2

Qualitative Methods
Their History in Sociology and Anthropology

ARTHUR J. VIDICH
STANFORD M. LYMAN

MODERN sociology has taken as its mission the individual and group, ideologies and faiths
analysis and understanding of the patterned con- define the distinction between good and evil
duct and social processes of society, and of the and lead to such nonsociological but con-
bases in values and attitudes on which individual ventional orientations as are involved in every-
and collective participation in social life rests. It
day judging and decision making. The soci-
is presupposed that, to carry out the tasks associ-
ated with this mission, the sociologist has the ologist's task in ethnography is not only to
following: be a part of such thoughts and actions but
also to understand them at a higher level of
conceptualization.
1. The ability to perceive and contextualize the
3. A sufficient degree of social and personal
world of his or her own experience as well
distance from prevailing norms and values
as the capacity to project a metaempirical
to be able to analyze them objectively. Usu-
conceptualization onto those contexts of life
ally, the ability to engage in self-objectifi-
and social institutions with which he or she
cation is sufficient to produce the quality of
has not had direct experience. The sociolo-
orientation necessary for an individual to be
gist requires a sensitivity to and a curiosity
an ethnographic sociologist or anthropologist.
about both what is visible and what is not
visible to immediate perception—and suffi-
cient self-understanding to make possible Qualitative ethnographic social research, then,
an empathy with the roles and values of entails an attitude of detachment toward society
others. that permits the sociologist to observe the conduct
of self and others, to understand the mechanisms
2. The ability to detach him- or herself from of social processes, and to comprehend and ex-
the particular values and special interests of plain why both actors and processes are as they
organized groups in order that he or she may are. The existence of this sociological attitude is
gain a level of understanding that does not presupposed in any meaningful discussion of meth-
rest on a priori commitments. For every ods appropriate to ethnographic investigation (see

23
24 LOCATING THE FIELD

Adler, Adler, & Fontana, 1991; Hammersley, ately, we might say that the method—of compos-
1992). ing, writing, painting, performing, or whatever—
Sociology and anthropology are disciplines is an intrinsic part of the creator's craftsmanship,
that, born out of concern to understand the without which the creation could not be made. If
"other," are nevertheless also committed to an the artist were to be asked, "How did you do it?
understanding of the self. If, following the tenets Tell me your method," his or her answer would
of symbolic interactionism, we grant that the other require an act of ex post facto reconstruction: the
can be understood only as part of a relationship method of describing the method. However, the
with the self, we may suggest a different approach original production would still retain its primor-
to ethnography and the use of qualitative meth- dial integrity; that cannot be changed, whatever
ods, one that conceives the observer as possessing conclusions are to be drawn from later discus-
a self-identity that by definition is re-created in sions about how it was accomplished. Speaking
its relationship with the observed—the other, of sociological methods, Robert Nisbet (1977)
whether in another culture or that of the observer. recalls:
In its entirety, the research task requires both
the act of observation and the act of communicat- While I was engaged in exploration of some of the
ing the analysis of these observations to others sources of modern sociology [it occurred to me]
(for works describing how this is accomplished, that none of the great themes which have provided
see Johnson, 1975; Schatzman & Strauss, 1973; continuing challenge and also theoretical founda-
see also Pratt, 1986). The relationships that arise tion for sociologists during the last century was
between these processes are not only the determi- ever reached through anything resembling what
nants of the character of the final research prod- we are to-day fond of identifying as "scientific
uct, but also the arena of sociological methods method." I mean the kind of method, replete with
least tractable to conventionalized understanding. appeals to statistical analysis, problem design,
The data gathering process can never be described hypothesis, verification, replication, and theory
in its totality because these "tales of the field" are construction, that we find described in textbooks
themselves part of an ongoing social process that and courses on methodology, (p. 3)
in its minute-by-minute and day-to-day experi-
ence defies recapitulation. To take as one's objec- From Nisbet's pointed observation we may
tive the making of a total description of the conclude that the method-in-use for the produc-
method of gathering data would shift the frame of tion of a finished sociological study is unique to
ethnological reference, in effect substituting the that study and can be neither described nor repli-
means for the end. Such a substitution occurs cated as it actually occurred. That societal inves-
when exactitude in reporting research methods tigators may choose to use different kinds of
takes priority over the solution to substantive material as their data—documents for the histo-
sociological problems. rian, quantified reports for the demographer, or
In fact, a description of a particular method of direct perception of a portion of society for the
research usually takes place as a retrospective ethnographer—does not alter the fact that social
account, that is, a report written after the research scientists are observers. As observers of the world
has been completed. This all-too-often unac- they also participate in it; therefore, they make
knowledged fact illustrates the part of the re- their observations within a mediated framework,
search process wherein the acts of observation are that is, a framework of symbols and cultural
temporally separated from the description of how meanings given to them by those aspects of their
they were accomplished. Such essays in method- life histories that they bring to the observational
ology are reconstructions of ethnographic reality; setting. Lurking behind each method of research
they take what was experienced originally and is the personal equation supplied to the setting by
shrink it into a set of images that, although pur- the individual observer (Clifford, 1986). In this
porting to be a description of the actual method fundamental sense all research methods are at
of research, exemplify a textbook ideal. bottom qualitative and are, for that matter, equally
The point may be clarified through a compari- objective; the use of quantitative data or mathe-
son of the world of a supposedly "scientific" matical procedures does not eliminate the inter-
sociologist with that of such artists as painters, subjective element that underlies social research.
novelists, composers, poets, dancers, or chess Objectivity resides not in a method, per se, but in
masters. Viewing a painting, listening to music, the framing of the research problem and the will-
reading a novel, reciting a poem, watching a chess ingness of the researchers to pursue that problem
game, or attending to the performance of a balle- wherever the data and their hunches may lead
rina, one experiences a finished production, the (Vidich, 1955; see also Fontana, 1980; Goffman,
"front region," as Goffman (1959, p. 107) puts it. 1974).1 If, in this sense, all research is qualita-
The method seems to be inherent in the finished tive—because the observer is at the center of the
form (Goffman, 1949, pp. 48-77). More appropri- research process—does this mean that the find-
Qualitative Methods: Their History in Sociology and Anthropology 25

