or
she could assign "type of note" codes to them during analysis; or she
could place the analytic notes into memos or meta-note files.

La Colonia
Loren Miller
22 August 1998
General gender; Sex talk with 2 sodas; La Villa dance
Wrote field notes in the morning, took a post lunch break to ride horses and
take photos with the family and Carlos's family. At lunch Susana sat down next
to me with her bowl after everyone was served and had nearly finished, as is
more and more our practice. She had the chicken feet in her caldo (soup). I
asked her why the women always eat the chicken feet, because the night of
the July La Villa dance Nelly Reyes ate the chicken feet at her brother's house,
Rosa Vera also eats the chicken feet. And with relish. Susana told me because
they're the best part. And those who prepare the food get to eat them.
Was supposed to go to the new cassava processing plant with a group of
sodas, Juana and I each thought the other would inform them. It wound up be-
ing just Rosa P., Juana and myself. I went without notebook, only my camera,
as I'd had no intention of taking notes. We 3 wound up having one of the most
frank discussions I've yet had. I don't know if it was bcz of the lack of pen and
paper, or bcz we were out in the forest with no one at all around us, or bcz I've
by now gained a level of confidence and people are feeling even more open
since I'm leaving. Also the nature of the survey, ie reproductive history, also
might have opened a door. In any case we walked up long the road through
Valentine, passed the plant equipment. We finally came to the 3rd barbed wire
fence on the right, with a wooden gate, and went in. The herbs [weeds) were
really high but there was a path. Rosa said she had never been there.
We were headed to the well, to check out it's condition and see what sort
of minga (communal labor exchange) would be needed to clean it. We passed
a small stream; Juana explained that that was where the cassava runoff went
to. We walked about 8 min and finally got to a place which was so overgrown
that we couldn't pass. We had by then given up, and were standing around
chatting, making jokes, saying we needed to come back with machetes. I took
a photo of Rosa. Then Rosa said she didn't want to go back there, bcz 'they'd
rape us.' I asked who, were there crazy people back in the forest? She said
no but women alone in the forest-"peligroso" (dangerous). I said the three
of us together, no one will rape us. I'll hit them with my camera. We were
 Appendix 229

all laughing and Juana said, you know we were raped. 'Uno nos ha violada.'
I didn't quite get what she was talking about, and she kept repeating it, say-
ing, 'we've been raped.' Finally Rosa whooped, 'con gusto.' Juana was talking
about their husbands. We had a 15 or so min. talk about sex in marriage. How
young Rosa had been when she married, 15, didn't know anything about sex.
Freaked out when she saw her husband without clothes. But she kept saying
that she liked sex. But Juana said that sometimes a woman doesn't have 'el
deseo.' And she has to have sex anyway (with her husband). Because if she
doesn't, 'he will go off and find someone else.' Juana finally said how the first
time that 'yo fui con Juan,' [I was with Juan] it was really quick and she 'wasn't
ready. Hadn't had any time to build up desire. It really hurt.' She had known
about sex bcz she and her friends talked about what it was like, that sometimes
it hurt sometimes it was fun. Rosa said that in the beginning she was horrified,
what was that 'fea cosa'. Juana said that Juan has learned a lot that she and
he have really come to understandings. Now when she doesn't want to 'have
relaciones,' he waits until she does. She says that if he ever wanted to go to
another woman she would say, 'Go. And don't come back.' She doesn't need
any other man; she's already had experience with one. Broken him in. Got
him to understand her a little. She doesn't want to have to go through it again.
It could be worse with someone different. You've no idea what you might get.
Rosa kept insinuating that she liked sex. Juana less so. Juana got Juan to
be more considerate of her she said when she started to 'cuidarse' (take care
of herself: use birth control) with what I think she explained as the rhythm
method. She gave me a fairly detailed explanation of when were safe and un-
safe times to have sex. She said that she got pregnant several times using this
method, bcz there were times when Juan said, Oh I don't care. He wasn't at all
as cautious or thoughtful as she regarding the number of children they might
have. She said sometimes he just didn't want to wear a condom at dangerous
times or her didn't want to wait. But she said that he has learned patience.
She won't ever let him take advantage of her she said. She's had too much
experience. I asked them what does a woman do if she wants to have sex and
her man doesn't? Does she force him or go out looking for someone new too?
They laugh. Rosa says no, no. Juana says she wouldn't go for another man bcz
adultery is a sin. Isn't it a sin when a man does it, I ask? Well, they say. 'EI
hombre hace lo que desea.' The man gets to do what he wants. But with Juana
and Juan, Juana tells me, they have arrived at a point where they respect each
other and won't go with anyone else.
The light is so pretty where Rosa sits and I tell her I want to take her photo.
Just as I am about to click it she opens her legs wide in a wildly raucous gesture
and screams with laughter. She and Juana think its hysterical and they both
want to take photos of ourselves in somewhat comprising positions. I snap
Juana's photo while she is laughing hysterically. They laugh even harder at
that. As if it there is something risque about her laughing uncontrollably, letting
loose perhaps. Then they scream, and you and you. Juana takes the camera
and I show her how to do it and as I go to crouch down at the hillside and
gather the bottom of my dress together, she snaps it. With who knows what
exposed. They erupt in peels of laughter and I am laughing too bcz I am a little
230 Appendix

amazed at these 'reserved' women whooping it up deep in the forest where no

one will find us.
We talked about man/woman relationships more generally. Juana says that
she really works at open communication with her husband and her children.
She always tells them she wants them to tell her if they are in love with some-
one. And if she can help in any way, or give advice, she will.
Juana tells us that Clara Espinoza, from Guayaquil, married to a man turned
Evangelist, has just finally separated from him. She took a job in a factory and
lives with some siblings. She has visiting rights to her son every weekend. The
breakup was amiable enough, and the door is open if she wants to return.
And convert from Catholicism. Juana says that Clara is thinking about going to
Quito. She doesn't want to stay in Guayaquil. Rosa can't believe that Clara left
her man, Juana only just found out from Lydia yesterday. I don't know how the
Espinoza's feel about it. I wonder aloud how Clara feels about leaving another
of her children. Juana says that when Clara had Marisol with Paulo the couple
had lived together 6 mos. But it didn't work out. Then Clara moved with baby
Marisol to Quito, where she worked as a maid in a home. Marisol burned her-
self badly and it was difficult for Clara to take care of her there. Marisol went
back home to live with her grandparents in La Colonia. Paulo never really
recognized Marisol as his child-1 think her surname is Espinoza.
Marisol knows he is her birth father but they don't have any kind of special
relationship. She just considers him like 'any other guy in the street.' When
Clara married the current/separated husband, and wanted to take Marisol with
her to Guayaquil, her own parents wouldn't let her. 'They had grown accus-
tomed to raising Marisol.' They wouldn't give her up and Marisol calls them,
her grandparents, mom and dad.
As we walked out of the planta, I tried to get Rosa to talk a little bit more
about her relationship with her husband. She told me that when she was young
and newly married, she new nothing about anything, sex or otherwise. She
knew how to cook and iron. She never spoke with her own kids about sex. But
she and Juana said that they always talked amongst themselves, in groups of
women, about any kind of sexual thing. And now Rosa said her kids and she
are more open. I asked Rosa what she considers her husband, ie is he a friend,
her best friend. She said clara that he is an amigo, but a particular kind bcz he
lives in my house. I said, oh. 'EI es un particular.' We all laughed and she said
no, not a particular because he is the only one who shares my bed. So I asked,
more like a soda, and she agreed.
We passed two little girls up in a tree and Juana called out to them, 'pajaros!'
and said to me, 'why don't you take a photo of these precious little birds.' One
of them didn't want her photo taken and Juana kept coaxing her to look at the
camera with stories of witches and bigger birds. Juana was acting so freely. It
was really something.
We crossed Pedro and Carlos walking up towards Valentine with Machetes
just before we got to the La Colonia river. As with everyone else I've run into
the past few days, I asked them if they were going to the dance. Yes! Carlos was
going in his car around 8 and Pedro walking at 7. I asked Carlos if I could go
with him. No problem. Pedro told me, 'we are going to dance together.' I asked
 Appendix 231

him who Maria (his wife) was going to dance with if he and I danced together.
He was stumped. He said we'll all dance. They were all in good moods. As we
walked on Juana told me that Pedro doesn't like to dance with Maria. I asked
why not. She said, 'no se.' But he likes to dance with other women and never
asks Maria. Well then, I said. I'm not going to dance with him. Like I told PC,
I don't like to dance with married men. Juana said, dance with him one or 2
dances and then tell him to go dance with Maria.
Later Helena and her sister and brother and a friend arrived from Manta for
the La Villa Virgen Saint dance. They got all decked out. Helena in a white
satin short dress and stockings. One thing that was interesting about me asking
people if they were going to the dance, the men if they were going, all said
yes. Unequivocally. In fact I hadn't spoken to any men who said they weren't
going. The women and girls said, 'no se' (I don't know) Or 'we'll see.' Or 'it
depends.' Isabelle didn't know if she was going bcz she didn't know if her
mother would go. I said I was going, and she and Susana both said that I could
be the chaperon, as well as Tia D. Susana didn't know if she would go. She
said she would have to wait until it was time to see if she was animated to go.
As I was ironing my clothes after dinner, and Paulo, Jaime, Susana gathered
around to verify that I knew what I was doing; Margarita still didn't know if she
was going. She was waiting for Manuel to come home, she couldn't find him.
She said that, 'my papi still hasn't told me if I can go or not.' I asked Susana
why they needed Manuel's consent if Susana agreed that she could go. Susana
said that 'bcz here this is the way we do things. Not just one or the other can
make a decision. Isabelle already has accord from my part, and now she needs
the accord from the other.' In the end, everyone went except for Renato. He
stayed to watch the house. And also to guard the school house for Paulo so that
Paulo could go to the dance. It seemed sad bcz he had been looking forward
to this activity. But he said it was ok. He gets to go out a lot and it would give
the others an opportunity. Although Paulo and Raquel both went to the dance,
Raquel went with Maria, Margarita stayed behind. I asked why if the kids were
going too. They said, to watch the house. Particularly the chickens. Otherwise
people would steal them.
The dance was actually really fun. Carlos's truck picked us up after 8. The
back was filled with guys, boys and some men. Also a stroller for Ariel who was
already there. The mothers sat in the front with Pedro and we solteras (single
women) stood in the back. This is the first time I'd ridden in a car through the
road to La Villa, it's only recently fixed. At the school yard where the dance
was, 'Disco Movil' from Manta/Guayaquil set up on a big podium. There were
flashing colored lights on the podium, and smoke. There were also two danc-
ers on stage. Dressed in extremely short, black hotpants, halter tops and high-
heeled boots. They were like the dancers on the evening television program
where boys dance with the dancers and the best one wins. There were at least
200 people there, a big group of hiphop boys from Manta wearing their shiny
baggy pants and slicked back hair. Women's entrance [fee] was 3000 sucres
and men 5000 sucres. On the way in I was given a rose which I then offered
to the Virgen. There was a fairly elaborate set up-A big ceramic stature of
Christ, flowers and offerings on a table in a corner, seats around it, mainly
232 Appendix

women sitting perched there. Others came up and prayed to the Virgen, kissed
the different idols, were solemn, gave their flowers. junior Valeriano brought
a plastic wrapped bouquet of carnations for the virgin and a wrapping paper
wrapped bottle, of puro (cane liquor). Patricia climbed up on a step and put
a folded written message in a big box marked something like 'sobreviivres [?]'
I sat at a table with Carlos, D, Susana, Paulo, P, Isabelle, a Ramirez girl, and
JC and JD and another Moreno guy sat on the cement bleachers nearby. They
filled the table with fantas, cokes, beer, and puro. When we first arrived Pedro
was sitting uptop the bleachers holding Ariel, his son. I got up and said hello
to ET and Felicia, and their daughters and family. By the time I left it was Maria
who was sitting atop the bleachers near the food stand with Linda. She said she
was going to help her sister in law sell in the kiosk.
Pedro was the first to ask me to dance. When I first saw him, he had just sat
down at a table with some cousins nearby. They were drinking. He told me
we're going to dance. But wait just a bit. I guess it was when he was sufficiently
loosened up by the alcohol that he asked me to dance. He's a wild man on
the dance floor. Has tons of energy. Bounces. Jumps around. We danced a set
than I told him I couldn't dance anymore it made me so tired. I told him go
dance with Maria. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said. I'm going to. The short version
of the dance is that I don't think Pedro ever danced with his wife. She said
watching us dance at one point. I felt a bit uncomfortable, having had that talk
with Juana. But Maria seemed to have a bemused expression on her face, as
did Pedro's daughter who I met for the first time. She was dancing nearby at
one point, she's really warm and friendly, and looks extremely New York hip.
I danced with a few different guys, but mainly Pedro and juan Carlos. Also
EB-all my connections are with the community leaders. It was actually fun to
whoop it up with them, and share a few drinks. I sat with Belinda a while, she
was there with only her 2 oldest kids. Timoteo was home sick and she wasn't
dancing. She lent me her sandals to wear as I had come in flip-flops, the only
shoes I had, which was apparently a major faux pas.
I noticed EB's son point out my shoes on the dance floor to his sister, with a
kind of smirk. I made a joke of it to Leana and Patricia, and also to Maria. They
all looked at my feet and then said, 'no importa' (it doesn't matter). But in a
way that made me think it was a big deal and they were trying to make me not
feel uncomfortable. I didn't really care but I did wish I had some sparkly heels
like the other chicks. E had lent me a shiny midriff blouse. Which I was glad
to wear, and felt like I fit in more than I would had I kept on my stretched out
cotton tank top. Patricia told me I should have asked her to borrow shoes. She
sews and seems to be the big fashion authority. She had on gold nail polish to
match her gold sandals. Isabelle wore a long black print skirt and matching top,
with a triangular flap opening to reveal part of her stomach. It was elegant and
fit her well. Margarita had made it. Interesting how so many women want to
learn dressmaking while several already seem to do it quite well.
Back to dancing. The 3 times that Pedro asked me to dance, well didn't ask
really but came to my table, increasingly more drunk and said 'LORENA MilER
VAMOS A BAILAR!' Somehow the DJ had gotten my name and kept making
announcements about Lorena Mijer, Miyer, Mijet, Miter, the Norte Americana
 Appendix 233

