Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
monogamy surface in my interactions or writings. I say “tried” because my
reaction to one of my first acquaintances, a Bedouin with a leathery face and
feet, was far from neutral. I was astonished. I admired his ability to survive and
adapt in a harsh environment, moving from one water hole to the next through-
out the desert. My personal reaction to the odor of his garments (particularly
after a camel ride), however, was far from impartial. He shared his jacket with
me to protect me from the heat. I thanked him, of course, because I appreci-
ated the gesture and did not want to insult him. I smelled like a camel for the
rest of the day in the dry desert heat, however. I thought I did not need the
jacket because we were only a kilometer or two from our destination, Saint
Catherine's monastery, but the short trip took forever—up rocky paths and
down through
wadis,
or valleys. I learned later that without his jacket, I would
have suffered from sunstroke. The desert heat is so dry that perspiration evap-
orates almost immediately, and an inexperienced traveler does not always
notice when the temperature climbs above 130 degrees Fahrenheit. By slowing
down the evaporation rate, the jacket helped me retain water. Had I rejected his
jacket and, by implication, Bedouin hygiene practices, I would have baked, and
I would never have understood how much their lives revolve around water, the
desert's most precious resource. Our seemingly circuitous ride followed a hid-
den water route, not a straight line, to the monastery.
The point, simply, is that ethnographers must attempt to view another cul-
ture without making value judgments about unfamiliar practices, but ethnog-
raphers cannot be completely neutral. We are all products of our culture. We
have personal beliefs, biases, and individual tastes. Socialization runs deep.
The ethnographer can guard against the more obvious biases, however, by
making them explicit and by trying to view another culture's practices impar-
tially. Ethnocentric behavior—the imposition of one culture's values and stan-
dards on another culture, with the assumption that one is superior to the
other—is a fatal error in ethnography.
INTER- AND INTRACULTURAL DIVERSITY
One danger of ethnography is that it can produce a stereotype of a group, sub-
culture, or culture. The ethnographer must reduce and crystallize a world of
observation to produce a clear picture of a community. As long and detailed as
most ethnographies are, they typically represent only a fraction of what the
ethnographer learned and saw. Holistic, contextual, emic, etic, and nonjudg-
mental concepts require the ethnographer to boil down all the information,
observations, interviews, theories, and patterns that emerge during fieldwork
to produce the essence of a culture.
