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Review Summary: Useful But Still Needs Work |
Date: 2006-08-11 |
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Details: One area that introductory cultural anthropology courses lack is the opportunity to conduct a field study. This is impractical for reasons that need no elaboration--there is no onvenient Yanomamo shabono, Guatemalan community (such as the "Ixil village" Benjamin Colby proposed at UC Irvine), or !Kung band nearby to train students in the complexities of ethnographic inquiry.
The next best thing is a simulated program, and here EthnoQuest is the first attempt that I know of to fill this need. I have used this program, this version and a previous one, in an introductory cultural anthropology course, for five years now. Though flawed, it is a useful teaching device.
The program is a portrayal of Amopan ("Nowhere"), a fictional Nahuatl village located east of Mexico City. The program consists of a series of still photographs simulating dialogue between ethnographer and informant, supplemented by "films" of the British ethnographer Bronislaw Edmund Radcliffe-Pritchard (a composite name of four British social anthropologists) who has conducted a study of Amopan back in 1965. The sidebar includes a "knapsack" containing Nahuatl-English glossaries, helpful hints, and other items; a "Wise Man" in Aztec noble dress serving as the guide; and an exit function in the form of footprints.
This second edition of EthnoQuest contains 10 units: preparation for the field study, entry into Amopan, taking a genealogical census, working in the fields, participating in an open-air market, making queries about the Day of the Dead, interviewing a midwife (the most valuable for reasons I detail below), observing a local electon, witnessing conflict between the village and nearby ranchers, and exchanging folk tales before departure.
There are improvements over the first edition. The most valuable is Unit 7, "Day in the Life of a Midwife." The unit includes a list of questions the authors identify as questionable (such as leading questions or those with cultural bias), informant responses to questions asked by a male versus female ethnographer, and probing techniques in follow-up questions. Other units have their strengths--how does the ethnographer maintain his/her objectivity in the election and in the farmer-rancher conflict? How about buying tomatoes from an outsider in a market where Amopantecos also sell tomatoes? Many, though not all, ticklish fieldwork situationa are covered.
Unfortunately, there is much about EthnoQuest that is cheesy. The graphics are half photograph, half cartoon. The persons portrayed look very mestizo and not at all indigenous Nahua. (The two boys Juan and Eduardo are brothers surnamed Ross in real life.) The names of some informants are corny (Juan Jefe, or "John the Chief," as town mayor? Juan Milpero, or "Juan the Farmer," as a typical campesino? Give me a break!). The manila "letters" sent by the funding agency and that contain the questions at the end of each unit are amatuerish drawings any ten-year-old could sketch.
Despite its shortcomings, EthnoQuest is a useful supplement for an introductory course. The student does get some exposure to questions that the ethnographer might actually ask, encounter ticklish situations that all fieldworkers inadvertently walk into, and make choices between appropriate and inappropriate interview questions (although some are all too obvious). The student gets diverse perspectives on topics from different informants, from mayor to priest to ordinary campesino. He or she is encouraged to observe things and events of the village. Finally, the ethnography is clearly based on a composite of actual field studies of Nahuatl-speaking peoples, and so is useful in that regard.
Therefore, I use the program because it gives students some experience in fieldwork, especially interviewing, in the absence of actual work in a band or village. I hope the authors--or another group of authors--come out with a more convincing program.
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