don't leave us. Throughout the night, my last name changed. The last time Pe-
dro and I danced, I was sitting with Belinda and I think her brother in law and
some of their kids, drinking beer and floratine with them, when he just stood
at my table with his hands outstretched. We galloped across the dance floor to
the front of the room and wound up dance a lot with Diana Espinoza and an-
other EXTREMELY drunk on his feet guy, who looked a bit like a light skinned
V. It was hysterical. We did square dances, switching partners, we skipped in
circles, we all held hands and spun around really fast, we got in a line and
spun each other around, we danced the hora, charged into the center of our
circle with our hands raised yelling 'whooe!' We were creating such a huge
raucous. But it was so fun. We were like children. At different points I'm sure
we were obnoxious, banging into other people around us. Pedro and I held
hands and skipped around the perimeter of the pista. Than the four of us in a
line, supporting the drunk guy, who also I'm sure is a big community leader,
by the shoulders. A lot of people were laughing, we were having so much fun
and I'm sure the spectacle was fun to watch. But the men were really smashed,
and the one especially kept bumping people. By our 2nd time around some
people were looking annoyed. Betti had a look that it wasn't proper. Susana
was holding her sides laughing. At one point, I mouthed to N "no mas" (no
more). But she kept on dancing, she was having great fun too though it seemed
that like me, there were moments when it was getting out of control. Yet she
kept on going. Even when it seemed she was just getting pulled along. I tried to
get the guy to sit down but he kept staggering up for more dancing. The set was
long. And Pedro and I at least were dripping with sweat by the time it ended.
We all congratulated ourselves and each other and as the men went to
sit down, a fight almost broke out between Pedro and some other guy. It got
calmed quickly. I don't know what it was about. Then the long speeches to
announce the Reina (queen) began. Each of the 5 contestants from diff parts
of La Villa had to walk to music around the dance floor, pose like runway
models, and then stand in a line while the MC, Don Criollo talked about their
beauty of Ecuador.' And also something about them being beautiful virgins
for the virgen celebration. Some one was there with a camcorder, filming
the whole thing, trained on the girls as they made their round on the dance
floor. One particularly curvy contestant, no more than 20, dressed in tight,
tight gold pants, gold sparkle shirt, high gold heels, was a great dancer. The
camera stayed on her ass as she sashayed to display herself. The contestants
had to each dance, trying to follow the lead of the ballerinas. Then boys
were called to volunteer to accompany each girl. Some guys literally raced
up front to stand next to a girl. Helena was a contestant and seemed the most
self-conscious about posing. She was also dressed the most conservatively,
and at 23, older than the others. The boy and girl contestant walked around
with dishes to collect money and funds from those attending the dance for the
chapel. In the end, Helena collected 93,500 sucres and won. The others col-
lected 60,000 and 80,000 sucres. The most bodacious girl, with lots of poise
and a good dancer, won the least amount of money. All her enthusiasm had
died as, to slow sad music, she and the others made the final tour of the floor
with some compensatory red roses.
234 Appendix

Interesting how the girls get paraded for their beauty, poise and dance abil-
ity, but then in the end it is the one able to collect the most money in order
to help the chapel who wins. The outgoing Reina was MV, a catechist and
Estella's cousin. Her speech was to thank everyone for their collaboration in
building up the church, not only in mano de obra (work) but in materials. She
hoped that the coming year would be even more successful for the community
and seguir adelante (move forward). Helena is to be a representative of the
La Villans from outside the community. She told me her responsibilities are
to help out in all ways possible. When I asked if she would be coming more
frequently to La Villa, she said, 'tal vez' (maybe).
COMMENTS: Without TV, radio, newspaper, much of the news outside
of what is happening right in front of me, seems very remote. It's not that
I feel cut off, or in a cloistered world, bcz we still are connected. Discus-
sions daily have to do with market activities, and the road, and the foreign
lending and aid, and government actions. News that I am interested in is
what gets transmitted in daily conversation. This is the information that has
directly to do with peoples' lives here. For example, yesterday when we
were taking horse pictures juan Carlos, 28, told me that though he had been
trained to work the UOMA tractors, the tractors still sat in the shed in PV
untouched. They were waiting for the 'Polish trainer' to come and instruct
them in the usage. The trainer was supposed to come already, but they were
still waiting 15 days.
Back to the news-l've no idea what Clinton's up to, no idea of what's in the
papers about Africa, Asia, the middle East, Europe. I only know parts of what's
being broadcast as far as international lending and aid goes.

SAMPLE FIELD NOTES 2

This second set of notes was collected as part of the study on the nutri-
tional strategies of older adults in rural Kentucky. The notes were recorded
on audiotape. The running description in the first section was audiotaped
while driving through the county. The description of the visit with Mrs. L
was taped immediately following the visit, while driving on to the next
event of the day. The notes contain directions to places in Central County,
descriptions of the road and the traffic on it. The visit with Mrs. L is sum-
marized in the notes with as much detail as could be recalled immediately
after. Some of it is summarized in synopsis form at the beginning of the
section describing the visit. In these notes there is somewhat less of the
overt presence of the researcher than in the notes by Miller. However,
there has been an attempt to record exact words, both of the researcher
and the informant.
 Appendix 235

Central County
Kathleen DeWalt
August 8, 1989:
Visit to Central County-Interview with Mrs. L
I stopped in at the Agricultural Extension office, talked to the secretary, and got
directions to CC's house. You take Route 49 north from the courthouse, to the
Atwood Chapel Methodist Church, then you take your first left onto a blacktop
road. You go down about 1/2 to 3/4 mile and his house is the fifth house on the
left. It's a trailer. I didn't actually stop at his house. I stopped at the home of a
nephew and his wife, which is the fourth house on the left, and the first brick
house down that road and off of Route 49. I introduced myself to CC, and said
that I would like to talk with him, since Steve Davis said he was knowledgeable
about agriculture in the county. He said to come anytime early in the morn-
ing or late in the afternoon or early evening, or at lunchtime, which is around
11:30-12:00, and that he would be happy to talk to me anytime that I can
catch him at home. It sounds like he is out working most of the day, though.
I did find out from one of the children around, that he is not married and has
never been married. He did say he has been farming for a long time in Central
County and did know a lot about farming. His niece, or his niece-in-law, M, said
"he taught me how to farm, but you better be careful because the way he taught
me is he put me up on a tractor and said 'Go that direction .. ' " I explained that I
didn't necessarily want to learn how to farm, but I wanted to learn about farming
and food and what people did in the past and what they do now. After turning off
Route 49, it's about half to 3/4 mile down that road, until you get toM's house.
From Liberty to the turn-off on Route 49, it's about 7 or 7 l/2 miles, to the
courthouse. The turn-off to the Carr's place is in farming area. What you see
along the side of the road are some houses and barns, a lot of pasture land,
or land that looks like pasture land, and an occasional tobacco field. I passed
several churches. The Atwood Chapel Methodist Church is the farthest one
out. Many of the houses along Route 49 appear to be trailers, or converted
trailers, and some very small houses. The C' house looks like one of the most
substantial houses in the area.
One of the other churches along the way is the Bush Creek Christian Church,
the Bush Creek Pentecostal Church. Going back down to town, I managed to
get behind a truck hauling logs, and it is going very, very slowly up the hill,
but the logs look pretty fresh cut and I am reminded that Steve Davis says that
about half the county is in forest or in woods, and that logging, although we
don't think of this as a mountain or a forest county, that logging is still an im-
portant economic activity here. The closer you get to Liberty on Route 49, the
more prosperous things look. You see a little more tobacco and some houses
with big lawns. A fair portion of the land right around the road is wooded.
I've come upon another logging truck. That makes two, one following the
other, although it's some distance.
I then went to visit Mrs. L. she told me yesterday that she would be canning
this morning, so I am kind of hoping to drop in on her while she is canning. I'll
be getting there about 11 o'clock.
236 Appendix

The land on Route 70, or the other side of the road north towards (no, west
toward Mrs. L's house) looks undeveloped, at least for the first couple of miles.
A lot of weeds, and it looks like on the right hand side, it looks like mostly
forest up on the hillside up to the ridge, and down towards the valley it looks
like land that's been left fallow, or has been left to go back to forest. There is a
lot of brush and shrubs, and some areas are along the creek and are wooded.
About two miles outside of Liberty, the land to the left of the road appears to be
a meadow or open field, maybe hay fields. There are some barns in the back-
ground, and most probably, hay, because on the right side there is a field that
looks like it's been recently mowed with hay rolls in it. Two miles outside of
Liberty for the next couple of miles, it's pretty open land although the ridge tops
are wooded. Mostly houses and some things that look like garages ... there
is a Ralph Mills Masonry Company on the left, an Ashland garage or service
station which looks like it has a small store. On the left about 4 miles outside
of Liberty, it looks like they are building a new service (gas) station. On the left
and right, there are used car lots. There is a very big cornfield next to a couple
of trailers that's hard to tell whether the trailers go along with that. There is a
junkyard, down to the right, which may be the junkyard that Beverly has re-
ferred to earlier. On the right, Lee's Orchard, which looks like a salesroom, and
on the left there are several good-sized cornfields, right across the street from
the Citgo gas station, which is about 6 miles outside of Liberty. Hayfields, some
corn, some tobacco, and some cattle being pastured ... about six miles outside
of Liberty. They look like dairy cattle, rather than beef cattle. To the left, about
6 1/2 miles outside of Liberty, is a small orchard. It almost looks like a backyard
or garden orchard, there are only about 50-60 trees. Turning off Route 70 onto
Route 206- there are a number of trailers along Route 206, right at the turn-
off, with fields of corn with heavy Johnson grass infestation here.
Turn off Route 207 (?)onto Route 1640 and bear to the left, and I'm getting
to Mrs. L's house right about 11 o'clock-
These are notes from a conversation with Mrs. L today. When I got there, we
sat down for about 5 minutes, just with pleasantries, and I gave her some jars
that I had brought, because she said last time a problem was she gives away
a lot of the food she cans, and never gets the jars back. She had given me a
jar of pickles, and I had a number of jars in the garage that Bill was wishing
that I would get rid of, so I did that. I also gave her a fish with a magnet on the
back, that I had brought from Ecuador. I came in about 11:00 o'clock and we
sat down for about 15 minutes, and then she said, "I want to give you some
lunch." And I protested that I hadn't meant to come in at lunchtime, but had
managed to do so. And she said, "It's not going to be much, because I don't
have anything really prepared, but do you like vegetables?" I said yes, I like
vegetables. She said, well, we've got some vegetables and some other things,
and so she sat me down in the kitchen and started to work on the lunch. I was
trying to clarify a little bit her life history, and so a lot of the questions I asked
her were backing up some of the information I had gotten from her last time,
about her life history and what she had done, and who she had lived with, and
when she had lived there. This is a little synopsis of what I know so far:
 Appendix 237

