0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Dancing Lessons from God
experience in the field, I believe that ethnographic research cannot
always be approached only as science, nor should it solely embrace
ideas of “scientific rigor.” Nor do I feel comfortable with the sugges-
tion that our interactions and experiences with people, usually from
another culture, and in a sense from another world, should be ap-
proached or thought of as “natural experiments” (Bernard 1994 , 52 ,
56 – 58 , 60 ). However, I also would find it problematic to try to con-
vince granting agencies of the legitimacy of encouraging other ways
of doing ethnography by referencing these as the “garbage can” ap-
proach to research. I would certainly not encourage my students to
think of their methods of study in such a way.
Since I am espousing a recognition of the validity of more fluid and
interactive forms of research orientation, I should mention that I have
received training in the types of methods emphasized by those uphold-
ing models of scientific rigor. Russell Bernard, a proponent of similar
methodological approaches, provides a preface ( 1998 ) to deMunck
and Sobo’s Essential Ethnographic Methods. In this preface Bernard
refers to the National Science Foundation Summer Institute on Re-
search Methods in Cultural Anthropology, where he taught for sev-
eral years with Pertti Pelto (co-author of Anthropological Research:
The Structure of Inquiry ( 1978 ), and Stephen Borgatti, designer of
the Anthropac computer software for cataloguing and analyzing eth-
nographic data ( 1992 ). I was one of those who trained through this
“methods camp” (Bernard 1998 , 7 ) and I have included in the an-
thropological methods courses I teach the more structured methods
taught at the institute, along with materials on either Anthropac or
other emerging software-analysis programs.^1 Thus, this paper is not
a rejection of the use of such methods or applications. It is, however,
the expression of a concern that these highly structured approaches,
which can provide a lot of data and can be very valuable for cer-
tain forms of research, can also take on lives of their own, becoming
methods in search of research. Research should not become a series
of projects designed to fit methods that have been defined as accept-
able within a narrow scientific paradigm. Rather, method ought to be
chosen according to its fit to the context of research.
In this context, Wolcott describes the effects the espoused scientific