ings produced by the method are no more than the issue in our present dilemma in The Art of the
peculiar reality of each observer (Atkinson, 1990)? Novel: "But if God is gone and man is no longer
One simple answer is that we judge for our- the master, then who is the master? The planet is
selves on the standard of whether the work com- moving through the void without any master. There
municates or "says" something to us—that is, it is, the unbearable lightness of being" (p. 41).
does it connect with our reality?2 Does it provide Throughout all of the eras during which social
us with insights that help to organize our own science made use of observational methods, re-
observations? Does it resonate with our image of searchers have entered into their studies with prob-
the world? Or does it provide such a powerful lems implicitly and, in some cases, explicitly de-
incursion on the latter that we feel compelled to fined by hopes and faiths. Focusing on the substance
re-examine what we have long supposed to be true of these problems and their ideational adumbra-
about our life world? tions, we shall confine our discussion of this
Or, put another way, if the method used is not history to the qualitative methods used by anthro-
the issue, by what standards are we able to judge pologists and sociologists in ethnographic research,
the worth of sociological research (Gellner, 1979)? that is, the direct observation of the social realities
Each is free to judge the work of others and to by the individual observer. Our history proceeds
accept it or reject it if it does not communicate along a continuum that begins with the first en-
something meaningful about the world; and what counters of early ethnographers with the New
is meaningful for one person is not necessarily World and ends with the practical and theoretical
meaningful for another. problems facing the work of our contemporaries.
In the present and for the foreseeable future, the
virtually worldwide disintegration of common val-
ues and a deconstruction of consensus-based so-
cieties evoke recognition of the fact that there Early Ethnography:
exist many competing realities, and this fact poses The Discovery of the Other
problems not previously encountered by sociol-
ogy. In effect, this situation sets up a condition
wherein the number of possible theoretical per- Ethnos, a Greek term, denotes a people, a race
spectives from which the world, or any part of it, or cultural group (A. D. Smith, 1989, pp. 13-18).
may be viewed sociologically is conditioned only When ethno as a prefix is combined with graphic
by the number of extant scientific worldviews. As to form the term ethnographic, the reference is to
for the potential subjects of investigation, their the subdiscipline known as descriptive anthropol-
outlooks are limited only by the many religious ogy—in its broadest sense, the science devoted to
faiths, occupational and professional ideologies, describing ways of life of humankind. Ethnogra-
and other Weltanschauungen that arise to guide phy, then, refers to a social scientific description
or upset their lives. At the time of this writing, a of a people and the cultural basis of their people-
new outlook on epistemology has come to the hood (Peacock, 1986). Both descriptive anthropol-
fore. It disprivileges all received discourses and ogy and ethnography are thought to be atheoretical,
makes discourse itself a topic of the sociology of to be concerned solely with description. How-
knowledge.3 ever, the observations of the ethnographer are
The history of qualitative research suggests always guided by world images that determine
that this has not always been the case (Douglas, which data are salient and which are not: An act
1974). In the past, the research problems for many of attention to one rather than another object
investigators were given to them by their commit- reveals one dimension of the observer's value
ment to or against a religious faith or an ethnic commitment, as well as his or her value-laden
creed, or by their identification with or opposition interests.
to specific national goals or socioeconomic pro- Early ethnography grew out of the interests of
grams. In the historical account of the use of Westerners in the origins of culture and civiliza-
qualitative methods that follows, we shall show tion and in the assumption that contemporary
that their use has been occasioned by more than "primitive" peoples, those thought by Westerners
the perspective of the individual observer, but to be less civilized than themselves, were, in ef-
also that the domain assumptions that once guided fect, living replicas of the "great chain of being"
qualitative research have lost much of their force. that linked the Occident to its prehistoric begin-
However, the faiths, creeds, and hopes that had nings (Hodgen, 1964, pp. 386-432). Such a mode
given focus to the work of our predecessors have of ethnography arose in the fifteenth and six-
not disappeared altogether from the sociologist's teenth centuries as a result of fundamental prob-
mental maps (Luhmann, 1986). Rather, they re- lems that had grown out of Columbus's and later
main as a less-than-conscious background, the explorers' voyages to the Western hemisphere,
all-too-familiar furniture of the sociological mind. the so-called New World, and to the island cul-
Milan Kundera (1988) has pointed to a central tures of the South Seas.
26 L O C A T I N G THE FIELD