She is going to be 79 in October, which means that she was born in 1910.
When she was eight years old, her father died of typhoid fever. He got typhoid
fever, and was actually recovering from the typhoid fever, but it left him with
Bright's Disease, (kidney failure), and he eventually died of kidney failure.
He was 29 years old, and her mother was 27 at the time. She said that she
had always been close to her mother's parents, the Crockett family. Her ma-
ternal grandmother's family name was Helms, and she said the Helms' and
the Crocketts were among the first settlers in Central County, along with the
Grants and some other families. All those families came from Tennessee. Her
grandfather's grandfather was a first cousin of Davy Crockett. Much of the fam-
ily was kind of "ornery" like Davy Crockett, although her own grandfather did
not believe in drinking and swearing and gambling and all the other stuff some
of the other families did, things that she associates with the Crockett family.
When she was a young child, she said her grandparents used to come to her
parents home and say, "We're taking Mrs. L ... "And they would take her to
stay with them for a few days. She said her mother really couldn't say much
about it, because they just really came and took her, but her father was always
a little sore, because she was spending so much time with her grandparents.
When her father died at age 29, she was eight years old, she had a six-year-old
brother, she had a three-year old sister, and a five-month old brother. Eventu-
ally all of them went back to live with her mother's parents. Her mother tried
to maintain the family on the farm where she and her husband had farmed,
but the grandparents said, "No, you should come back and live with us ... "
Mrs. L said her father, when he knew he was dying, had said to his wife, "I
know you're too young to be alone and I know that you'll remarry ... I just
hope that you'll marry somebody who will treat you and the kids well ... "
Mrs. L 's mother lived with her parents (she and her children) for about two
years, and which point in fact, she did remarry. She married a man who had
been married before, and she took the two smallest children with her, and left
the two oldest children with her grandparents. Mrs. L at this time was ten years
old. She then (Mrs. L 's mother) had another child with the new husband, so
that Mrs. L has one half-brother.
Mrs. L lived with her grandmother and grandfather (her grandfather was a
blacksmith and a farmer); he did a lot of repair work and shoed horses. He was
... apparently his "smithie" was a local hangout, and she said her grandmother
used to say, "Now, fly down and see how many men are down there, so I know
how much bread to prepare." Her grandmother would make lunch, or make
dinner, and invite all the people who were hanging around the "smithie" at
the time, to dinner. She said that they raised most of their food, and that they
would take her grandfather, who also had a corn mill, and would take corn
and grind it for meal, and crack it for the animals. When other people brought
their corn to the mill, the way that they paid for it was by taking a toll, or giv-
ing a toll to the miller, and there would be a certain measure of each bushel
of corn that would be kept aside for the miller, as payment. She said before
that her grandfather had orchards, and that they produced a lot of apples, as
well as the garden crops that her grandmother raised. She (Mrs. L ) helped, and
238 Appendix

wheat, corn ... they raised pork and they would smoke it, but that both in her
grandfather's house and later, when she was married, until the time she had a
freezer, they would very rarely eat beef. They would never raise or kill a beef
until they had a freezer. Before that time, somebody would slaughter every
week or two, and they would buy enough beef for a day or two, and use it that
way. But for the most part, they had pork and chicken.
Her grandmother died when she was fourteen, and in Mrs. L 's terms, she
"took over all the jobs of a woman" . . . she kept house, she cleaned and
cooked and mended, she kept the chickens, and did a lot of farm work, the
kind of farm work that women did, and she said that the reason she married so
young, at 16 1/2, is just because she just wanted to get away from there. She
didn't want to cook and clean for other people. She thought if she got mar-
ried, then there would be two of them working together. So she married a man
who was nineteen at the time she was 16 1/2 years, and went to live with her
parents-in-law. She said she lived with her parents-in-law for 2 l/2 years, and
"kind of didn't like it'' because the parents-in-law were farmers and as soon
as she and her husband moved into the farm, they started traveling and left all
the farm work to their two sons and all the housework to Mrs. L . So, Mrs. L
said she had all the housework for this extended family, including cooking and
cleaning and mending and washing, as well as taking care of her own baby.
Her first child was born a year after she got married, the second one was
born 22 months later, and the third one was born when the second child was
three years old, and Mrs. L was not yet 22 years of age. I said, "Why didn't you
have more?" She said, "Why, three was enough. I didn't think I could educate
more than three, or raise more than three." And then she added, "Well, I guess
it was to be ... " I was kind of hoping she'd tell me how she managed not to
have more children after she was 22 years old, but she didn't volunteer the
information, and I didn't feel quite ready to ask, although I may, some time in
the future.
Her three children are-the oldest boy is named R, the middle one is a girl
named A, and the third one is a boy, and I think the name she has mentioned
is "Albie," but I'm not sure that I've gotten it quite correctly. The boy (R), who
is now himself in his sixties, is the son who lives across the street, and was
farming the dairy farm with her, and still raises some tobacco, but they sold
off the dairy herd about a year ago, and he has gone to work in the Oshkosh
Factory. He says it is easier work, and it was getting too hard to do the farming,
although he still kind of likes cattle, and he now has twenty-five (or they have,
together) 25 head of Holstein cows that they are breeding to a Hereford bull,
for beef cattle. They still have one cow that they keep because they are raising
a few veal. .. a few small calves, with the milk.
She had a gallon jar of milk in the refrigerator, which she used to cook with.
She says it's from the cow. I don't know how long that lasts, although she used
milk in several dishes, in the lunch that I'll describe below.
After she and her husband left his parents' house, about 2 1/2 years after they
were married, they moved (they rented a house), that she said was the house
that she in fact had been born in. It was the same house that her parents had
been renting when she was born, although they later had bought their own
 Appendix 239

little farm. Her husband had a team, and he worked in road construction as
well as renting farm land and farming, for a number of years. She said they
moved to Ohio once to try out living in Ohio, and lasted there about six weeks.
She said she didn't mind it, but actually her husband didn't like it and wanted
to come back to Central County. They came back. I'm not sure about the timing
of it, but I'm sure it was fairly early in their marriage. Later on, he continued to
farm and work in road construction and other kinds of things and eventually
they bought the farm that she is living on now. I don't know how many acres
they started out with, but she now has about 100 acres. She was complaining
that most of it was growing up, and that they are not cutting the hay and they
are not farming it anymore. Her son isn't, in the way she would like to, and it
kind of hurts her to see the farm go to weeds.
She mentioned a date of 32 years ago that she and her husband had gone
into dairy farming. I'm not sure, from other things she said, (I need to pin
down the date) I think they have been on this farm a little bit longer than that.
They've been on the farm for around 40 years, and they had moved there in
the 1940's. She and her husband operated the dairy farm together until eleven
years ago, when her husband died. Then she and her son operated the dairy
farm up until last year.
She has always grown a garden. She was telling me about the kinds of things
she has in the garden. She showed me a pole bean (or she calls it a stick bean)
that she has been raising for something like 40-45 years, that her husband had
been working on someone else's farm and they fed him lunch, and he came
home and said, "These are the best beans. I had the best beans I ever ate to-
day!" So she went to that person and asked for the seed, and since then has
been growing that particular kind of "stick bean" in her garden and saving the
seed. She has given the seed to a lot of other people in the county. She thinks
that pretty much anybody that has that particular "stick bean" has gotten the
seed from her, and people will say, "You know I'm growing this bean. I think
you gave that seed to my mother ... "And she said, "Yes, I did ... I gave it to
your mother thirty or forty years ago." She doesn't appear to do much selection,
although when she is shelling beans for seed, she selects out the best looking
beans, the biggest ones, for seed.
These are the beans she had just canned, a total of about 100 quarts, al-
though that includes 38 half gallons. She's been using half gallon jars. I asked
if that wasn't a lot of beans, and she said, "Well, it's too much for her now,
but in the past, she used to have to feed farmhands, and they usually had two
or three farmhands, and they'd eat up a half gallon of beans at a time." So,
now she's still sort of in the habit of canning half gallons, she likes the half
gallons. The beans are cut into about inch and a half segments, and canned.
The seeds are pretty big (I ate some for lunch), and they taste as though, in fact,
they were probably at the point when a lot of the structural proteins are being
laid down. They tasted almost like (they are fresh beans) they could have been
dried before cooking. I need to know more about the nutrient content of that,
but I think that, like corn at the "dough" stage, they had already started to lay
down structural proteins. But the pods are still green and tender. She said that
the advantage of this kind of beans is that they get nice and big and they still
240 Appendix

stay tender and they have good flavor. In fact, they did, to me, have a very
good flavor. She also grows several kinds of lower growing beans. She grows
two kinds of white runner beans, one that, from her description, sounds like
half runners, because she said one is shorter than the other. She also grows
another kind of runner bean (I've forgotten the name). I think she said it is a
brown-seeded runner bean, but it didn't sound like a scarlet runner. She has
got early crops and late crops. She has a late crop that is not yet ready to pick.
Her early crop is at the height of the picking season, and she has been picking
beans that morning, and in fact, had canned about four half gallons, or eight
quarts, by the time I got there.
She grows several different kinds of tomatoes. She likes the Rutgers tomato
for canning, because it has a little more acid. She was saying (she only grows
the hybrid, and doesn't save seed for tomatoes) that the modern tomatoes have
less acid, and while she knows that you're supposed to add lemon juice to the
beans when you're canning them, to increase the acid content, she doesn't do
that herself. She says she's never had a can of tomatoes go bad on her. She is
growing Rutgers (tomatoes) for canning, and she also grows Big Girl, because
she likes them better than the Big Boys, for example, and she mentioned an-
other kind of tomato that she showed me, a very large slicing tomato (but I've
forgotten the name of it). She has two corn crops, and there are two corn crops
planted. She's got a white corn variety that is coming in right now, and actually
it's just now ending. She says she has picked the last ears from this corn crop,
and the next corn crop will be in a couple of weeks. She says that's her big
crop. That's the crop that she is going to do-freeze, from.
She talked about the kinds of canning that she is doing. She says that the
plums were ready, and that she had been canning plums. She showed me
some jars. But what she has been working on for the past two or three weeks
is mostly beans, because the beans were in and the crop was ready to can. She
was just starting to work on tomatoes, and that for a while, since this crop of
beans is over, she is going to be working on tomatoes and tomato juice, and
had actually picked a bucket of tomatoes this morning, because she is going to
can them tonight. Her canning for tomatoes-what she is planning to do with
this particular batch-is to just section the tomatoes and put them in jars and
process them in a cold water bath. She had processed the beans in a pressure
canner. For the tomatoes, she said one way of dealing with the fact that the
tomatoes have less acid, is that she processes them a little more than she used
to. She used to use a processing time of about 28 minutes for a quart (which
seems quite low to me, actually), but now that she was adding a little bit of
time to that, because she was afraid the tomatoes needed more time, now that
they were less acidic.
She has sauerkraut made and jarred, about 10 quarts. She said it looked
good, and she said this batch was going to be pretty good. It was hard to tell
this early. She said kraut was kind of tricky, but the color looked good. It was
still sort of processing itself in the jars.
The other thing she talked about starting to put up now was peaches, and
that she was buying peaches at the grocery store. She thinks they are from
Georgia. Central County has some peaches, although she doesn't have any
 Appendix 241

peach trees. Central County grows some peaches, but she thinks the crop was
lost this year because of the late freeze.
Later in the visit, she took me down to show me the stuff she had already put
up, and as I said, I saw about 10 quarts of sauerkraut, and what clearly looked
like 100 quarts, or close to 100 quarts, of beans. Also 10-15 jars of different
kinds of pickles, and she said she had quit pickling. She had quite a bit of stuff
left over from last year, and she said she was going to pour out some of it. She
said she would pour out the fruit juices. She had plum juice and apple juice,
for making jelly, but she didn't make as much as she used to, because "nobody
eats it anymore." She doesn't know why they don't eat it, but she guesses they
use toast rather than other kinds of bread, and just don't eat the amount of jelly
they used to. She said she might want to pour out some vegetables that are from
two years ago, and she just doesn't use as much as she used to. She gives a
lot of it away. In the past, when she had to cook for farmhands, she used a lot
more. Now she only cooks for herself and her son. Her son R eats dinner with
her everyday during the school year, because his wife is a schoolteacher, but
during the summer, he doesn't eat with her. So she was saying, I need to start
putting up some stuff, because in two weeks R is going to start to eat with me
again. She did mention that she hardly wants to cook for herself. As a matter of
fact, earlier, or during my visit, she was baking biscuits and the biscuits burned,
and she said, "Oh, it's just because I'm so out of practice!"
She prepared a lunch for me, which she apologized about, because I think I
kept her talking too much, and she wasn't paying attention to it, but she used
some of the beans that she had prepared for canning. She had some still in a
pot, and she cooked them with a pork chop, and basically cooked them the
whole time I was there, or until we ate, which was about two hours. She took
about five ears of fresh corn, and cut the kernels off, and then sort of scraped
the corn to get the corn milk off, into the bowl, and then she put what looked
like about two tablespoons of Crisco in a skillet and added the corn, and also
cooked that for about an hour and a half or so. She started preparing this about
11:30, and we ended up eating at about 1:00, so that the corn cooked for about
an hour and a half. She sauteed it for a while in the Crisco, and then towards
the end of the cooking, she added some milk and butter so that it was a very
nice creamed corn by the time it was served. She took four pork chops and
dipped them into beaten egg and then flour, and put what looked to be about a
quarter or a third of a cup of Crisco in a skillet, and fried them. They probably
were fried for about forty minutes (they sat on the table a little while before
we ate). She took some fried apples out of the refrigerator, and she said she
was just going to warm them up. She put a little more Crisco in the bottom of
another skillet, and warmed them up. She made some boiled potatoes. I think
she peeled about 3 to start out with.
They were potatoes that she grew in her own garden, and had dug them up.
She said she keeps them in the basement, but they don't last very well any-
more. They don't last through the winter. They sprout. In the past, she said, that
they had a root cellar, and then showed me a concrete slab in the backyard,
which is apparently excavated. It is the roof of a root cellar, built into a little
hillside. She said that the concrete slab had cracked, and that the root cellar
242 Appendix

