The Innocent Anthropologist : Notes from a Mud Hut - Softcover

Nigel Barley

4.06

3,032 ratings by Goodreads

9780140095364: The Innocent Anthropologist : Notes from a Mud Hut

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140095365 ISBN 13: 9780140095364

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1986

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Studying a little-known tribe in the Cameroons was the author's first experience in fieldwork - and very nearly his last. Nigel Barley set up home in a mud hut in order to study the customs and beliefs of the Dowayo people. He knew how fieldwork should be conducted, but, as he rapidly discovered, the theory did not take into account the elusive nature of the Dowayo society, which refused to conform to the rules. In this honest, funny and compulsive account of his first year in Africa, Dr. Barley - who survived boredom, disaster, illness and hostility - gives a wonderfully irreverent introduction to the life of a social anthropologist which nevertheless makes inspiring reading.

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"The prevalence of factual data in anthropological monographs stems . . . from an attitude of 'when in doubt, collect facts.' This is, in a sense, an understandable approach. So off I went every day, armed with my tobacco and notebooks and paced out the fields, calculated the yields, counted the goats in a flurry of irrelevant activity. This at least had the virtue of making my weird and inexplicable ways familiar to the Dowayos and I began to know them by name." (from Chapter 6)

Review:

"I absolutely love this book and am using it this semester. The text is extremely readable and provides students with real insight into how fieldwork can go right even in the face of adversity." --Yvonne Downes, Hilbert College

"I have decided to use it in my Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course. Its strength was the author's clear articulation of the fieldwork process in all its highs and lows." --Christina Schwenkel, University of California, Riverside

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