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
the time, to the scene, and to the two little boys themselves. She said
suddenly, watakushi no oto ̄ to-tachi, “my little brothers.” Maybe being
the good bad ethnographer was OK after all, since informants were
still answering questions, sometimes even those never asked.
Conclusions
In the end, I argue for recognition of the possible art of being the good
and the good bad ethnographer, allowing for possible alternations be-
tween applying careful and explicit methods and pursuing another
sort of understanding through insights born out of the unexpected
encounters that emerge in the field context, and out of evolving rela-
tionships. Doing so can allow us to perform appropriate ethnogra-
phy in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. Clearly, there are
good reasons for set research objectives. However, we should also re-
main open to experiences and insights that come from outside their
parameters. Otherwise, we relinquish too much in our search for the
full range of knowing about human cultures and experience. For this
reason, I cannot so easily embrace the assertion that anthropology is,
and must only be, a science in the strict sense. Like Wolcott ( 1999 ,
10 ), I think that we are continually constructing the “proper place”
of anthropology among, as he says “the social sciences,” wondering
if perhaps that should not read instead “among the humanities”?^7
Finding anthropology’s “proper place” among the disciplines, and
the “proper approaches” to good ethnography are issues potentially
much more complicated than some of the models discussed earlier in this
essay would suggest. In addition to those methodological approaches
that are explicit and systematic, there is also a place for those that
build upon more reflexive engagements of ethnographers and hosts.
Wolcott writes, “As you will discover, I lean heavily on the integrity of
the ethnographer to figure what he or she is up to rather than admon-
ishing everyone to work at devising grand theories or themes” ( 1999 ,
14 ). In other words, for some, anthropology is more of a science in
search of law; for others, it is an interpretive exploration of meaning
or of stories, the stories of other people’s lives and how we come to
know them. Like Geertz, I lean toward the latter paradigm.