leaked and so it didn't keep things anymore, and that she had tried patching
it a couple of times, but it still leaked. She was needing to get somebody to
help her get a new repaired, some new concrete or pour a new one, so that
she could use the root cellar and keep her potatoes which she hasn't been able
to keep. Then she said she thought she would do what they used to do, that
when she lived with her grandparents, and then she and her husband would
bury potatoes. They would hollow out a little bit in the ground and line it with
straw, and then pile the potatoes up, and then cover them with straw and then
cover the whole thing with dirt, and that would keep the potatoes through the
whole winter without any trouble at all, in real good condition. She was talking
about having her son help her bury the potatoes this year, so that she could
keep them through the winter.
[This particular type of storage sounds very like the kind of storage that is
used in parts of Ecuador, and that kind of straw and dirt burying method is
called a "Yata." It sounds very, very similar.]
These potatoes were potatoes that she had just dug, however, and she said
she also had several varieties. This was a white variety, with some very nice
tubers. Very nice looking potatoes, and that she had another variety coming
along in a little while.
At any rate, the first set of potatoes-we got to talking and forgot about them,
and they ended up scorching, and she threw them all out and started over
again, and peeled another 4-5 potatoes, and boiled them. She served them
with what looked like a quarter of cup of butter poured over the top. She baked
biscuits, and I was impressed because she, although I know that good cooks
can do this, she didn't measure anything. She just sort of sifted flour until it
looked like enough, and then she put in, kept adding Crisco until it looked like
it was enough, and baking powder-and didn't measure that either-mixed it
around, and then added milk, until it was the right consistency (added milk
from the jar in the refrigerator. She kneaded them and rolled them out, and
put them on a tray and put them in the oven, and eventually when she took
them out, they were quite overdone. They hadn't risen very much, and dark
brown, although not really burnt, and she apologized and said she had turned
the oven up too high, and hadn't really looked at it, and had baked them at
too high a temperature.
I asked her about her oven-it is an electric stove, with an electric oven-
and I asked her if she had used electricity to cook with for a long time, and she
said, "Yes ... " She had used electricity for over 30 years because her husband
didn't like to cut stove wood, so that they had electric. This was her second
electric stove and it worked like a dream. She had to replace the elements a
couple of times, and it had had a double oven and one of the ovens stopped
working. Since she really didn't need the oven anymore, she had never had it
repaired, but yes, she was quite used to cooking on an electric range.
When she took the pork chops out of the pan, she added some flour and
browned it in the pan juices, and then added milk and made white gravy for the
biscuits. Then she opened a jar of peaches, which was dessert, so that our meal
consisted of pork chops, creamed corn, boiled potatoes, beans with some pork
in them, fried apples, fresh sliced peeled tomatoes, and later, canned peaches.
 Appendix 243

While she did some cooking with real butter, I thought it was kind of inter-
esting that she put margarine on the table. She said, "I don't usually put this on
the table (she put it on the table in the tub), but I'm going to do it." She kept
apologizing that she hadn't had time to cook a real, good dinner, because she
had been canning all morning. So, I said, "Oh, don't you make your own butter
anymore?" She said, "no, I put away the churn." So I asked if it was because
they didn't have dairy cattle anymore, and didn't have enough milk. And she
said, no, actually we get enough milk to churn, but nobody eats it anymore.
"My children don't want butter anymore, they say it's got too many calories,
and that they want margarine because it doesn't have as many calories." Then
she said, "this one wants this kind of margarine, and that one wants that kind
of margarine, so I just stopped using or making butter," although she did have
some in the refrigerator, and used it too cook with. She said "I think they make
too much of that, I don't think that it makes any difference, butter or marga-
rine." Then she opened the freezer, and said, my one son will only eat this stuff,
and she had Shedd's Country Crock. He said it has less calories. I said well,
that one does have less calories, but the other margarines that she put on the
table that she said her other son eats, was a sort of generic tub soft margarine.
It was in fact, a corn oil margarine.
One thing I noticed about what Mrs. Late, was that she did not eat any of
the pork chops. She had beans, and corn, and biscuits with gravy, and sev-
eral-at least three slices of tomato-and several helpings of the fried apples,
but she did not have any of the pork chops. While I was there, she did not have
any peaches. She made me coffee, but she did not drink coffee, or iced tea,
although there was iced tea in the refrigerator.
I noticed that she had a microwave which she used to defrost the pork chops,
and I said, Oh! a microwave! how long have you had that? She said she had had
it for a couple of years, and that her daughter gave it to her for Christmas, and
she was kind of mad because her daughter had given her several other things for
Christmas. Then she said, "Why did you go and get me a microwave too?" And
her daughter said, "Well, I had one, and I won one at a raffle ... and so, I won
this little one, so this one's for you." So she said, "I'm just going to give this one
to you, Mother." What she said was, that she didn't think she wanted it, until
she got it, and now, if it were to break down, she'd go out and get another one.
She finds it real handy, especially defrosting. And also, she makes her oatmeal in
it every morning. So I said, Oh! you eat oatmeal every morning? And she said,
well, I really don't care much for it, but I heard that it's good for you. "Now I
don't have cholesterol, but I've got that other stuff-triglycerides-and they say
that's worse, and wouldn't you know it! I'd have the worst one, so I've been eat-
ing oatmeal because they say it's good for your cholesterol."
We got to talking a little bit about oatmeal and oat bran, and I said, well,
I kind of like oatmeal, but I like the oat bran cereal better. That it tastes more
like Cream of Wheat. She said, well, I don't like Cream of Wheat either. But
she said, "I can eat it. I can eat any of those things, and I can eat the oatmeal,
but I don't kind of care for it much."
We started talking about cereals, or breakfast food-and she said, well,
when we were younger, or when I wasn't living alone, I'd make biscuits every
244 Appendix

morning, and we'd have biscuits and gravy. And I said, Oh! biscuits and gravy
... ! And she said, "Oh, you must be a country girl, if you like biscuits and
gravy." So I said, "No, I wasn't ... but my husband was ... I grew up in the
city and all I ever had was Cheerios. What I had most of the time was Cheerios .
. ." She said, "Cheerios! I really still like Cheerios. They're my favorite! But you
know, they've gotten so high. They are so expensive ... "So we started talking
about how expensive breakfast cereals were, and I said the other day I went
to buy an oat bran cereal and I realized it was $3.00-something a box ... and
she said her daughter probably was trying to buy the same cereal, because she
said she was buying a box of cereal that cost $3.00 a box, and she was sort of
horrified! Mrs. L said, I don't think I'd buy it if it was that expensive ... So I
said, yes, well, Cheerios are getting kind of expensive too! But she said, yes, but
a box of cereal lasts her several weeks. Recently she's been eating corn flakes,
which she doesn't like that much, but she said, "You know, when I eat them it's
not for breakfast. You know, I kindly don't sleep too well anymore, and I kindly
want to stay up late, and I get hungry in the evening, so I have a bowl of corn
flakes before I go to bed at night and that kindly satisfies me, so I can sleep."
Another thing that was on the table was a jar of homemade plum jelly.
She said that when she was younger, when she was a kid, that nobody had
any money. People didn't have money, but they traded for the things they
wanted, to some extent. They raised a lot of the things they needed. She said
that their family was poor, but they always had everything they needed. She
said the one thing she has always regretted, and she said this the last time I
talked with her, is that she didn't have an education. She was in a one-room
school until she was in eighth grade, at which she passed the eighth grade
exam when she was thirteen, and then she would have had to have gone into
town for high school, and the only way to get there would have been riding a
horse, and her grandfather said she was too little a girl to ride a horse into town.
She thought she probably would have had to leave real early and probably get
back about sundown, but she really wanted to do it. She said a lot of the boys
went to school, but very few girls went to high school. But there were a couple
of girls up a little ways from her, that rode horses to school, but that not very
many girls went to high school who didn't live in town. She said she's always
been sorry that she didn't get more education, that she thinks if her father had
lived, that that side of her family (the Davis') felt that education was important,
and that if her father had lived, she would have gotten an education.
She talked about feeling that she didn't remember names and things too well
anymore. Names "would just fly out of my head," she said, when she tried to
remember them. She wondered if it wasn't the medication she was taking. She
has had a flare up of bursitis in the last couple of weeks, and she has been tak-
ing steroids, which she said, seemed to have helped quite a lot. She also takes
two high blood pressure pills a day. Then she says she's had some pains in her
legs, so she takes quinine (?)for the pains in her leg. I'm not sure exactly what
that is. She said the quinine gives her a headache. She said she needs to be
careful about blood pressure, since she has got high blood pressure, and that
it runs in her family. On her mother's side of the family, "all the women died
of strokes, and all the men died of heart disease." She feels that it runs in the
 Appendix 245

family. Her mother died of a stroke, although she was eighty-five. She says she
thinks it has a lot to do with the diet that they used to eat, that everything was
salted and smoked, all the meat. So, she thinks that kind of might contribute to
the blood pressure problems, because she says, "Now they tell you you need
to be careful about salt." I did notice that she did use quite a bit of salt in the
cooking. She would add it to the food in what seemed to be very generous
pinches, almost handfuls! As I said, she said that her son eats with her during
the school year when his wife is working as a schoolteacher, but that during
the summer, she eats by herself, and that she just doesn't cook that much for
herself. Then she apologized, and she said that was one of the reasons why she
burned the biscuits, because she's just not used to making biscuits.
She said that when she had farmhands, she always fed the farmhands. So I
said, "Oh, is that part of a farmhand's wages around here?" And she said, "Not
really, not too many give them lunch anymore, but James (her husband) always
said I don't have a man working for me that I wouldn't eat with .. " So that they
would always feed the farmhands dinner. She mentioned before (and it is in
other notes) that she would cook something like two chickens a day to feed
her family and the farmhands. And, as I mentioned before, she said that she
is so used to putting up half gallon jars of things, because they would use that
much when they had to feed farmhands. She's not had any farmhands to feed,
though, for about a year now.
She talked a little bit about what might happen when she got older. She said
when her husband was quite ill, just before he died, he said, "Mrs. L , when I
die, why don't you sell the farm and move into town? You'd be more closer to
things and it would be easier to get around .. " But she said she thought about
it some, but she's never really quite gotten around to doing it, and she doesn't
think she'd like living where she couldn't "feel the dirt under her feet." So, she
has never done that, although she said, "If I got bad, maybe I would have to
move to town, although I don't know what good it would do me, if I were in
an apartment. It wouldn't be any different, I've got the electricity and the water
and things here in the house .. " She said she would kind of like to go to the
Senior Center, but she doesn't have a way to get there. She's never been there.
That's one thing she thinks she might do if she lived in town. She'd be able to
go to the Senior Center.
She did say that she didn't have water in the house for many years. She
would haul water from the well, just outside the house to drinking and haul it
from the creek to wash. When they dug a well and piped it in she said it made
her job a lot easier and her husband was kind of repentant that he had not put
water in the house before, that he had made her do all that extra work.
She said that she had-she obviously tends this garden by herself-that she
had picked several bushels of beans in the last few days, and she picked a
bushel of tomatoes this morning, and she said, "Well, I can see that someday I
wouldn't be able to do that, but for now, I really want to ... "
By the way, her birthday is October 25, 1910.
Let me note that Mrs. L did say that she wasn't going to put up any more
of those-at least this kind of bean-and my impression was any other kind
of bean, because she now had enough, the 100 quarts would be enough.
246 Appendix

Although somewhat later, she saiCI she was going to get a late crop of beans,
and I wasn't clear as to whether she was going to put up any of them.

SAMPLE FIELD NOTES 3

Bill has done a number of social analyses and evaluations of development

projects for the World Bank, Global Environment Facility, World Wildlife
Fund, and other institutions. In general, Bill works with local investigators
in the countries in which these analyses are done, and most of the evidence
is gathered through rapid rural reconnaissance rather than intensive, long-
term field research. Just as with research projects, he makes jot notes while
speaking with people and then writes field notes as soon after as he can. Be-
cause his work is generally focused on a particular set of activities or evalu-
ation of a project, Bill's field notes are often "sketchier" on other aspects of
life. Bill does not formally code the field notes, but uses the word processor
find options when he needs to recover specific information.
The following field notes come from a project to evaluate a World Bank
community forestry project in Mexico (whose acronym is PROCYMAF;
PRODEFOR is a Mexican government program to support the forest sector).
Fernando Guadarrama Olivera was the local anthropologist who worked
with Bill on this project.

