Chapter 3 - Becca Libby

I feel like the relationship between an anthropologist and their key informants depend completely on the culture and people they are studying. The book talks about how more and more anthropologists are studying their own societies rather that exotic peoples across the world. So for someone working in/with their own society, I feel it would be better to use informants that you do not know rather than people in your own town. Seems to me making friends is not a good strategy for getting information in your own society. I know if I were an anthropologist wanting to do a survey about (for example) what peoples' main use of their computers is, I wouldn't want to interview my friends or family. I would want to talk to people and learn from people I have never met, it makes the whole thing more subjective. Working with friends in your own culture makes complicates things much more that making friends in a different culture. If I go across the world to study a society I know nothing about, it will be hard for me to talk to anyone at first. This is why in other societies it is much more important to make/have friends. In the article about the ice hunters the anthropologist is good friends with the man he is traveling with, and it makes it much easier for him to feel comfortable being in a setting he is not accustomed to. One thing that caught my attention was when he said "We have traveled together many times since 1996...so there is no need for words." I think this really says a lot about the relationship between the two men. I believe that the fact that they were so close, made his work much easier and more accurate. Friendships in cultures less like your own are obviously harder to create. It may take a longer for another society to get used to you, than for you to get used to them. Trust plays a huge role in this, you have to know your boundaries until you become more integrated into a society. To avoid issues with mistrust and misunderstanding, an anthropologist has to slowly become integrated, rather than jumping right in to asking questions and trying to get information that could be offensive or misunderstood by that culture. This may be why many anthropologists now work with their own cultures, no doubt these problems arise less frequently.