The first 100 pages of Paul Rabinow’s Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco have proven to be a nice pill for the drudgery of being back in the States, after a crazy international romp of a summer. The book is about Rabinow’s anthropological field work in Morocco from 1968-69, and is told in a witty, confident, candid story form, from his 1st person view.
I’ll hit two quick points from Rabinow that have stuck with me.
“Ali was a first rate informant. He was intelligent, quick to learn, patient, cooperative, and vivacious. But I do not think that these qualities alone explain his success as an informant. Ali, like several other people with whom I worked, was a marginal character in his own social world. He was not the average villager, he was far from the solid-citizen stereotype of Sefrou, and he had not become involved with the French.” (p.73) I can relate a lot to Rabinow in these observations as I seek to make international contacts. “Intelligent, quick to learn, patient, cooperative, and vivacious” are all qualities that are essential in my contacts, if they are to assist me in problems and projects. Being a “marginal character” in their social world is incredibly beneficial as well, as they are more willing to step outside of their culture and examine it more objectively, and even occasionally from the view of my culture and experiences.
Speaking of participant observation in a foreign country, Rabinow says “No matter how far “participation” may push the anthropologist in the direction of Not-Otherness, the context is still ultimately dictated by “observation” and “externality.” (p.79) One can never be a complete participant in a culture as well as external and a non-bias observer. This fact should provide me with caution as I consider that I am a complete participant in my culture, and as such I need to take foreigners’ views of my culture seriously and with humility, having the potential of blindness from cultural flaws and faults. Just as participation without observation is inadequate when an anthropologist is reporting on the main aspects of a culture, so it is if I’m trying to gauge my culture’s relation to issues.
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