13 July, 2000-0axaca, Mexico

Billie R. DeWalt
Fernando picked me up promptly at 8:00 to go to San Sebastian de las Grutas.
He was able to borrow a car from a friend, so it was an easy trip of about 80
kilometers. We had a bit of luck because, just when I suggested Fernando
stop for some breakfast, we were at the turnoff to Sn. Sebastian. Otherwise we
would easily have missed the turn. We had breakfast there in El Vado before
taking the dirt road toward San Sebastian.
The fairly decent dirt road parallels a very pretty little river that is filled
along the banks and in the river with sabinos, a very pretty, gigantic tree. It is
an ecosystem of its own with lots of bromeliads and vines. The water was very
clear and there were lots of little riffles and places where the river ran among
huge boulders. (It reminded me a lot of Sabino Canyon that goes into the hills
near Tucson.) There was a spot where there was a large flat spot by the river
that looked well used by picnickers. It was surprisingly clean.
Sn. Sebastian has a huge, well-maintained church. The municipal and co-
munidad indigena offices are right in front of the church. Off to one side is a
really large, well-maintained school. We were met by two young guys who
said that the main officials were still up in the hills. They were expecting us,
and apologized that the others were not there. We talked with them while
 Appendix 247

waiting for the others. They were J. S. R., the Secretaria Municipal, and L. S. S.,
the Secretary of the Comisariado de Bienes Comunales.
They talked about their ecotourism project, saying that until the earthquake
last year they had three cabins to rent. The earthquake destroyed two of these,
so only one is left functioning. The cabins are made of adobe and they said
that CEDETUR told them they could not use the two damaged cabins. One of
the projects they have had with PROCYMAF is an ecotourism study, and they
currently have an application pending to build three wooden cabins.
We talked a bit about the history of the place. They said that there were very
old documents relating to San Sebastian that dated to the 1500 and 1600s.
The church is old (they had no idea how old) and was reconstructed about 8
years ago.
They have about 5400 hectares of land in the community. There is also an
area of about 2000 hectares that is under dispute with a neighboring com-
munity (Aldama). They said that conciliation talks have been held and that
they hope this will be resolved soon. They said there are about 400 mayores
de edad (adults) in the community who are comuneros. Total population is
about 2000 in the main town and two rancherias. They said that there are
some people in the community who do not plant crops, but most people earn
their living from agriculture. They have very little productive forest because the
Compania Forestal de Oaxaca had the concession in the 1970s and they took
away all of the best trees. They are not exploiting the forest now; last year they
did a "cleaning" of the forest to get rid of the diseased trees and they sold some
of this. They vender madera en trozo (sell logs). They started selling their own
trees in 1985 but they really sell very little. They don't have a lot of forest that
can be exploited right now. What they sold last year was as a result of culling
the diseased trees (saneamiento). They do have a 10 year plan for the manage-
ment of their forest.
They were part of the Union Mixa but withdrew from it in May of 2000.
They said it did not make sense for them to belong because they were not
engaging in forestry activities. At one point, it sounded as though they had to
pay fees for a technician to the Union, but then later they said this was not
the case. It was not clear what the reason for their withdrawal really was. The
Union Mixa (Miza??) was formed in 1982 or 1983.
They first began hearing about PROCYMAF in 1998 because of regional
meetings that were held. They said the foros regionales were held in different
places and that they had held one of the first meetings in San Sebastian. Last
Thursday the latest meeting was held in Sebastian Jutanin. They had plans to
send a representative but said that something came up at the last minute and
no one could go, but they do attend regularly.
They have had several projects from PRODEFOR that have supported the
community. In October 1999, PRODEFOR supported the preaclareos (thin-
ning of trees). PROCYMAF has supported two studies for them. In 1998, they
did a study that looked at the possibility of bottling water for the community
to commercialize. This study showed that it was possible and could be a good
business, but they were scared off because it showed they needed a capital
investment of about 1 million pesos. They thought this was quite high, and kind
248 Appendix

of complained that it included new everything, including two new trucks. The
community voted against getting into this because a) there were not funds to
install the equipment and b) some people thought there would not be enough
water left over to irrigate land.
The second study was done at the end of 1999 and was an ecotourism study.
They now have a project to construct new cabins, using wood from the region
instead of adobe like the last ones were. The Centro lnterdisciplinario de ln-
vestigacion para el Desarrollo Integral Regional of the Politecnico in Oaxaca
did both studies. For the ecotourism project the community will have to put
up 25% of the cost and PROCYMAF will put up 75%. They are waiting to see
whether this project will be approved in Mexico City.
They have also had people attend several courses for training. One was on
environmental impact in Santiago Textitlan in November of 1998, another was
about rural stoves (estufa lorena) in Santa Catarina in February of 1999. One
young girl also completed a course on ecotourism, a guy dropped out of the
same course because he left for working outside the community.
I asked about the course for rural stoves and its effects. They said that when
they came back they talked with people about the stoves, but they could not
convince anyone to really build them. The Comisariado de Bienes Comunales
was one of the people who attended. They said that they thought that PROCY-
MAF needed to do a course in the community before it would have much effect.
We talked a bit about the struggle to eliminate the concessions. They talked
about the organization of communities that had done it. The people from San
Pedro el Alto, Sta. Maria Zanisa, and others led the fight.
The Comisariado de Bienes Comunales, L. P. L. and the head of the Comite
de Vigilancia, N. L. G., showed up about halfway through the interview. It was
clear that they did not have a clear understanding of the difference between
PRODEFOR and PROCYMAF. Their main contact with both programs has been
through P. C. who is the technician working with them. They are very support-
ive of the projects however. They said the big problem they had was that there
was no support given to them after they got the rights to their forests. This is the
first real support and the regional meetings are what they see as the vehicle for
support. They said the Comite de Recursos Naturales began in 1998.
I asked about cargos (community offices) and migration. They said that
people chosen for cargos do come back to the community, but the mayordomo
part of the system has really broken down. They said they used to have may-
ordomos for everything, but now just have collaboration of the community to
have the fiestas. There are several people who belong to a Protestant sect, but
they said this was not a problem. Those people participate in the tequios (com-
munal work) and so are members of the community. Apparently there is little
social conflict because of religion. They also said that the PRI had won their
community by just a few votes, with the PRO coming in second and PAN third.
Again, they said that the political differences did not split up the community.
Those people who do migrate are employed as masons, drivers, machinery
operators. Both boys and girls are migrating equally they said.
About 20% of their land is in cultivation, mainly in maize and beans. They
have about 10% of land in pine, and the other 70% is a mix of pine and Encino.
 Appendix 249

They had tobacco up until about 10 years ago but the company went broke
and they had no market for it. They also cultivated Zempozuche (I think this is
marigolds) for a while.
The comisariado said that there were about 300 family heads and that about
50% of these had their own yunta (ox team). The average amount they plant
is three hectares. Although he initially could not give an estimate of yields
(porque no tantiamos), Fernando skillfully got the data in another way. The
result was that he estimated that they harvested 40 cargas per hectare and this
added up to about 1500 to 2000 kilos of maize per hectare and about 300
kilos of beans. They plant one kilo of frijol to 4 kilos of maize, interspersing
them randomly. The 300 kilos of beans they thought would last a family a
whole year, and they estimated that family consumption of maize was 56 kilos
a week. The comisariado has quite a mixed enterprise with about 150 chivitos
(both sheep and goats), and lots of chickens. He said others have even larger
herds of chivitos. They have enough chickens in the community so there is no
need to buy them outside. When they do look for work outside, they work as
peons in the forest enterprise of San Pedro el Alto.
We returned to the theme of the projects. They said that most people were not
very enthusiastic about the projects because they are studies, and that they have
not received any actual resources for projects. They also have PROCAMPO that
about 80 people are getting (a lot of people just don't want it) and PROGRESA in
which about 60 families are left out with about 180 participating. They also get
milk from the DIF program with about 90 people getting that-for kids between
4 months and five years. There is also a rural store (tienda). The comisariado said
that all of them brought benefits to the community.
No one any longer speaks Zapotec in the community. They said it disap-
peared as a language about 20 years ago. INI has been there with programs
but when Fernando asked if they participated in any of them, they said no, that
people did not want to take on debt. They wanted gifts. As he so picturesquely
said, they are interested in programs "dado y olvidado" (given and forgotten),
not ones for which they have to take on debt. PROCYMAF is good because it
is mostly dado y olvidado.
Services in the community-
They do have a telephone. There is piped water but it doesn't have much
pressure so most people use wells. There is no drainage and most people use
latrines. They have had electricity for about 30 years. There is no plaza so
they have to go to Yocuso (Tuesdays) or to Zimatlan (Wednesdays). But most
people just go to Oaxaca. The PROGRESA program makes the mothers go to
the clinic in San Vicente which is supposed to be there for them. But they said
that they could not count on the doctor being there, that the medicines needed
were not available, and so most people went to Oaxaca for medical care. It
costs 20 pesos to go to Oaxaca on the bus and there is service about every
two hours. There are still a few midwives in the community. They do have a
telesecundaria but have to go to Oaxaca for preparatory school. They also have
postal service. It was interesting that they had a SKYTEL for television on the
roof of the community building. People chipped in for it, although it apparently
only gets a few channels.
250 Appendix

They said that a travel agent in Oaxaca books the cabins for ecotourism.
They did not know who it was. SEDETUR is also involved. They said the river
always has water in it.
We then went to the springs in the community and the place where the
cabins are located. The cabins are in a very nice spot, on a very level plain.
Someone was occupying the one cabin that was still in good shape. The area
around the springs was very well kept with no garbage around. They said the
community made sure it was kept clean. We then walked up the hill to one of
their caves. They have a guide who takes people through. They only have two
large flashlights, so when the group is large, it is a bit difficult.
The tour consisted of the guide pointing out different formations and tell-
ing us what "form" these formations had. So, there were elephants, penguins,
two people embracing, falcons, chickens, turtles, etc. The guide knew nothing
about the geology of the cave. There were bats flying around, and a few pools
of water. At one point we could hear an underground river. Apparently, by rap-
pelling, you can easily get down to it. The guide said he had been there and
that along the river it was sandy. A group from the polytechnic in Oaxaca was
in the cave exploring one of the branches. We were neither able to see or hear
them. The cave is nicely provided with both an entrance and an exit. The exit
is a fairly steep climb, but they have done a good job of building steps both in
the cave and at the exit. There is apparently another cave, but it only has an
entrance and they have not discovered if there is an exit.
There was a group waiting for us when we got back to the entrance. It had
eight people (mostly teenagers) in it. Another group of about eight came up
the hill also - an extended family by the looks of it. They charge 7 pesos for
entrance and the guided tour. Apparently there is only one guide.
Before we left, we bought lunch for the three guys who accompanied us.
There is a small restaurant in the community that has built a really nice palapa
over some tables. They had a chicken dish and beef steak. I had the latter
which was grilled to be almost crisp. Fernando reported that the chicken dish
was not any better. Some of them had beer and I and one of the guys had a
mescal. They said the mescal was made in the community and was far better
than the "artificial" stuff from Oaxaca. When we got back to the municipal
building, we said our goodbyes. They gave each of us a handful of small
peaches to eat on the road back to Oaxaca.

