Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Participant Observation 369
not to betray their confidence, you’ll be surprised at the direct questions you
can ask.
In his study of Cornerville (Boston’s heavily Italian American neighborhood
called North End), William Foote Whyte wondered whether ‘‘just hanging
on the street corner was an active enough process to be dignified by the
term ‘research.’ Perhaps I should ask these men questions,’’ he thought. He
soon realized that ‘‘one has to learn when to question and when not to question
as well as what questions to ask’’ (1989:78).
Philip Kilbride studied child abuse in Kenya. He did a survey and focused
ethnographic interviews, but ‘‘by far the most significant event in my research
happened as a byproduct of participatory ‘hanging out’, being always in
search of case material.’’ While visiting informants one day, Kilbride and his
wife saw a crowd gathering at a local secondary school. It turned out that a
young mother had thrown her baby into a pit latrine at the school. The Kilbrides
offered financial assistance to the young mother and her family in
exchange for ‘‘involving ourselves in their . . . misfortune.’’ The event that the
Kilbrides had witnessed became the focus for a lot of their research activities
in the succeeding months (Kilbride 1992:190).
The Ethical Dilemma of Rapport
Face it: ‘‘Gaining rapport’’ is a euphemism for impression management,
one of the ‘‘darker arts’’ of fieldwork, in Harry Wolcott’s apt phrase
(2005:chap. 6). E. E. Evans-Pritchard, the great British anthropologist, made
clear in 1937 how manipulative the craft of ethnography really is. He was
doing fieldwork with the Azande of Sudan and wanted to study their rich tradition
of witchcraft. Even with his long-term fieldwork and command of the
Azande language, Evans-Pritchard couldn’t get people to open up about
witchcraft, so he decided to ‘‘win the good will of one or two practitioners and
to persuade them to divulge their secrets in strict confidence’’ (1958
[1937]:151). Strict confidence? He was planning on writing a book about all
this.
Progress was slow, and while he felt that he could have ‘‘eventually wormed
out all their secrets’’ he hit on another idea: His personal servant, Kamanga,
was initiated into the local group of practitioners and ‘‘became a practising
witch-doctor’’ under the tutelage of a man named Badobo (ibid.). With Badobo’s
full knowledge, Kamanga reported every step of his training to his
employer. In turn, Evans-Pritchard used the information ‘‘to draw out of their
shells rival practitioners by playing on their jealousy and vanity.’’
Now, Badobo knew that anything he told Kamanga would be tested with
rival witch doctors. Badobo couldn’t lie to Kamanga, but he could certainly