The discovery of human beings living in non- that the peoples we now call Native Americans
Occidental environments evoked previously uni- were "full fellow human beings, possessing valid
magined cosmological difficulties for European traditions, dignity and rights" (Marty, 1992, p. xiii).
intellectuals, who felt it necessary to integrate the Today, despite or perhaps because of the new
new fact into the canon of received knowledge recognition of cultural diversity, the tension be-
and understanding.4 Because the Bible, especially tween universalistic and relativistic values re-
the book of Genesis, was taken to be the only mains an unresolved conundrum for the Western
valid source on which to rely for an understanding ethnographer (Hosle, 1992).6 In practice, it be-
of the history of geography and processes of crea- comes this question: By which values are obser-
tion, and because it placed the origin of human- vations to be guided? The choices seem to be
kind in the Garden of Eden—located somewhere either the values of the ethnographer or the values
in what is today called the Middle East—all hu- of the observed—that is, in modern parlance,
man beings were held to be descended from the either the etic or the emic (Pike, 1967; for an
first pair, and, later, in accordance with flood excellent discussion, see Harre, 1980, pp. 135-
ethnography (Numbers, 1992) from the descen- 137). Herein lies a deeper and more fundamental
dants of Noah and his family, the only survivors problem: How is it possible to understand the
of a worldwide deluge. Linking Columbus "s en- other when the other's values are not one's own?
counter with what we now know as the Taino, This problem arises to plague ethnography at a
Arawak, and Carib (Keegan, 1992; Rouse, 1992) time when Western Christian values are no longer
peoples in the New World to the biblical account a surety of truth and, hence, no longer the bench-
proved to be difficult. Specifically, the existence mark from which self-confidently valid observa-
of others outside the Christian brotherhood re- tions can be made.
vealed by his "discovery" posed this question:
How had the ancestors of these beings reached the
Americas in pre-Columbian times? Any thesis
that they had not migrated from Eurasia or Africa Colonial Mentalities and
was held to be heresy and a claim that humankind
might have arisen from more than one creative act
the Persistence of the Other
by God.
In general, the racial and cultural diversity of Before the professionalization of ethnography,
peoples throughout the globe presented post-Ren- descriptions and evaluations of the races and cul-
aissance Europeans with the problem of how to tures of the world were provided by Western
account for the origins, histories, and develop- missionaries, explorers, buccaneers, and colonial
ment of a multiplicity of races, cultures, and civi- administrators. Their reports, found in church,
lizations (see Baker, 1974; Barkan, 1992; Trinkhaus national, and local archives throughout the world
& Shipman, 1993). Not only was it necessary for and, for the most part, not known to contemporary
the cosmologist to account for the disconcerting ethnologists, were written from the perspective
existence of the "other,"5 but such a scholar was of, or by the representatives of, a conquering
obliged to explain how and why such differences civilization, confident in its mission to civilize the
in the moral values of Europeans and these "oth- world (for pertinent discussion of this issue, see
ers" had arisen. In effect, such a profusion of Ginsburg, 1991,1993). Some of the seventeenth-,
values, cultures, and ways of life challenged the eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century explorers, mis-
monopolistic claim on legitimacy and truth of the sionaries, and administrators have provided thick
doctrines of Christianity. Such practices as infan- descriptions of those practices of the "primitives"
ticide, cannibalism, human sacrifice, and what at made salient to the observer by his Christian
first appeared as promiscuity reopened the prob- value perspective.7 For societies studied by these
lem of contradictions among cultural values and observers (see, for example, Degerando, 1800/
the inquiry into how these contradictions might 1969), the author's ethnographic report is a re-
be both explained and resolved (Oakes, 1938). versed mirror image of his own ethnocultural
These issues of value conflicts were conflated ideal. That these early ethnographies reveal as
with practical questions about the recruitment, much about the West as about their objects of
organization, and justification for the division of study may explain why they have not been recov-
labor in the Spanish settlements in the Americas, ered and reanalyzed by contemporary anthropolo-
and these confusions are to be found in the de- gists: Present-day ethnographers hope to separate
bates of Bartolome de Las Casas with Juan Gines themselves from the history of Western conquest
de Sepulveda at the Council of Valladolid. Sepul- and reject the earlier ethnographies as hopelessly
veda, "who used Aristotle's doctrine of natural biased (see "Symposium on Qualitative Meth-
slavery in order to legitimize Spanish behavior ods," 1993). Recently they have begun to take
against the Indians" (Hosle, 1992, p. 238) in ef- seriously the accounts the natives have given of
fect won the day against Las Casas, who insisted their Western "discoverers" and to "decenter" or
Qualitative Methods: Their History in Sociology and Anthropology 27

"disprivilege" the reports presented by the latter of the Family, Private Property and the State.
(Abeyesekere, 1992; Salmond, 1991; Todorov, Engels, in fact, had derived his idea of primitive
1984). communism from Lewis Henry Morgan's (1877/
A rich resource, through which one can discern 1964) Ancient Society, an original study in the
the effects that this early ethnographic literature Comtean ethnohistorical tradition of American
had on the subjugation of these peoples, is to be aborigines that conceived of the latter as "ances-
found in the works of latter-day colonial admin- tors" to the ancient Greeks (for a recent critique,
istrators (e.g., Olivier, 1911/1970). Ethnology arose see Kuper, 1988). Others, no longer concerned to
out of the reports written by administrators of the prove that "mother-right" preceded "father-right"
long-maintained seaborne empires of the Span- by presenting ethnographic accounts of Melane-
ish, English, French, and Dutch (Maunier, 1949). sians, Tasmanians, Bantus, or Dayaks (for a fine
These empires provided opportunities for ama- example, see Hartland, 1921/1969), turned their
teur and, later, professional ethnologists not only attention to acculturation, and, unsure of how
to examine hosts of "native" cultures,8 but also to long the process might take and how well the
administer the conditions of life affecting the formerly colonized subjects would take to Occi-
"cultural advancement" of peoples over whom dental norms, reinvoked "the doctrine of surviv-
their metropole exercised domination (Gray, 19117 als" (Hodgen, 1936) to account for elements of the
1970, pp. 79-85). In respect to the seaborne em- natives' culture that persisted (see, e.g., Herskovitz,
pires, European interest was often confined to 1958,1966), or marveled at how well some native
exploiting the labor power of the natives, utilizing peoples had traded "new lives for old" (Mead,
their territory for extractive industry and/or estab- 1956/1975). These diverse value and ideological
lishing it in terms of the strategic military advan- orientations are pervasive in the work of early
tage it provided them in their struggles against professional ethnologists and provided anthro-
imperialist rivals (for some representative exam- pology the grounding for most of its theoretical
ples, see Aldrich, 1990; Boxer, 1965; Duffy, 1968; debates.
Gullick, 1956; Suret-Canale, 1988a, 1988b). Hence
the anthropology that developed under colonial
administrators tended toward disinterest in the
acculturation of the natives and encouragement The "Evolution" of
for the culturally preservative effects of indirect Culture and Society:
rule. Their approach came to be called pluralistic
development (M. G. Smith, 1965). Colonial plu-
Comte and the Comparative Method
ralism left the natives more or less under the
authority of their own indigenous leaders so long Even before the professionalization of anthro-
as these leaders could be co-opted in support of pology engulfed the discipline, the enlightened
the limited interests of the colonial administration ethnographer had abandoned any attitude that might
(Lugard, 1922/1965). This tendency led to the be associated with that of a merciless conqueror
creation of a market economy at the center of and replaced it with that of an avatar of beneficent
colonial society (Boeke, 1946; Furnivall, 1956) evolutionary progress. Value conflicts arising within
surrounded by a variety of local culture groups anthropology from the history of colonialism, and
(Boeke, 1948), some of whose members were with the moral relativism associated with them
drawn willy-nilly into the market economy and were, in part, replaced by theories of social evo-
suffered the effects of marginalized identity (Sachs, lution. The application of Darwinian and Spence-
1947). rian principles to the understanding of how socie-
Ethnographers who conducted their field stud- ties and cultures of the world have developed over
ies in colonialized areas were divided with respect eons freed the ethnographer from the problems
to their attitudes toward cultural and/or political presented by moral relativism; it permitted the
nationalism and self-determination. A few be- assertion that there existed a spatiotemporal hier-
came champions of ethnocultural liberation and archy of values. These values were represented
anticolonial revolt. Some respected the autonomy synchronically in the varieties of cultures to be
of the traditional culture and opposed any ten- found in the world, but might be classified diachroni-
dency among natives in revolt against colonialism cally according to the theory of developmental
to seek further modernization of their lifestyles. advance.
The latter, some of whom were Marxists, admired This new approach to comprehending how the
the anticolonial movement but were concerned to lifeways of the Occident related to those of the
see that the natives remained precapitalist. Some others had first been formally proposed by Auguste
of these might have imagined that precapitalist Comte and was soon designated the "comparative
natives would practice some form of primitive method" (Bock, 1948, pp. 11-36). According to
communism (see Diamond, 1963, 1972) as de- Comte and his followers (see Lenzer, 1975), the
scribed by Friedrich Engels (1884) in The Origins study of the evolution of culture and civilization
28 L O C A T I N G THE F I E L D

