Doing Fieldwork : the Correspondence of Robert Redfield and Sol Tax / Robert A

Doing Field work Doing Field work The Correspondence of Robert Redfield and Sol Tax Robert A. Rubinstein editor with a foreword by Lisa Redfield Peattie and a new introduction by the editor O Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK Originally published in 1991 by Westview Press, Inc. First published 2002 by Transaction Publishers Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business New material this edition copyright © 2002 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Letters from Robert Redfield are reprinted with permission of Lisa Redfield Peattie. Letters from Sol Tax are reprinted with permission of Sol Tax. Photo- graphs 5, 6, and 7 are reprinted with permission of Sol Tax. Photographs 8 through 22 are taken from the Robert Redfield Papers and the Sol Tax Papers and are reprinted with permission of the University of Chicago Archives. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2001048079 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Redfield, Robert, 1897- [Fieldwork] Doing fieldwork : the correspondence of Robert Redfield and Sol Tax / Robert A. Rubinstein, editor; with a foreword by Lisa Redfield Peattie ; and a new introduction by the editor, p. cm. Originally published: Fieldwork. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7658-07354 (alk. paper) 1. Tax, Sol, 1907—Correspondence. 2. Redfield, Robert, 1897— Correspondence. 3. Ethnologists—United States—Correspondence. 4. Ethnology—Field work. 5. Ethnology—Guatemala. I. Tax, Sol, 1907- II. Rubinstein, Robert A. III. Title. GN21.R43A4 2001 305.8'0092—dc21 2001048079 ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0735-9 (pbk) To my father, Samuel B. Rubinstein, and in memory of my mother and my aunt, Frieda L. Rubinstein and Helen Lokshin Contents Introduction to the Transaction Edition, Robert A. Rubinstein xi List of Illustrations and Photographs ix Foreword, Lisa Redfield Peattie xix Preface, Robert A, Rubinstein xxv Introduction Reflection and Reflexivity in Anthropology Robert A. Rubinstein 1 Chapter One "I followed your advice and didn't get us killed" October 1934-May 1935 37 Chapter Two "You have beaten me ... in the argument of extensive vs. intensive studies" November 1935-June 1936 103 Chapter Three "If you want to write a book about a place, don't stay longer than three weeks" January 1937-June 1937 143 Chapter Four "For all my failure, I am getting some good insights into how things work" December 1937-March 1938 199 vii via Contents Chapter Five "Do you suppose that I shall be a padrino at 4 or 5 A.M. some morning, or what?" October 1938-April 1939 233 Chapter Six "I take it that neither of us can prove what we feel probably to have been true" October 1940-May 1941 279 Related Bibliography of Robert Redfield and Sol Tax 329 Non-English Terms Used in the Correspondence 333 About the Book and Editor 337 Index 339 Illustrations and Photographs Illustrations 1 Guatemala (Map) 184 2 Lake Atitlan Region, Guatemala (Map) 185 3 "We have a good base here in Panajachel," Tax to Redfield, December 16, 1935 (Facsimile) 186 4 "Survey and intensive study tend to strengthen and guide one another," Redfield to Tax, February 26, 1936 (Facsimile) 188 Photographs 5 Sol Tax with a San Isidro in the corredor of the Tax house in Panajachel (1937) 190 6 Gertrude Tax in the front yard of the Tax house in Panajachel (1937) 190 7 Sol, Gertrude, and Susan Tax (1938) 191 8 Sol and Susan Tax (1939) 191 9 Robert Redfield in Guatemala (1937) 192 10 Redfield family portrait, Joanna, Robert, Margaret, Lisa, and James (1938) 192 11 James, Margaret, Joanna, and Lisa Redfield with Sol Tax (1939) 193 12 The road to Agua Escondida (1937) 193 13 The marimba band plays at the fiesta for the blessing of Casa del Sol (1938) 194 14 In the garden of Casa del Sol, Donicia, Joanna Redfield, Romelia, Margaret Redfield, and Lisa Redfield 194 15 Santiago Yach, Panajachel Indian and Sol Tax's principal informant (1937) 195 16 Negrito dancers, Panajachel (1937) 195 17 Santos in a Panajachel home (1937) 196 ix X Illustrations and Photographs 18 Family group, Santiago Atitlan 196 19 San Pedro Street, Atitlan 197 20 Market scene, Santiago Atitlan (1937) 197 21 Atitecas in market, Santiago Atitlan (1937) 198 22 San Pedro Atitlan (1937) 198 Introduction to the Transaction Edition Fieldwork and Tradition in Anthropology: Resonance and Reflexivity Robert A. Rubinstein Fieldwork has a unique place within anthropology. Ethnographic fieldwork is the single activity in which nearly all anthropologists participate during their training and throughout their careers. Anthropologists differ in the kinds of research questions they investigate and in the theoretical understandings that motivate