NOTE

1. All names used in the text of the sample field notes are pseudonyms.
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 ~Index~

AM. See American Anthropological notes, 170-71, 189, 190, 207; parts
Association of, 188-89, 190, 200; process of,
abstraction, 200 209; quality of, 10-15; statistical,
acceptance: breakthrough moment of, 195; of texts, 2, 22, 35, 207. See also
54-56; enhanced, 56; fear of non, data analysis
65 anger, 70
accuracy, 94; of information, 48, anonymi~,215,218,221,222
205; of interpretation, 172; of Anthropological Research: The Structure of
observation, 89, 166 Inquiry (Pelto, P. and Pelto, G.), 158
activism, ethnography and, 34, 53 anthropology, 2, 3, 5, 35, 126, 127,
adjustment, process of, 69 157-58, 163; contemporary, 36, 39;
Adler, Patricia, 12, 22, 24-25, 27, 31, controversies in, 94; interpretation
39 and, 95; methods of, 19; nutritional,
Adler, Peter, 12, 22, 24-25, 27, 31, 39 91
Agar, Michael, 35, 44-45, 46-47, 94, anxie~, 68, 69, 70, 73
132, 204 apprenticeship, 7, 11, 12
age, 30, 94, 130 Argonauts of the Western Pacific
agriculture, 61-62; research on, 38, 51, (Malinowski), 7
52, 128, 133 Arhem, Kaj, 29
Allen, Katherine, 101 ASA. See American Sociological
American Anthropological Association Association
(AM), 211, 213, 218, 223; code of Ashkenazi, Michael, 103
ethics, 53, 215, 216, 219, 225 audit trail, 184, 185, 190, 205, 207,
American Sociological Association 210; defined, 206
(ASA), 211, 213 Avenarius, 25-26, 224
analysis, 21, 109, 110, 228; ability of,
5, 12, 17, 20, 26; field notes and, Babbie, Earl R., 142
159, 166, 170-71, 179; getting, Bailey, Frederick G., 197
done, 78; involvement and, 31; Baird, Spencer, 6

265
266 Index

Bali, 54,59 Chapin, Mac, 84

Bastidas, Elena P., 84-85 charts: decision modeling, 202, 203,
Behar, Ruth, 28, 29 209; time sequence flow, 199, 200,
behavior: appropriate, 48, 58-61; 200,201
disturbing, 21; expected, 62-63; children, 128; fieldwork and, 74-77;
human, 37, 96; new styles of, rapport and, 7 5
10; patterns, 90, 126, 183; class, 30, 31-32, 34, 39, 99, 100, 111,
questions about, 122; skills of, 20; 112
understanding, 15. See also etiquette; Clifford, James, 159-60
manners CMC. See computer mediated
"being on,• 69-70, 73, 81, 87, 92, 142 communication
benefits: to informants, 107, 215, 216, code( s) of ethics and federal
217, 218; to research, 215, 217 regulations: AAA, of ethics, 53, 215,
Bernard, H. Russell, 21, 29, 138-39, 216, 219, 225; federal regulations,
141, 162, 165, 168, 183, 184, 192, 215, 226nl.
204-5 coding of data, 196; conceptual
biases, 80, 90, 166, 167, 183, 184, definition o£ 184-85, 188, 191, 207;
203, 205; acknowledging, 206; development of, 207; evolution of
ethnographer, 94-96; ethnography 190; indexing, 186-88; names, 190;
and male, 100; personal, 92-94 operational definitions of, 185, 188,
Boas, Franz, 8, 169 191, 207; structural, 183.
Bochner, Stephen, 69, 73, 77 codebooks, 184, 207; evolution of,
Boellstorff, Tom, 4, 9, 220 185
Bohr, Niels, 92, 93 Code of Federal Regulations, 215;
Booth, Charles, 7 informed consent in, 226n 1
boredom, 72 coding, 174-75, 179, 180, 195-96,
Bourgois, Philippe, 4, 12-13,22,31, 203, 209; categories in OCM, 184;
33, 35, 63-64, 75, 132, 154, 163, for characteristics, 192; computer
190,197,198,222 assisted, 188, 192; defined, 183;
Brazil, 14, 22, 25, 30, 46, 50, 57, 72, finalization o£ 191; hierarchical,
224 185; managing, 192-93; programs,
"breakdowns," 159, 204 193, 194-95; structural, 192;
Briggs, Jean, 30, 101 summaries and hypothesis, 199; for
Brymer, Richard, 13-14, 92 themes, 189-90, 191, 192
Cold War, 221
CAQDAS. See computer-assisted collaboration: oflocal scientists, 66n 1;
qualitative data analysis research, 5 1
case studies, 197-98, 202, 209 Collings, Peter, S0-51
Cassell, Joan, 76 Colombia, 85
categories, 183, 185, 188, 196, 198; of colonialism, 221
field notes, 158; OCM coding, 184 commitment, 56
CBPR. See community-based communication: cross-cultural, 58;
participatory research good, 51; nonverbal, 11, 68, 81, 87,
census, 73, 131, 132; bureau, 84 143. See also computer mediated
Chambers, Robert, 141-42 communication (CMC)
change, 61-62, 135; of topics, 152-53; community(ies), 56, 61-62, 66n2;
understanding, 125 education, 50, 51; expectations,
 Index 267

26-28; goals, 52, 53; identification context, 158, 159; familiarity of, 88;
with, 28; impact of global processes understanding wider, 125
on, 125-26; integration into, control, 20; degree of, of interviews,
30; interests, 84; leaders, 42-44; 138, 139
mapping, 84-85; meetings, 43; conversation, 140, 141, 142, 149, 152,
online, 4, 9, 14-15, 42, 46, 48, 50, 153, 159; attention to, 87; directing,
51; participating in, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 137; everyday, 4, 5; remembered,
12-13, 16n4, 40n3; participation, 138-39
13 2; permission of, 21 7; profit- cooperation, 48, 65
sharing with, 66n5; recruiting Copenhagen (Frayn), 97n5
members of, 52-53 Comerville, 31, 46, 64, 81, 142, 163
community-based participatory cost, of participant observation, 65, 67,
research (CBPR), 66n2 70
comparison: of data, 140, 141; offield counting, 85-86, 96, 137
notes, 89, 96, 123; of observations, culture(s), 184; communication
113; of research, 39 across, 58; contemporary/living, 8;
competency, 94; requirements for, 212; disappearing, 8; explicit vs. tacit,
of researcher, 211, 212-13, 225 1-2, 11, 16n2; immersion in, 65.
compromise, 28 See also enculturation
computer(s): field notes on, 169, 170, culture shock, 71, 81; coping with, 73-
222; programs, 135, 175, 181, 193, 74; defined, 67; phases of, 68-69,
194-95; solar powered, 178nl; 72-73; reverse, 77; symptoms of,
using, 169, 170, 175, 176; using, for 68,70
coding, 188, 192. See also computer- Cupples, Julie, 104
assisted qualitative data analysis Cushing, Frank Hamilton, 6-7, 22, 25
(CAQDAS); computer mediated Cutcliffe, John R., 206
communication (CMC); Internet
computer-assisted qualitative data dance,26-27,227,231
analysis (CAQDAS), 181, 185, 193, danger, physical, 31, 33
199; performance o£ 194-95 data, 168; comparability of, 140, 141;
computer mediated communication differing, 94; display, 180, 181;
(CMC), 9, 14, 26, 42, 43, 219, 220, falsification of, 222; interpretation
221 of, 10; managing qualitative, 180-
conceptual frameworks, 80-81, 134, 81; quantitative, 85; validity of, 110
182, 185 data analysis, 7, 29, 111, 123, 179,
conclusion(s), 85, 124, 180, 209; 181, 189, 206, 209; process of,
developing, 204; differing, 112-13; 180; strategy, 133, 135. See also
drawing and verification, 202-5; computer-assisted qualitative data
validity of, 122 analysis (CAQDAS)
confidentiality, 49, 85, 95, 211, data collection, 2, 3, 5, 16, 29, 35, 73,
219, 220; of field notes, 226; 134, 139, 182, 203; quality of, 10-
maintaining, 226; publication and, 15; sexuality and, 105, 106; strategy,
226 133, 135; structured, 71, 137
confirmability, 205-6 data display methods, 209; decision
confrontation, avoiding, 151-52, 156 modeling, 202, 203, 209; quotes,
Constable, Nicole, 43, 46, 220 196-97, 209; tables/matrices,
contact, first, 44-4 7 198-99; time sequence flow chart,
268 Index

199, 200, 200, 201; vignettes/cases, economic exchange, 63, 100, 130
197-98,202,209 Ecuador, 50, 52, 60, 113, 122, 155,
data reduction, 180, 181-96, 209. See 161, 168, 173, 175, 196, 199, 227
also coding; indexing education: community, 50, 51; health,
debriefing, 218 50; research and, 23, 44, 205
decision modeling, 202, 203, 209 electricity, 174, 175, 176, 242, 245,
demands, dealing with, 69, 73 249
demystification, 28, 36 elicitation, formal, 3, 35, 58, 110, 128
Dentan, Robert K., 20, 45, 55, 59, 64, Emerson, Robert M., 158, 167, 170
74 emicfetic approach, 9, 125, 184;
Dentan, Ruth, 55, 59, 64 defined, 17n8
depression, 70, 72, 169 emotions, 41, 154, 229-30;
deprivation, enduring, 72 involvement and, 22-23, 28-29, 30
description, 124, 125, 228; enculturation, 4, 11, 12, 80; defined,
ethnographic, 184; research and, 16n6
126 Enelow, Allen J., 147
Desjarlais, Robert, 10-11, 22 enmeshment, 29
detail, 88, 158, 159, 182; attention to, ethics, 9, 23, 26, 32, 34, 42, 53, 85,
79, 81-84, 87, 88, 96, 142; field 96n4, 209, 211; AAA code of, 53,
notes and, 165-66, 167-68 215, 216, 219, 225; limitations
deviant subcultures, fieldwork on, 4, to participation and, 224-26;
12-14,33 noninterference vs. personal, 225;
DeWalt, Bill R., 33, 59, 60, 62, 66, 74, online research and, 219-21;
77, 91, 94-95, 102, 156n3, 161, publication and, 211, 221-22, 226;
168,174,185,199,223,246-50 public taking of field notes and,
DeWalt, Kathleen M., 33, 42, 50, 57, 221-22; relationships and, 222-24;
60,61-62,74,75,77,94-95,140, relativism and, 225; of research,
144, 154, 155, 161, 174, 17~ 185, 211, 212, 213; sexuality and, 106
190,223,224,225,235-46 ethnicity, 30, 34, 37, 39, 94, 111, 112,
dialect, 5, 13 130
diary, 158, 159, 168-69, 170, 173, ethnocentrism, 59
174; personal, 28, 72, 77 ethnographer, 28; bias, 94-96; visibility
A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term of, 26
(Malinowski), 168-69 ethnography, 1, 2, 3, 9, 11, 93; activism
Dillman, Don A., 142 and, 34, 53; auto, 88; contemporary,
discrepancies, 91 35; defined, 16n1; description and,
diversity: of research methods, 11 0, 184; focused, 38; male-biased, 100;
123, 127-28; understanding, narrative, 28, 36-37, 96
130-31 etiquette, 68
documentation, 125, 128, 135; of Europe and the People without History
methods, 112; types of, 157 (Wolf), 125
Doing Fieldwork: Warnings and Advice events, 131, 158; choosing, 10, 61;
(Wax), 77, 208-9 common, 14, 90-91; rare, 13, 14,
Dreher, Melanie, 76 90, 91, 125
drug dealers, 4, 12-13, 32, 33, 198 expectations, 79, 80, 100, 204, 228;
DuBois, Cora, 67 of behavior, 62-63; of community,
Dubois, Rene, 92-93 26-28
 Index 269

experience, 19, 86, 92, 93, 95; personal, term, 13; method of, 1-5; sexuality
20 and,33,48, 102-8
explanation, 124 Finland, 82-83
exploitation, 34, 225; intellectual, 160; Finnstrom, Sverker, 29, 35-36
sexual, 106 Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn, 75, 211, 212,
eye contact, 1, 58, 70, 114, 143-44 213,216
focused ethnographic studies (FES), 38
family status, 34 food(s), 101, 128, 131; comfort, 74;
feedback: repetition, 147-48; summary, consumption of, 91; local, 59-60,
148-49 62-63, 64, 69, 91, 128; reciprocal,
Fernandez, Renate, 75 distribution, 64. See also nutrition
FES. See focused ethnographic studies Frayn, Michael, 97n5
Fewkes, Jesse, 22 Freeman, Derek, 100
field: entering, 41-44; leaving, 224, Fretz, Rachel 1., 158, 167, 170
226 Friedrich, Morris, 163
field notes, 2, 5, 7, 12, 15, 81, 135; friendships, 4, 27, 32, 45, 64, 160, 222
analyzing, 159, 166, 170-71, 179; functionalism, 5, 35, 126
categories of, 158; comparing, 89, funding: governmental, organizations,
96, 123; on computer, 169, 170, 222; research, 109, 127, 133, 134
222; confidentiality of, 226; detail Furnham, Adrian, 69, 73, 77
and, 165-66, 167-68; effects of
taking, 163; ethics and public taking gangs, 13, 92
of, 221-22; examples of, 167-68; gatekeepers, 42-44
expanded, 165-68; history of Gearing, Jean, 104
writing, 157-60; jot notes to, 165; Geertz, Clifford, 29, 54, 56
losing, 171-72; of meeting at Seguro Geertz, Hillary, 54, 56
Campesino, 113-22; memories gender, 30, 31, 34, 37, 39, 93, 96,
and, 166, 171, 173; observation, 99-102, 10~ 111, 112, 130, 192;
87-88; in online research, 173-74; performative nature of, 104
ownership of, 176-78; quality of, generalizations, 37, 38, 124, 128
166; rereading, 159, 175, 179, 203, Global Environment Facility, 246
209; review of, 222; running, 96n3; goals: community, 52, 53; sharing
subpoenaed, 222. See also diary; research, 21 7
journals; sample field notes godparenthood, 223
Field Notes (Sanjek), 167 "going native," 6, 22, 24, 40n5, 73
field notes type: computerized notes, Gonzalez, Carlos A., 84-85
169, 170, 222; expanded field notes, Good, Kenneth, 22, 24, 33-34, 103,
165-68; headnotes, 171-73, 176; 224
jot notes, 160-61, 160-68, 162, GoogleEarth, 84
163-64, 166-68; logs, 169-70, 193; gossip, 3, 214, 218
meta-notes/analytic notes, 170-71, Guadarrama Olivera, Fernando, 246
189, 190, 207; methodological Guatemala, 76, 107
notes, 168 Guimaraes, Mario J. L., 46, 48, 50
fieldwork, 2, 19, 29, 208-9; children
and,74-77;defined, 1-2;on Hamilton, Sarah, 196-97
deviant subcultures, 4, 12-14, 33; harm, doing no, 53, 226
history of, 5-9; joy of, 78; long- headnotes, 171-73, 178
270 Index