would postulate three stages of culture and would HRAF any and all items of culture found a secure
hold fast to the idea that the peoples and cultures classificatory niche (Murdock, 1949/1965). A Yale-
of the world are arrangeable diachronically, form- produced handbook of categories provided the
ing "a great chain of being" (Lovejoy, 1936/1960). ethnographer with guidelines to direct his or her
Moreover, these stages are interpretable as or- observations and provided the basis for the clas-
derly links in that chain, marking the epochs that sification of these and other collections of cultural
occurred as human societies moved from condi- traits.11 The trait data in the Yale cross-cultural files
tions of primitive culture to those of modern civi- represent ethnography in a form disembodied from
lization.9 By using technological as well as social that of a lived social world in which actors still
indicators, ethnographers could discover where a exist. They are a voluminous collection of dispa-
particular people belonged on the "chain" and rate cultural items that represent the antithesis of
thus give that people a definite place in the evo- the ethnographic method.
lution of culture. (For a recent discussion and
critique of Comte as a theorist of history and
evolution, see R. Brown, 1984, pp. 187-212.) The
seemingly inconvenient fact that all of these dif- Twentieth-Century Ethnography:
ferent cultures coexisted in time—that is, the time
in which the ethnographer conducted his or her
Comteanism and the Cold War
field study—was disposed of by applying the
theory of "uneven evolution," that is, the asser- Two twentieth-century developments have un-
tion, in the guise of an epistemological assump- dermined both the various "colonial" anthropo-
tion, that all cultures except that of Western Europe logical perspectives and evolutionary schemes.
had suffered some form of arrested development Within 30 years of the termination of World War
(Sanderson, 1990; Sarana, 1975). In this way, and II, the several decolonization movements in Af-
in the absence of documentary historical materi- rica and Asia succeeded in ending the direct forms
als, ethnographers could utilize their on-the-spot of Western global colonialism. As part of the
field studies to contribute to the construction of same movements, an anticolonial assault on West-
the prehistory of civilization and at the same time ern ethnocentrism led to a critical attack on the
put forth a genealogy of morals. Following Comte, idea of "the primitive" and on the entire train of
this diachrony of civilizational development was ethnological thought that went with it (Montagu,
usually characterized as having three progressive 1968). In effect, by the 1960s anthropologists had
and irreversible stages: savagery, barbarism, and begun not only to run out of "primitive" societies
civilization. The peoples assigned to each of these to study but also to abandon the evolutionary
stages corresponded to a color-culture hierarchi- epistemology that had justified their very exist-
cal diachrony and fitted the ethnocentric bias of ence in the first place.
the Occident (Nisbet, 1972). A new term, underdeveloped, tended to replace
In the nineteenth century, Comte had formal- primitive. The colonial powers and their support-
ized this mode of thinking for both anthropolo- ers became defendants in an academic prosecu-
gists and sociologists by designating as epochs of tion of those who were responsible for the under-
moral growth (Comte's terms) three stages that, development of the newly designated "Third World"
he averred, occurred in the development of relig- and who had neglected to recognize the integrity
ion. The ethnologists' adaptation of Comte's com- of "black culture" and that of other peoples of
parative method to their own efforts provided color in the United States (see Willis, 1972).12
them with a set of a priori assumptions on the Ethnologists discovered that their basic orienta-
cultures of "primitives"—assumptions that viti- tion was under attack. Insofar as that orientation
ated the need to grant respect to these cultures in had led them or their much-respected predeces-
their own terms—that is, from the perspective of sors to cooperate with imperial governments in
those who are its participants (for a countervail- the suppression and exploitation of natives, or
ing perspective, see Hill-Lubin, 1992). The impo- with the American military and its "pacification"
sition of a preconceived Eurocentric developmen- programs in Vietnam, anthropologists began to
tal framework made the work of the ethnographer suffer from the effects of a collective and intradis-
much simpler; 10 the task became that of a classi- ciplinary guilt complex (see Nader, 1972).13
fier of cultural traits in transition, or in arrest. Changes in what appeared to be the direction
Ultimately, this approach was institutionalized in of world history led anthropologists to retool their
the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) housed approach to ethnography. Because, by definition,
at Yale University, which became the depository there were few, if any, primitives available for
for an anthropological data bank and the resource study, and because the spokespersons for the newly
for a vast project dedicated to the classification designated Third World of "underdeveloped" coun-
and cross-classification of virtually all the extant tries often held anthropologists to have contrib-
ethnographic literature—in the drawers of the uted to the latter condition, access to tribal socie-
Qualitative Methods: Their History in Sociology and Anthropology 29