their work and which they use in their analy- ses. Despite these differences, however, anthropologists recognize ethnographic fieldwork as the keystone of their profession. It is because fieldwork provides both the data and the experience cen- tral to anthropology that it is at the discipline's core. Fieldwork is at once the culmination of graduate anthropological training, the discipline's core rite de passage, and the most constant activity of most professional anthropologists. Ethnographic fieldwork involves extended periods of research "away in the field" during which times the researcher participates in and observes the activities of the people being studied.1 In addition to partici- pant-observation, other techniques such as structured and informal inter- viewing, network analysis, focus groups, and archival research are used. All of these strategies are used to gain fuller understandings of how the people of a community, organization, profession, or other group organize them- selves as they interact with their environment. Fieldwork allows the development of an understanding of how people learn ways of thought, ways of behaving, and modes of interpretation char- acteristic of their groups. It helps us to sort out how they see what they do as meaningful and significant, how they separate right from wrong, and how they elaborate what is proper behavior and what is not. As Geertz (2000:16) puts it, the aim of fieldwork is to discover about a people, "who they think they are, what they think they are doing, and to what end they are doing it." XI Introduction.p65 11 7/3/01, 9:48 AM Xll Introduction to the Transaction Edition What we learn through ethnographic fieldwork thus permeates the discipline. The kinds of information obtainable through this methodology inform how anthropologists think about human social life.2 As well, the practice of ethnographic fieldwork unifies practitioners through experiences unique to the discipline. Indeed the practice of ethnographic fieldwork is so ubiquitous and defining, that it is easy to suppose that fieldwork was part of anthropology from its beginning and that it has for a long time been a stable, unchanging kind of activity. Yet, despite its prominence within anthropology, during the last three decades of the twentieth century there was arguably no aspect of the discipline that came under closer scrutiny. Disquiet about anthropological fieldwork appeared to begin in the 1960s and grew through the ensuing years. At first, anthropologists traded embellished stories about the harrowing aspects of their own first fieldwork and their lack of preparation for that work. These stories motivated two subsequent trends. One line of work ex- pressed the methodological concern for greater clarity in the techniques of anthropological research. The second line of work pursued an epistemological concern about whether what we learned from fieldwork really told us anything meaningful about the social worlds of the people we sought to understand. In one of the earliest examples of the methodological concern, Pelto (1970) set out how data collection in fieldwork might be made more ex- plicit. This line of writing has continued and blossomed. There are now dozens of texts that elucidate the approaches and techniques of ethnographic work. These range from specialized texts that elaborate ways of conducting ethnosemantic interviews (Spradley 1979), to those that seek to make fieldwork activities systematic (Werner and Schoeple 1987), through texts that try to set out the full range of techniques available to an ethnographer (Bernard 1988), to multi-volume collections that seek to provide a "toolkit" (Schensul and LeCompte 1999). Epistemological challenges to the very possibility of ethnographic work were also plentiful in these three decades. These works questioned the sta- tus and value of the "data" collected by ethnographers (Rabinow 1977), or contested the possibility that ethnographers might produce understanding of the lives of others (Clifford 1997). This introspective self-doubt focused attention on the researcher's influences on the ethnographic encounter, which at times led to a skewed focus mainly on the ethnographer's own experience (Gottlieb and Graham 1993). At the same time, work in this tradition frequently eschewed the possibility that ethnography could re- port anything meaningful about the people studied (Clifford 1997). In many ways both the methodological and epistemological questioning spurred welcome developments in the way anthropologists thought about their enterprise, leading, for example, to more nuanced and careful analy- Introduction to the Transaction Edition xin ses and to the development of new techniques to learn about culture.

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