Year: 1978
Type: article
Abstract: In [Karo] rechten .. . is er om zoo te zeggen geen enkel individu, maar heeft men steeds met deze triniteit te maken."M. Joustra (1902) No one ever does fieldwork with an open mind, writes Jose Gutileiro, and the difference between the ethnography of a native member of a society and that of an outsider is not that the former has preconceptions whereas the latter has not, but that they have different preconceptions.Those of the native affect his research in a deep and ramified way, and they confer advantages in the selection of important points and in the mastery of information that the outsider only slowly and imperfectly acquires.The native will be quicker and more perceptive mainly with regard to details or isolated instances, yet a grave problem remains: "It will require a much bigger effort from him than from an outsider (ultimately perhaps even an impossible one) to be able to form an integral conception of a society of which, at least at some levels of experience, he is himself a part" (Cutileiro 1971: viii).These trenchant and hard-won observations, by a Portuguese social anthropologist writing about his own highly professional study of rural society in Portugal, make an authoritative preface to the present paper and they clearly indicate the premises from which I shall develop my argument.The contrast to be drawn here is that between the interpretation of Karo Batak society, as reported by a native Karo, Dr. Masri Singarimbun, in a very commendable monograph (Singarimbun 1975), and by myself as an outsider, a social anthropologist with certain theoretical interests but with no direct acquaintance with Karo life.The differences between Dr. Singarimbun and myself do not in general relate, therefore, to the factual accuracy of what he has published; indeed, in what follows I shall rely almost exclusively (with only
Author: Rodney Needham
Language: Dutch
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W1972978726