ties became more difficult than it had been. As cal economy and a democratic social order re-
opportunities for fieldwork shrank, recourse was placed earlier images of the ultimate stage of
had to the study of linguistics, to the data banks cultural evolution. Changes in the rest of the na-
of the Yale files, or to the discovery of the ethno- tions of the world that seemed to herald move-
graphic possibilities for anthropological exami- ment toward adoption of an American social, po-
nations of American society. Anthropology had litical, and economic institutional structure became
come full circle, having moved back to a study of the standard by which social scientists could meas-
its own society, the point of departure—as well as ure the "advance" of humankind. This standard
the benchmark—for its investigation of more "primi- provided the analyst-ethnographer with a new
tive" cultures. Linguistics and data banks lend measure for evaluating the "progress" of the "other"
themselves to the study of texts, as does the study (which, after 1947, included the peoples and cul-
of Western society, with its rich literary and his- tures of the Soviet Union as well as those of the
torical archives. These tendencies opened ethnog- "underdeveloped" world). The matter reached epiph-
raphy to the modernist and, later, the postmod- any in the early 1990s, when students and scholars
ernist approaches to the study of exotic peoples of the cosmological, moral, economic, and mili-
and to the investigation of alien culture bearers tary problems faced by claimants of the right to
residing within industrial societies of the Occident. spread a benevolent variant of Christianized West-
However, even as anthropology was convulsed ern civilization throughout the world began to
by decolonization movements and constrained by rejoice over the collapse of communism, the dis-
restricted access to its traditional fieldwork sites, integration of the Soviet Union, and the decom-
the Cold War gave to sociology an opportunity to position of its allies and alliances in Eastern Europe
revive Comte's and Spencer's variants of evolu- (Gwertzman & Kaufman, 1992). But for some
tionary doctrine in modernist form and to com- there arose a new apprehension: worry over whether
bine them with a secular theodicy harking back to these events signaled the very end of history itself
America's Puritan beginnings. (see Fukuyama, 1992).14
Talcott Parsons's (1966,1971) two-volume study The end of the Cold War and the deconstruction
of the development of society restored the Calvin- of the Soviet Union revived nationalist and ethnic
ist-Puritan imagery, applying the latter to those claims in almost every part of the world. In such
"others" not yet included in the Christian broth- a newly decentered world, cultural pluralism has
erhood of the Occident. Written during the dec- become a new watchword, especially for all those
ades of the U.S. global contest with the Soviet who hope to distinguish themselves from eth-
Union, it arranged selected nations and societies nonational "others." The dilemmas once posed by
in a schema according to which the United States cultural relativism have been replaced by the is-
was said to have arrived at the highest stage of sues arising out of the supposed certainties of
societal development; other peoples, cultures, and primordial descent. Ethnographers now find them-
civilizations were presumed to be moving in the selves caught in the cross fire of incommensura-
direction plotted by America, "the first new na- ble but competing values.
tion" (Lipset, 1979; for a critique, see Lyman,
1975), or to be suffering from an arrest of ad-
vancement that prevented them from doing so.
That developmental scheme held to the idea that The Ethnography of
economic progress was inherent in industrializa- the American Indian:
tion and that nation building coincided with capi-
talism, the gradual extension of democratization,
An Indigenous "Other"
and the orderly provision of individual rights.
Despite the pointed criticisms of the comparative In the United States, the Calvinist variant of the
method that would continue to be offered by the Protestant errand into the wilderness began with
school of sociohistorical thought associated with the arrival of the Puritans in New England. Con-
Frederick J. Teggart (1941) and his followers vinced of their own righteousness and of their
(Bock, 1952, 1956, 1963, 1974; Hodgen, 1974; this-worldly mission to bring to fruition God's
Nisbet, 1969, 1986; for a critical discussion of kingdom on the "new continent," the Puritans
this school, see Lyman, 1978; see also Kuper, initially set out to include the so-called Indians in
1988), a Comtean outlook survived within sociol- their covenant of faith. But, having misjudged
ogy in the work of Talcott Parsons and his macro- both the Indians' pliability and their resistance to
sociological epigoni. an alien worldview, the Puritans did not succeed
Social scientific literature during the Cold War in their attempt (Galloway, 1991, pp. 57-90; A. T.
included such titles as Robert Heilbroner's The Vaughan, 1965). Nevertheless, they continued their
Great Ascent, A. F. K. Organski's The Stages of missionary endeavors throughout the nineteenth
Political Development, and W. W. Rostow's The and twentieth centuries (Coleman, 1985; Keller,
Stages of Economic Growth. The American politi- 1983; Milner & O'Neil, 1985). American political
30 LOCATING THE FIELD