health, 51, 66n2, 91, 115, 127, 128, 221, 222; relationships with, 29, 34,
140, 154, 202, 222; education, SO; 36,37,45,47-53,92,177,222-24,
research, 23, 52, 133, 205, 206, 207; 225; respect for, 48, 49, 52, 61, 143,
traditional, practices, 52 211, 213, 215, 216, 225; rights o£
Hecht, Tobias, 14, 22, 25, 30-31 52,211,215,216,218-19,222;
hermeneutics, 6 risks/benefits to, 107,215,216,217,
hierarchy: civil religious, 26-27; coding 218; stories o£ 27, 36, 47, 48, 61,
and, 185; indexing and, 185 65, 102, 217
Hine, Christine, 220-21 information: accurate, 48, 205; giving
history: of fieldwork, S-9; life, 125, personal, 48-49; income, 49;
128; oral, 125, 128, 135; of integration o£ 124; lack of, 140;
participant observation, 5-9; of quality of, 52, 56; tacit/explicit, 5,
writing field notes, 157-60 11-12, 16n2, 80
HIV/AIDS, 16n5 informed consent, 106, 164, 211; in
homesickness, 67 Code of Federal Regulations, 226n1;
homosexuality, 100, 105, 106 meaning of, 214-18, 225-26;
honesty,33,48,49, 156n2 online research and, 220; standards
hopelessness, 73 for, 215
Horowitz, Ruth, 31 inquiries, directed, 4
household type, 130, 131 insider status, 6, 24, 25, 36
Howell, Nancy, 107 Institutional Review Board for the
Huberman, A. Michael, 181, 183 Protection of Human Subjects in
Hugh-Jones, Christine, 76 Research (IRBs), 33, 42, 214
Hugh-Jones, Stephen, 76 institutions, 43-44
Human Relations Area Files, 184 integration: into community, 30; of
hunches, 202; source o£ 203-4 information, 124
Huntingon, G. E., 76 integrity, research, 176-78, 222
hypotheses, 123, 170, 183, 202, 203; Internet: based participant observation,
coding, 199; new research, 10, 15- 26, 42; blogsfchats, 14, 23, 26;
16; reformulating, 205; testing, 110, communities, 4, 9, 14-15, 42, 46,
125, 126, 128, 135 48, SO, 51; ethics and, research,
219-21; field notes in, research,
identification: with community, 28; of 173-74; informed consent and,
local problems, 84 research, 220; lurker, 14, 17n11,
identity, group, 25 23, 26, 220, 221; multimedia
illegal activities, 31, 45, 217, 221 online sociability platform, 46;
illness, 51, 76, 168, 169 research, 23. See also massively
implementation, 9 multi player online role-playing
indexing, 135, 195-96, 203, 209; game (MMORPG)
approaches to, 184-89;for interpretation, 11, 109, 110, 124, 125,
characteristics, 183; codes, 186-88; 167, 181, 183, 189, 203; accuracyo£
defined, 183; finalization of, 191; 172; anthropology and, 95; of data,
hierarchical, 185; managing, 192-93 10; involvement and, 31; research
India, 60, 75, 197 and, 126; of texts, 2, 22, 35, 207
Indonesia, 83 intervention: programs, 38; by
informants: choosing, 130, 131; researcher, 33-34, 224-25. See also
protecting, 45, 52, 211, 214, 216, noninterference
 Index 271

interview(s), 8, 215, 218; choosing type Kozinets, Robert V., 173-7 4

of, 141; concluding, 155-56; degree Kulick, Don, 104, 105
of control of, 138, 139; formal, 128, Kuznar, Lawrence, 84
132, 137, 142; informal, 13, 21,
122, 13~ 138, 139, 141, 142, 152, labels, 188; attaching, 183-84
153, 156, 159; life history, 128; Lamb, Zachary, 84
mistakes during, 145; open-ended, Langness, L. L., 47
3; oral history, 128; semistructured, language, 5, 6, 8, 13, 23, 66n8, 127;
2, 139, 141, 142, 164; structured, 2, body, 59, 68, 87, 143; use of local,
110, 133, 137, 153, 164; types of, 56-58
138-42; uniformity of stimuli in, Latin America, 43, 223
138, 139; unstructured, 139, 140, Leach, Edmund, 172
142 learning: participant observation, 20-
interview questions: for clarification, 21; selective, 15
150, 156; naive, 150-51, 156; tell- LeCompte, Margaret D., 48, 133, 170,
me-more, 149 179
interview schedules, 128, 137, 139, 180 leisure activities, 4, 5
interview technique: active listening, letters of introduction, 42
142-43, 151, 156; repetition Levi-Strauss, Claude, 95
feedback, 147-48; sensitive silence, Lindeman, Eduard, C., 9, 16, 31
142-43, 156; summary feedback, listening, 4, 48, 212; active, 86, 87,
148-49; uh-huh prompt, 145-47 142-43, 151, 156
intuition, 15 Living with Bad Surroundings
Inuit, 50 (Finnstrom), 35
involvement: analysis/interpretation Lobban, Richard, 75
and, 31; emotional, 22-23, 28-29, logs, 169-70, 193
30; level of, 28 Lombardi, 44, 46
IRBs. See Institutional Review Board for loneliness, 67, 70, 71, 72, 169
the Protection of Human Subjects in Lugosi, Peter, 214
Research Lutz, Katherine, 31, 100-101, 223
isolation, 52, 75, 125, 126
Malaya, 20
Jackson, Jean, 158, 159, 160, 163, 166, Malaysia, 55
167, 173 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 3-4, 5, 7, 8-9,
Jamaica, 76, 91 16, 16n4, 22, 35, 50, 72, 100, 103,
Johnson, Jeffrey C., 22, 25-26, 130 15& 15~ 16~ 168-6~ 174
Jorgensen, Danny, 48 Maman,Suzanne,85
jot notes, 160-61, 162, 163-64, 166- manners: adopting local, 58-61; table,
68; to field notes, 165 60
journals, 158, 168-69, 170, 173 Manu'a, 7-8
mapping, 96, 137; community, 84-85;
Kaiser, Lincoln, 31, 64 participatory, 84-85; social space,
Kelly, Phyllis, 26-27, 161 81-84
Kent, Linda, 64-65 Markowitz, Fran, 103
Kentucky, 27, 42, 45, 58, 101, 131, marriage, 43, 104, 227
168,175,176,185,207,223 Martin, David, 2 7
Kornblum, William, 54-55, 56 Martin, Judith, 77-78
272 Index

massively multiplayer online role- Nader, Laura, 47

playing game (MMORPG), 4, 15, Naroll, Raoul, 94, 95
219,221 Nash, June, 34
matrices, 198-99 National Institutes of Health, 222
Maybury-Lewis, David, 171 National Science Foundation, 222
Maybury-Lewis, Pia, 171 Ness, Robert, 95
McKenna, Hugh P, 206 networks, 81
Mead, Margaret, 7-8, 11, 16, 21, 22, neutrality, 4 7
30, 59, 71-72, 73, 74, 79, 100, 129, Nicaragua, 104
159, 169, 174 Nichter, Mark, 75
meaning: creation, 26, 158, 183, 202, Nichter, Mimi, 75
203; of informed consent, 214-18, Nimuendaju, Curt, 22
225-26; of respect, 215 noninterference, personal ethics vs., 225
membership: active, 24, 25; full, 24, 25; nonjudgment, 61
limits to, 39; peripheral, 24, 25, 27; notebooks, 161
role, 29, 30. See also participation Notes and Queries on Anthropology
memory(ies), 79, 82, 96n2, 158, 163; (Seligman), 157-58, 163
field notes and, 166, 171, 173; novels, 72, 74
practicing/improving, 88-89; quality NUD*IST, coding program, 193
of, 161; short-term, 21 nutrition: anthropology and, 91; research
mental notes, 142 on, 101-2, 131, 185-88, 190-91,
Merton, Robert, 9 198; sample field notes of research
meta-notes/analytic notes, 170-71, on, 234-46; strategy of, 61-62
189,190,207 Nutritional Strategies and Agricultural
Merico,26-27,43,45,47,49,52,56, Change in a Mexican Community
59,61-62, 74,75,83,86,94, 102, (DeWalt, K. M.), 61-62
112, 131, 132, 140, 151, 168, 174, NVivo, coding program, 193, 194-95
175, 184, 223; sample field notes of
forestry project in, 246-50 Oberg, Kalervo, 67-69, 73
Michalski Turner, Diane, 76 objectivity, 28, 37, 85, 93, 96, 97n6,
Micronesian atoll, 100 104, 112, 123, 166, 172, 209; limits
Miles, Mathew B., 181, 183 to, 111, 124; losing, 31
Miller, Loren, 169, 173, 227-34 observation(s), 39, 159; accuracy
Minocha, Aneeta, 165-66 of, 89, 166; comparing of, 113;
mistakes: during interviews, 145; content of, 89-92; defined, 21,
making, 61-65 80; exploratory, 133; field notes
MMORPG. See massively multiplayer and, 87-88; impact of, 93; limits
online role-playing game to, 92-94; number of, 90; outside,
money, 50-51 17n9; practicing/improving, 88-89;
morality, standards of, 34 pure, 2, 21; running, 96n3; self, 80;
Moreno, Eva, 107 skills, 79, 80, 86, 87, 96; structured,
Morocco, 69 3, 110, 128; understanding, 80;
Mullings, Leith, 42-43, 132 vantage point of, 92, 93, 111, 112,
Murphy, Robert F., 101 124. See also participant observation
Murphy, Yolanda, 101 observer: becoming, 79-96; impact of,
Murray, Stephen, 105, 107 80; role of, 81, 92; sexuality and, 106
My Apprenticeship (Webb), 7 OCM. See Outline of Cultural Materials
 Index 273

openness, 61 photographs, 51
opinions, 48 Picchi, Debra, 57, 61, 72
opportunists, 45 poachers, 13-14
Ottenberg, Simon, 169, 172-73 Political Systems of Highland Burma
Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM ), (Leach), 172
coding categories in, 184 postmodernism, 35, 36, 94, 95, 96
power, 7; relationships, 76, 81;
Palace, 46, 48, 50, 66n4 women's social, 53, 83
participant: becoming, 41-65; roles, 12 preference, 21; denial of, 70; in
participant observation, 80, 124, 152; sexuality, 96, 111
cost of, 65, 67, 70; deceitfulness of, privacy, 215; lack of, 59; right to,
214; defined, 1-2; as foundation, 218-19,220
16; fundamentals of research design privilege, 7
and, 111-23; history of, 5-9; problems, identifying local, 84
importance of, 10; Internet based, program planning, 9, 52
26, 42; justifying, 134; learning, 20- prompts, uh-huh, 145-47
21; limitations to, 125; long-term, prostitutes, 55
91; method of, 1-5, 20, 21, 92, 111, protection: of informants, 42, 52, 211,
126, 127, 163; paradox of, 28-29; 214, 216,221, 222; of rights, 52,
quality of, 96; rapport and, 47; 211, 216
research design and, 109-11; role psychoanalysis, 96
of, 36; short-term, 38-39; skills, 19, publication, 191,212, 216,217, 218;
20-21, 30, 39; theory and, 35, 39 confidentiality and, 226; ethical,
participation, 66n2; active, 23-24, 25- 211, 221-22, 226; intended/
26; community, 132; complete, 24; unintended uses of, 221, 226;
defined, 22; degrees of, 22-24, 25, potential consequences of, 21 7;
26-28, 29, 39; ethics and limits to, results of, 21 7
224-26; in illegal activities, 31; limits Punch, Maurice, 214
to, 31-32, 33-34, 39; mapping
and, 84-85; moderate, 23, 27; non, quality: of analysis, 10-15; of data
22-23; passive, 23, 42; pure, 21, 22; collection, 10-15; of field notes,
social, 72. See also membership 166; of information, 52, 56; of
particle physics, 92, 93 memory, 161; of participant
patience, 21 observation, 96; of research, 95
patterns, 188, 189, 190, 203, 205; of questionnaires, 3, 110, 112, 128, 137,
behavior/thought, 90, 126, 183 138, 141, 180, 218
Patton, Michael, 179 questions, 61, 93, 127, 141, 203;
Paul, Benjamin, 28, 70, 72 appropriate, 124-26; about
peanut butter, 74 behavior, 122; nchinese box," 152-
Pelto, Gretel H., 19, 82-83, 158, 167, 170 53; choosing, 123-24, 129, 182;
Pelto, Pertti J., 19, 158, 163, 167, 170 clarity of, 47, 130, 133; evolving,
permission: of community, 217; 53; formulating, 52; leading, 153;
research, 42-44 multiple-choice, 152; new research,
personal characteristics, of researchers, 10, 15-16; open ended, 152;
30,34,93-94,9~9~9~ 111,166, responses to, 122; short, 152; types
205 of, 111. See also interview questions
personal space, 143 quotes, 196-97, 209
274 Index

