Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Participant Observation 347
doses of both, see Wolcott (1995), Agar (1996), and C. D. Smith and Kornblum
(1996), Handwerker (2001), and Dewalt and Dewalt (2002). There’s still
plenty of mystery and romance in participant observation, but you don’t have
to go out unprepared.
Fieldwork Roles
Fieldwork can involve three very different roles: (1) complete participant,
(2) participant observer, and (3) complete observer. The first role involves
deception—becoming a member of a group without letting on that you’re
there to do research. The third role involves following people around and
recording their behavior with little if any interaction. This is part of direct
observation, which we’ll take up in the next chapter.
By far, most ethnographic research is based on the second role, that of the
participant observer. Participant observers can be insiders who observe and
record some aspects of life around them (in which case, they’re observing
participants); or they can be outsiders who participate in some aspects of life
around them and record what they can (in which case, they’re participating
observers).
In 1965, I went to sea with a group of Greek sponge fishermen in the Mediterranean.
I lived in close quarters with them, ate the same awful food as they
did, and generally participated in their life—as an outsider. I didn’t dive for
sponges, but I spent most of my waking hours studying the behavior and the
conversation of the men who did. The divers were curious about what I was
writing in my notebooks, but they went about their business and just let me
take notes, time their dives, and shoot movies (Bernard 1987). I was a participating
observer.
Similarly, when I went to sea in 1972 and 1973 with oceanographic
research vessels, I was part of the scientific crew, there to watch how oceanographic
scientists, technicians, and mariners interacted and how this interaction
affected the process of gathering oceanographic data. There, too, I was a
participating observer (Bernard and Killworth 1973).
Circumstances can sometimes overtake the role of mere participating
observer. In 1979, El Salvador was in civil war. Thousands fled to Honduras
where they were sheltered in refugee camps near the border. Phillipe Bourgois
went to one of those camps to initiate what he hoped would be his doctoral
research in anthropology. Some refugees there offered to show him their home
villages and Bourgois crossed with them, illegally, into El Salvador for what
he thought would be a 48-hour visit. Instead, Bourgois was trapped, along with
about a thousand peasants, for 2 weeks, as the Salvadoran military bombed,