An ideal relationship between an anthropologist and his or her key informants would be one where both parties understand each other and can communicate on a better level than the anthropologist can with others in the group or community. The scientist must have a real trust for the party (or parties) that informs him of all key relationships within their tribe, and the informant must have an equally legitimate trust for the anthropologist studying him and his tribe in order to tell him secrets like names of dead loved ones, or to tell him truths about who plays what role and how they life their lives. Even for the anthropologist to trust a translator would take a great deal of trust, in my opinion.
There could be a lot of problems that arise from having an informant, one of them being a hard time keeping confidentiality in check. Again, trust is a thick boundary that one must cross by giving or recieving information that others may wish not to be "gossiped" about, if you will. In some cases, the people will gang up on the anthropologist and waste his time by only giving him bogus information as some sort of joke, such as in one of the stories we read. Another problem is that one could end up, whether intentionally or not, favoriting the informants, treating them better, and the others in the community could see that and perhaps you would cause a flurry of jealousy among a culture that frowns upon those kinds of feelings.
I don't think there is a way for anthropologists to rid the problems they have with informants, but they can deal with them and "minimize" them by just being very cautious with who and what they trust, and what other evidence they can gather to back everything up scientifically. Thus, they at least rid the problem of trust vs. distrust.
Trust is a large issue in ant relationship, espcecially between two people or groups from completely differrent cultures. i think with established trust will come more open communication, and that will cause the antrhopologist to really become integrated within that new culture. That trust cannot be one sided, the anthropologist should trust the key informants or translator just as much as they trust the anthropologist.
ReplyDeleteThere could definitely be a big problem with the key informants not giving completely true information, but the anthropologist shouldn't rely on just one key informant if possible. The "gossip comparison" was good as well, I wouldn't want an anthropologist studying my culture to spread untrue rumors for career advancement.
There is no perfect relationship between the anthropologist and key informants, some sort of problem is going to come up eventually. However, it is important for these problems to be at least minimized by being sure who to trust, and by being trusting in turn.
Trust really is the key with this relationship between anthropologist and informant. It's the only way both sides will confide in eachother and learn to understand eachother.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't think I would ever really be sure who to trust when you're a foreigner living in a culture that could possibly be ancient and has never known different than what they're living.. but trusting eachother definitely helps break the ice as well as gather willpower to expose truths about their culture and its people.