Rabinow, Paul, 69, 103 of, 215, 217; collaborative, 51;

race, 96, 99, 100 comparative, 39; covert, 13, 23,
RAP. See Rapid Appraisal Procedures 32-33, 41, 221, 226; descriptive,
rape,34, 107,224,229 126; disclosure of, purpose, 44;
Rapid Appraisal Procedures (RAP), 38, diversity of, methods, 110, 123,
132 127-28; educational, 23, 44,
Rapid Ethnographic Assessment (REA), 205; ethical conduct of, 211, 212,
38 213; ethics and online, 219-21;
Rapid rural Appraisal, 38 fundedfnonfunded, 222; funding,
rapport, 213; children and, 75; 109, 127, 133, 134; health, 23,
deepening, 74; defined, 47, 52; 52, 133, 205, 206, 207; integrity,
development of, 47-53, 65, 84, 176-78, 222; interpretation and,
85, 106; instant, 51; participant 126; interpretive, 125; long-term,
observation and, 4 7 84; man/woman, teams, 101-2;
REA. See Rapid Ethnographic new, questions/hypotheses, 10,
Assessment 15-16; on nutrition, 101-2, 131,
reciprocity, 48, 49-51, 52, 53, 65, 68; 185-88, 190-91, 198; objectives,
rules of, 59 134, 135..:.36; online, 23; online,
recording, 2, 5, 10, 79, 87, 153, and field notes, 173-7 4; online,
182-83; devices, 164; how to do, and informed consent, 220;
174-76; strategy, 111; taped, 4, 13, permission, 42-44; purpose,
14,21,30,31,89,96n2, 157,163, 51-52, 61; qualitative, 2, 7, 15, 38,
164,175-76, 198,210n2,217,222, 128, 133, 134, 205, 207; quality
226. See also field notes of, 95; quantitative vs. qualitative,
reentry shock. See culture shock 129, 206; rapid/focused, 38-39, 51,
reflexivity, 20, 28, 35-36, 38, 39, 102, 52, 84, 132, 246; risks of, 215, 217;
111, 123, 159, 169, 182-83, 203, role of, 58; sample field notes of,
205; sexuality and, 105; social on nutrition, 234-46; sample field
science and, 3 7 notes of, on women, 227, 228-34;
Reid, Elizabeth, 220 sharing, goals, 21 7; sharing, results,
relationships, 79, 212; ethics and, 51, 52; social, 9; supervised, 96n4,
222-24; fictive kinship, 223; with 212; survey, 128; tools of, 112;
informants, 29, 34, 36, 37, 45, validity/reliability of, 94, 110;
47-53,92, 177,222-24,225; variety of, methods, 95; on women,
maintaining, 211; obligations and, 43, 53, 71, 83, 199
223; power, 76, 81; social, 82-83, 88 research design, 134, 135, 136, 182;
relativism, ethical, 225 elements of, 123-28; fundamentals
reliability, 112, 114, 123; assessing, of, and participant observation,
124; field notes of meeting at 111-23; participant observation
Seguro Campesino and, 113-22; and, 109-11
interrater, 207; quixotic, 122; of researcher(s): competency of, 211,
research, 94, 110; testing, 113 212-13, 225; intervention by, 33-
religion, 26, 27, 34, 130 34, 224-25; personal characteristics
The Remembered Village (Srinivas), 172 of, 30, 34, 93-94, 95, 96, 99, 111,
representativeness, 128-33, 134, 135 166, 205; role of, 30-33, 227;
research, 66n2; agricultural, 38, 51, subsequent, 106, 212; training, 212,
52, 128, 133; applied, 38; benefits 213; woman, 31, 48, 55, 59, 99-102
 Index 275

research proposals, 133, 182, 206; sexual harassment, 100, 107

format of, 134-35 sexuality, 16n5, 100, 227, 229-30;
research site, 129, 134, 213; selection, data collection and, 105, 106;
111, 123, 126-27, 132 ethics and, 106; exploitation
resentment, 70 and, 106; fieldwork and, 33, 48,
respect, 47, 48, 52, 53, 55, 61, 63, 190, 102-8; impact of, 106-7; observer
211, 213; for informants, 48, 49, 52, and, 106; preference in, 96, 111;
61, 143,211,213,21~21~225; reflexivity and, 105; risks of, 107.
meaning of, 215 See also homosexuality
review, 33, 42, 190, 214; boards, 44, Shaw, Linda L., 158, 167, 170
222; of field notes, 222 shyness, 61, 65, 85
right(s): of informants, 52, 211, 215, skills, 89; behavioral, 20; observation,
216,218-19, 222; to know, 215; to 79, 80, 86, 87, 96; participant
privacy, 218-19, 220; protection of, observation, 19, 20-21, 30, 39;
52, 211, 216 social, 20
risks: to informants, 107, 215, 216, Smithsonian Institute, 6
217, 218; of research, 215, 217; of social life, 3; cues of, 68
sexuality, 107; understanding, 215, social organization, 79, 80-81
217 social science: reflexivity and, 37;
Rohner, Ronald, 95 theory, 39
romanticism, 6, 20, 68, 95 South America, 27
Ross, Becky, 223 Spain, 75
specialization, 127
safety, 211 sponsors, 45-46
Samoa, 7-8 Spradley, James P., 22, 24, 27, 39
sample field notes: of forestry project, Srinivas, Mysore N., 172
Mexico, 246-50; of research on St. Vincent, 104
nutrition, 234-46; of research on Stack, Carol, 55
women,227,228-34 standardization, 34, 112, 215
sampling, 3, 39, 128-33, 134, 135; stereotyping, 68
judgment, 130; opportunistic/ Sterk, Claire, 55
convenience, 130 stories, of informants, 27, 36, 4 7, 48,
Sanders, Teela, 220 61, 65, 102, 217
Sanjek, Roger, 158-59, 165, 167, 168, stranger handlers, 44-45
169-70 strategy: data analysis, 133, 135; data
Schaik, Eileen van, 91 collection, 133, 135; development
Schensul, Jean J., 48, 133, 170, 179 of, 123; nutritional, 61-62;
Schensul, Stephen, 48, 133, 170 recording, 111
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 34, 224 stress, 218
seasonality, 90 Sturtevant, William, 162
Second Life, 4, 15, 220 subjectivity, 97n6
secret societies, 14 Summer Institute of Linguistics, 56
seeing, 81; active, 21; with new eyes, surveys, 132, 141; research, 128;
88,96,204 windshield, 133
Seligman, Brenda, 157-58, 163 suspicion, 52
Semai, 64 Swanson, Eleanor, 26-27
sensitive subjects, 153-55, 217, 218 Swisher, Scott N., 147
276 Index

tables, 198-99 values, 48, 79, 80

talents, 21 verification, 180, 181, 209; conclusion
technology transfer programs, 38 drawing and, 202-5
Tedlock, Barbara, 28, 40n5 vignettes, 197-98, 202, 209
texts, 125, 128; analysis/interpretation Villa Rojas, Alfonso, 4 7
of, 2, 22, 35, 207 violence, 13, 34, 52, 56, 85, 155
theory, 37, 96, 111, 127, 130, 134,
166, 182, 184, 203; building, 94, Ward, Colleen, 69, 73, 77
194, 196; grounded, approach, 15, Wax, Rosalie, 60, 70-71, 72, 73, 77,
183, 189; participant observation 78,208-9
and, 35, 39; reformulating, 205; role Weatherford, Jack M., 25-26
of, 80-81; social science, 39 Webb, Beatrice Potter, 7, 22
third party assessment, 206 Weiner, Annette, 100
thoughtfulness, 4 7 Werner, Oswald, 84
Threlkeld, Bill, 84 Whyte, William Foote, 31, 46, 58, 64,
time frame, 26, 48, 94-95, 125 81, 142, 163, 221
tourists, 69 Willigen, John van, 27
traditions, 15 witchcraft, 14, 52, 56, 94
transience, 224 Wolcott, Harry, 79, 91-92, 208, 209
Travelers, Irish, 64-65 Wolf, Eric, 125
triangulation, 127-28 woman( en), 60, 78, 154; assault on,
Trobriand Islands, 3, 8, 100, 168-69, 174 34, 107, 155; researchers, 31, 48,
trust, 13, 14, 46, 48, 52, 65, 71; 55, 59, 99-102; research on, 43,
development of, 85 53, 71, 83, 199; research teams of
truth, Ill; telling of in establishing men and, 101-2; sample field notes
rapport, 48-49 of research on, 227, 228-34; social
power of, 53, 83
Uganda, 35-36 word searches, 193-96
understanding, 26, 29, 124, 189; World Bank, 246
behavior, 15; change, 125; diversity, World Wildlife Fund, 246
130-31; holistic, 110; observation, writing implement, 163
80; risks, 215, 217; tacit, 4-5, 10, writing up, 207, 210; indicators when
15, 16n2,80,92, 158, 16~ 171, to start, 208-9
173; wider context, 125 Wycliffe Bible Translators, 57
United Nations University, 38
University of Pittsburgh, research Yanomama Indians, 22, 24, 34, 103,
integrity policy statement of, 222 224
Yolmo healing, 10
validity, 112, 123, 207; assessing, 128; Young, James C., 202
of conclusions, 122; of data, 110;
defined, 122; of research, 94, 110 Zuni Pueblo, 6, 21, 25
 ~ About the Authors ~

Kathleen M. DeWalt earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the Univer-

sity of Connecticut {1980}. She is a professor of anthropology and public
health, and director ofthe Center for Latin American Studies at the Univer-
sity of Pittsburgh. From 1978 to 1993 she was a member ofthe Faculty of
Medicine of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Since 1970
she has been carrying out research related to health and nutrition issues
in Mexico, Brazil, Honduras, Ecuador, and rural Kentucky. Her primary
research interests are in the impact of economic, agricultural, and health
policy on the food security and health of families and individuals living
in economically marginal rural communities. Her most recent research
projects are on the impact of income-generating projects on women's social
power and child welfare in several communities in Ecuador and the food
systems and nutritional status of the Kichwa people of Napa Province, Ec-
uador. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation,
National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, The National Institute on Aging,
the National Institute for Nursing Research, the Me Arthur Foundation,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Agency for International
Development. She is the author of five books and monographs and over
seventy-five papers, chapters, and reports. She has served as the president
of the Council for Nutritional Anthropology, Chair of the Committee on
the Status of Women in Anthropology, and on the Nominations Commit-
tee of the American Anthropological Association.

Billie R. DeWalt is the founding president and director of the Musical In-
strument Museum {MIM} in Phoenix, Arizona. He joined the museum in
March 2007 with the responsibility for building a staff, assembling a glob-
ally comprehensive and renowned collection, fundraising, and coordinat-
ing with the building construction team. Prior to joining MIM, he served
as the director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh

277
278 About the Authors

from 2001 to 2007. At the University of Pittsburgh, he was director of the

Center for Latin American Studies from 1993 to 2001 and distinguished
service professor of public and international affairs from 1993 to 2007.
He has a B.A. in sociology and anthropology {1969} and Ph.D. in cultural
anthropology {1976), both from the University of Connecticut. He held
teaching and administrative positions in anthropology at the University of
Kentucky from 1977 to 1993. His extensive publications as an anthropolo-
gist focus on the human dimensions of natural resource and environmental
policies, the cultures of Latin America, human ecology, and anthropologi-
cal methods. He has received Fulbright awards for teaching and research in
Ecuador and Argentina; overseen major international projects in Mexico,
Honduras, and Ecuador; and supervised the work of doctoral students who
have worked in many parts of the world. As a consultant on the human
dimensions of agriculture, forestry, biodiversity, poverty, and aquaculture
policy, he has served frequently as a consultant for such organizations as
the World Wildlife Fund, World Bank, International Finance Corporation,
Inter-American Development Bank, and the U.S. Agency for International
Development.