and jurisprudential policy toward the Indian, as the special brand of anthropology that it fostered,
well as the ethnographic work on the cultures of American ethnography developed its peculiar out-
Native Americans, derive from this failure and look on Native Americans.15
shape its results. As one consequence, the several The BIA and later the Smithsonian Institution
tribes of North American aborigines would re- employed ethnographers to staff the various res-
main outside the ethnographic, moral, and cul- ervation agencies and to study the ways of the
tural pale of both European immigrant enclaves Indians. The focus of study for this contingent of
and settled white American communities. observers was not the possible conversion of In-
From the seventeenth through the nineteenth dians, but rather the depiction of their cultures—
centuries—that is, during the period of westward ceremonies recorded, kinship systems mapped,
expansion across the American continent—eth- technology described, artifacts collected—all car-
nographic reports on Indian cultures were written ried out from a secular and administrative point
from the perspective of the Euro-American con- of view.16 The theoretical underpinning of the
queror and his missionary allies (Bowden, 1981). BIA's perspective was the civilized/primitive di-
Even more than the once-enslaved Africans and chotomy that had already designated Indians as
their American-born descendants, the Indians have preliterates. In effect, the tribal lands and reser-
remained in a special kind of "otherness." One vation habitats of these "domestic, dependent na-
salient social indicator of this fact is their confine- tionals" became a living anthropological museum
ment to reservations of the mind as well as the from which ethnologists could glean descriptions
body. In the conventional academic curriculum, of the early stages of primitive life. In those parts
the study of Native Americans is a part of the of the country where Indians lived in large num-
cultural anthropology of "primitive" peoples, bers—especially the Southwest17—and where ar-
whereas that of European and Asian immigrants chaeological artifacts were numerous, the Comtean
and American blacks is an institutionalized fea- evolutionary perspective was used to trace the
ture of sociology courses on "minorities" and ancestry of existing tribes back to an origin that
"race and ethnic relations." might be found by paleontological efforts. From
In the United States a shift in ethnographic the beginning, however, the Southwest would also
perspective from that written by missionaries and be the setting where debates—over how ethnog-
military conquerors to that composed exclusively raphy was to be carried out, and what purpose it
by anthropologists arose with the establishment ought to serve—would break out and divide an-
of the ethnology section of the Smithsonian Insti- thropologists not only from missionaries and from
tution (Hinsley, 1981). However, ethnographies federal agents, but from one another (Dale, 1949/
of various Indian "tribes" had been written earlier 1984; Dockstader, 1985).
by ethnologists in service to the Bureau of Indian The life world of "the primitive" was thought
Affairs (BIA) (Bieder, 1989; two representative to be a window through which the prehistoric past
examples of pre-Smithsonian Amerindian ethnog- could be seen, described, and understood. At its
raphy are found in McKenney & Hall, 1836/1972; most global representation, this attitude had been
Schoolcraft, 1851/1975). In addition to being "prob- given the imprimatur of ethnological science at
lem peoples" for those theorists who wished to the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, when a scien-
explain Indian origins in America and to con- tifically minded missionary, Samuel Phillips Verner,
struct their ancestry in terms consistent with the allowed Ota Benga, a pygmy from the Belgian
creation and flood myths of the Bible, the pres- Congo, to be put on display as a living specimen
ence of the Indians within the borders of the of primitivism. A year later, Ota Benga was ex-
United States posed still another problem: their hibited at the Monkey House of the Bronx Zoo
anomalous status in law (R. A. Williams, 1990). (Bradford & Blume, 1992). In 1911, the Ameri-
Politically, the Indian "tribes" regarded them- can anthropologist Alfred Kroeber took posses-
selves as separate sovereign nations and, for a sion of Ishi, the last surviving member of the Yahi
period, were dealt with as such by the colonial tribe, and placed him in the Museum of Anthro-
powers and the U.S. government. However, in pology at the University of California. In the two
1831, their legal status was redesignated in a years before his death, Ishi dwelled in the mu-
Supreme Court case, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia seum and, like Ota Benga before him, became, in
(1831). In his decision, Chief Justice Marshall effect, a living artifact, a primitive on display, one
declared the Indians to occupy a unique status in to be viewed by the civilized in a manner compara-
law. They form, he said, "a domestic dependent ble to their perspective on the presentation of Indi-
nation." As such, he went on, they fell into a ans in American museum dioramas (see Kroeber,
special "ward" relationship to the federal govern- 1962, 1965; for contemporary accounts in news-
ment. The latter had already established the Bu- papers and other media, see Heizer & Kroeber,
reau of Indian Affairs to deal with them. Within 1979).
the confines and constraints of this decision, the Although U.S. Indian policy established both
BIA administered the affairs of the Indian. From the programs and the perspectives under which
Qualitative Methods: Their History in Sociology and Anthropology 31

most ethnographers worked, its orthodoxy was and Asian and European immigrants the moral
not accepted by all of the early field-workers. and communitarian values of Protestantism. That
Among these heterodoxical ethnologists, perhaps these immigrants had carried their Catholic, Ju-
the most important was Frank Hamilton Gushing daic, or Buddhist religious cultures to the United
(1857-1900), who became a Zuni shaman and a States and that the lifestyles of the recently eman-
war chief while working as an ethnologist for the cipated blacks did not accord with those of the
Smithsonian Institution (see Gushing, 1920/1974, white citizens of the United States were causes for
1979, 1901/1988, 1990; see also Culin, 1922/ concern among representatives of the older set-
1967).18 Cushing's case stands out because, though tled groups, who feared for the future integrity of
he was an active participant in Zuni life, he con- America's Protestant civilization (Contosta, 1980,
tinued to be a professional ethnographer who tried pp. 121-144; Hartmann, 1948/1967; Jones, 1992,
to describe both Zuni culture and the Zuni world- pp. 49-166). Initially, efforts to include these groups
view from an indigenous perspective. Moreover, focused on Protestant efforts to preach and prac-
Gushing joined with R. S. Culin in proposing the tice a "social gospel" that found its institutionali-
heterodoxical thesis that America was the cradle zation in the settlement houses that came to dot
of Asia, that is, that in pre-Columbian times the the urban landscape of immigrant and ghetto en-
ancestors of the Zuni had migrated to Asia and claves (Holden, 1922/1970; Woods & Kennedy,
contributed significantly to the development of 1922/1990).
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asiatic civili- About three decades after the Civil War, when
zations that in turn had been diffused over the it became clear that the sheer number and cultural
centuries into Africa and Europe (Lyman, 1979, variety of the new urban inhabitants had become
1982a, 1982b). too great to be treated by individual efforts, re-
Without attempting to become a native himself, course was had to the statistical survey. It would
Paul Radin (1883-1959) devoted a lifetime to the provide a way to determine how many inhabitants
ethnographic study of the Winnebago Indians (see from each denomination, nationality, and race
Radin, 1927, 1927/1957a, 1937/1957b, 1920/1963, there were in any one place, and to describe each
1933/1966,1953/1971b, 1923/1973,1956/1976).19 group's respective problems of adjustment (C. A.
Maintaining that an inner view of an alien culture Chambers, 1971; Cohen, 1981; McClymer, 1980).
could be accomplished only through a deep learn- In this manner, the "other" was transformed into
ing of its language and symbol system, Radin a statistical aggregate and reported in a tabular
documented the myths, rituals, and poetry in Win- census of exotic lifestyles. These quantified reports,
nebago and, in his reports, provided English trans- sponsored in the first years by various churches in
lations of these materials. Taking Cushing's and eastern cities of the United States, were the fore-
Radin's works as a standard for Amerindian eth- runners of the corporate-sponsored surveys of
nography, their perspective could be used to rein- immigrants and Negroes and of the massive gov-
terpret the works of earlier ethnographers; they ernment-sponsored surveys of European, Asian,
might enable future field investigators to compre- Mexican, and other immigrant laborers in 1911
hend the cultural boundedness of American In- (Immigration Commission, 1911/1970). The church
dian ethnography and at the same time provide the surveys and their corporate and sociological suc-
point of departure for a critical sociology of eth- cessors were designed to facilitate the "moral
nological knowledge (Vidich, 1966). But, in ad- reform" and social adjustment of newcomer and
dition, their work recognizes both the historicity ghetto populations. What is now known as quali-
of preliterate cultures and the problems attendant tative research in sociology had its origins in this
upon understanding the world of the other from Christian mission (see Greek, 1978, 1992).
the other's point of view. In this, as in the work It was out of such a movement to incorporate
of Thucydides and in the Weberian conception of the alien elements within the consensual commu-
a sociology of understanding (verstehende soci- nity that the first qualitative community study was
ology), Gushing and Radin transcended the prob- carried out. W. E. B. Du Bois's (1899/1967) The
lem of value incommensurability. Philadelphia Negro, a survey of that city's sev-
enth ward, was supported by Susan B. Wharton,
a leader of the University of Pennsylvania's col-
lege settlement. To Wharton, Du Bois, and their
The Ethnography of the Civic Other: colleagues, the "collection and analysis of social
The Ghetto, the Natural Area, facts were as much a religious as a scientific
activity offered as a form of prayer for the re-
and the Small Town demption of dark-skinned people" (Vidich & Ly-
man, 1985, p. 128). This study, which included
The Calvinist mission to save and/or include 5,000 interviews conducted by Du Bois, aimed
the Indian found its later counterpart in a mission not only at description, but also at the uplift of
to bring to the urban ghetto communities of blacks Philadelphia's Negro population by the Quaker
32 L O C A T I N G THE FIELD

