The Functioning of an Arapesh Community, January 28 to August 16, 1932

In discussing the functioning of the village of Alitoa, which will be considered as a center of social activity since it cannot actually be called a unit, it is necessary to elaborate on the conditions of field-work and the relations of the ethnologists’ household and the local inhabitants. We are shifting here from a discussion of behavior patterns in which the actual behavior of named individuals is cited in illustration to a consideration of the behavior of a given group of individuals at a given period of time. As a background for the first part 1 of this report, it would have been adequate to state that the work was conducted in the native language, that informants were used to such and such extent, that they were in certain ways typical or atypical of the cultural emphases, that texts were collected in such and such instances, etc. However, such a statement of research methods is inadequate when the sociology of a native community is under consideration. We must allow not only for the eruption into a small, meagerly self-sufficient mountain community of two white people, intent upon studying it in detail, but also for their native household, each member of which also introduces new complications. Failure to make such allowance gives rise to various fantastic research plans, such as the longitudinal study of a group of primitive children over a period of 10 years or so. If such a plan were carried out, it would be necessary to recognize that the presence of the investigator would continually alter the situation in which the native children were studied and render it increasingly atypical. The investigator is unable to discount at the time a great deal of the alteration which he brings with him, but it is possible that some part of it may be scientifically discounted in the final analysis.