community that surrounded it. The tone of no- ing contradictions of capitalism that seemed to
blesse oblige that inspires the final pages of Du have manifested themselves so alarmingly in De-
Bois's book are a stark reminder of the paternal- pression-ridden America. This new political ori-
istic benevolence underlying this first ethnographic entation was reflected in both what the Lynds
study of a community. observed and how they reported it. Where the first
Church- and corporate-sponsored survey meth- volume had made no mention of the Ball family' s
ods continued to dominate social research until domination of what was a virtual "company town,"
the early 1920s (see Burgess, 1916), when Helen or of the family's philanthropic sponsorship of
and Robert Lynd began their study of Middle- Ball State University and the local library and
town. Robert Lynd, a newly ordained Protestant hospital, or its control over the banks, Middle-
minister, was selected by the Council of Churches, town in Transition included a chapter titled "The
then concerned about the moral state of Christian X Family: A Pattern of Business-Class Control,"
communities in industrial America, to examine and an appendix titled "Middletown's Banking
the lifeways of what was thought to be a typical Institutions in Boom and Depression." Respond-
American community. Rather suddenly catapulted ing to what they believed to be the utter failure of
into the position of a two-person research team, America's laissez-faire, free market economy, the
the Lynds consulted the anthropologist Clark Wissler Lynds abandoned the ethnographic categories they
(1870-1947), then on the staff of the American had used in Middletown. Choosing instead to em-
Museum of Natural History,20 for advice on how ploy categories and conceptualizations derived
to conduct such a survey and how to report it once from their own recently acquired Marxist out-
the data had been gathered. Wissler provided them look, they shifted the sociological focus from
with what was then known as the cultural inven- religious to political values.
tory, a list of standard categories used by anthro- Middletown in Transition would become a stand-
pologists to organize field data (see Wissler, 1923, ard and much-praised work of sociological eth-
chaps. 5, 7). Those categories—getting a living, nography for the next half century. At Columbia
making a home, training the young, using leisure, University, where Robert Lynd taught genera-
engaging in religious practices, engaging in com- tions of students, explicit Christian values and
munity activities—became the organizing princi- rhetoric were replaced by those of an ethically
ple of Lynd and Lynd's (1929/1956) book and inclined political radicalism. With the radicaliza-
provided them with a set of cues for their inves- tion of many Columbia-trained youths (as well as
tigation. Although the Middletown study was de- of their fellow students at City College, many of
signed to provide its church sponsors with infor- whom would later become prominent sociolo-
mation that might be used to set church policy, gists), variants of Marxism would provide a coun-
the Lynds approached the Middletown commu- terperspective to that of the anthropologically
nity in the manner of social anthropologists. As oriented ethnographic observer of American com-
Wissler (1929/1956) states in his foreword to the munities. Ironically, however, Middletown's sec-
published volume of the study, "To most people ond restudy, conducted by a team of non-Marxist
anthropology is a mass of curious information sociologists nearly 50 years after Middletown in
about savages, and this is so far true, in that most Transition was published, returned the focus to
of its observations are on the less civilized. . . . the significance of kinship and family that had
The authors of this volume have approached an characterized the early anthropological perspec-
American community as an anthropologist does a tive, combining it with the kind of concern for
primitive tribe" (p. vi). In Middletown, the "other" Protestant religiosity that had been the stock-in-
of the anthropologist found its way into American trade of the earlier American sociological orien-
sociological practice and purpose. Moreover, from tation (Caplow, Bahr, Chadwick, Hill, & Wil-
the point of view of the policy makers in the liamson, 1982, 1983).
central church bureaucracy, he who had once Even before the Lynds' original study, ethnog-
been assumed to be the civic "brother" had to all raphy as a method of research had become iden-
intents and purposes become the "other," an ordi- tified with the University of Chicago's Depart-
nary inhabitant of Muncie, Indiana. ment of Sociology. The first generation of Chicago
Shortly after the publication of Middletown in sociologists, led by Albion W. Small, supposed
1929, the Great Depression set in. Soon, the Lynds that the discipline they professed had pledged
were commissioned to do a restudy of Muncie. itself to reassert America's destiny—the nation
Published in 1937 as Middletown in Transition: that would be "the city upon a hill." America
A Study in Cultural Conflicts, this investigation would become a unified Christian brotherhood,
reflected not only changes in the town, but also a committed to a covenant through which the right
transformation in the outlook of its two ethnogra- and proper values would be shared by all (Vidich
phers. During the early years of the Depression, & Lyman, 1985, p. 179). Small sought a socio-
Robert Lynd, a church progressive, had begun to logical means to impress the values and morals of
look to the Soviet Union for answers to the glar- Protestantism upon the inhabitants of the newer
Qualitative Methods: Their History in Sociology and Anthropology 33

ethnic, racial, and religious ghettos then forming and the slum (Zorbaugh, 1929), hobo jungles (N.
in Chicago. However, this explicitly Christian Anderson, 1923/1961), single-room occupants of
attitude—in service to which the University of furnished rooms (Zorbaugh, 1968), enclaves of
Chicago had been brought into existence by John cultural and social dissidents (Ware, 1935/1965),21
D. Rockefeller in 1892—did not survive at Chi- the urban ecology of gangdom (Thrasher, 1927/
cago. It was discarded after Robert E. Park, Ernest 1963), and the urban areas that housed the suici-
W. Burgess, W. I. Thomas, and Louis Wirth had dal (Cavan, 1928/1965), the drug addicted (Dai,
become the guiding professoriat of Chicago's so- 1937/1970), and the mentally disturbed (Paris &
ciology, and after Park's son-in-law, Robert Red- Dunham, 1939/1965), and on the social and eco-
field, had become an important figure in that nomic dynamics of real estate transactions and the
university's anthropology program. Park's secu- human and metropolitical effects arising out of
lar conceptualization of the "natural area" re- the occupational interests of realtors as they inter-
placed the Christian locus of the unchurched in faced with the state of the economy (Hughes,
the city, while, at the same time, and in contradis- 1928; McCluer, 1928; Schietinger, 1967). Park's
tinction to Park's point of view, Redfield's for- (1952b, 1952c) orientation was that of Montes-
mulation of the morally uplifting "little commu- quieu; he emphasized the freedom that the city af-
nity" introduced a counterimage to that of the forded to those who would partake of the "romance"
metropolis then emerging in Chicago. and "magic" of its sociocultural multiverse.
Park (1925/1967) conceived the city to be a Some of Park's students, on the other hand,
social laboratory containing a diversity and het- following up an idea developed by Louis Wirth
erogeneity of peoples, lifestyles, and competing (1938), all too often took to contrasting its forms
and contrasting worldviews. To Park, for a city to of liberty in thought and action—that is, its en-
be composed of others, ghettoized or otherwise, couragement of "segmented" personalities and
was intrinsic to its nature. Under his and Ernest role-specific conduct and its fostering of imper-
W. Burgess's direction or inspiration, a set of sonality, secondary relationships, and a blase at-
ethnographic studies emerged focusing on singu- titude (see Roper, 1935, abstracted in Burgess &
lar descriptions of one or another aspect of human Bogue, 1967, pp. 231-244)—with what they al-
life that was to be found in the city. Frequently, leged was the sense of personal security—that is,
these studies examined urban groups whose ways the gratification that came from conformity to
of life were below or outside the purview of the custom, the comfort that arose out of familiar
respectable middle classes. In addition to provid- face-to-face contacts, the wholesomeness of whole
ing descriptions of the myriad and frequently personalities, and the companionability of pri-
incompatible values by which these groups lived, mary relationships—to be found among the peo-
these ethnographies moved away from the mis- ple who dwelt in rural, ethnoracially homogene-
sionary endeavor that had characterized earlier ous small towns (see Bender, 1978, pp. 3-27;
studies. Instead, Park and his colleagues occupied Redfield & Singer, 1973; see also M. P. Smith,
themselves with documenting the various forms 1979). For those who idealized the "folk society,"
of civil otherhood that they perceived to be emerg- and who conflated it with concomitant idealiza-
ing in the city (see Burgess & Bogue, 1967). tions of the "little community," "primitive" pri-
Central to Park's vision of the city was its mordialism, pastoral peace, and the small town,
architectonic as a municipal circumscription of a the impending urbanization of the countryside—
number of "natural areas," forming a mosaic of heralded by the building of highways (Dansereau,
minor communities, each strikingly different from 1961; McKenzie, 1968), the well-documented trend
the other, but each more or less typical of its kind. of young people departing to the city (for early
Park (1952a) observed, "Every American city has documentation of this phenomenon, see Weber,
its slums; its ghettos; its immigrant colonies, re- 1899/1967), and the intrusion of the automobile
gions which maintain more or less alien and ex- (Bailey, 1988; Rae, 1965), the telephone (Ball,
otic cultures. Nearly every large city has its bo- 1968; de SolaPoole, 1981), and the radio (Gist &
hemias and hobohemias, where life is freer, more Halbert, 1947, pp. 128, 505-507) on rural folk-
adventurous and lonely than it is elsewhere. These ways—was a portent not merely of change but of
are called natural areas of the city" (p. 196). For irredeemable tragedy (see Blake, 1990; Gusfield,
more than three decades, urban ethnography in 1975; Lingeman, 1980; Tinder, 1980). On the
Chicago's sociology department focused on de- other hand, for those ethnographers who con-
scribing such "natural areas" as the Jewish ghetto cluded on the basis of their own field experiences
(Wirth, 1928/1956), Little Italy (Nelli, 1970), that the processes as well as the anomalies of
Polonia (Lopata, 1967; Thomas & Znaniecki, America's inequitable class structure had already
1958, pp. 1511-1646), Little Germany (Park, 1922/ found their way into and become deeply embed-
1971), Chinatown (Lee, 1978; Siu, 1987; Wu, ded within the language and customs of the na-
1926), Bronzeville and Harlem (Drake & Cayton, tion's small towns, there was an equally porten-
1962; Frazier, 1931, 1937a, 1937b), the gold coast tous observation: America's Jeffersonian ideals
34 L O C A T I N G THE FIELD

were professed but not practiced in the very com- versities by Businessmen, Veblen (1918/1965) drew
munities that had been alleged to be their secure on his own experiences at the University of Chi-
repository. As August B. Hollingshead (1949/1961) cago, Stanford University, and the University of
would point out on the basis of his ethnographic Missouri, three sites that provided the raw mate-
study of "Elmtown's youth": "The . . . American rials for his highly organized and prescient exami-
class system is extra-legal . . . [but] society has nation of the bureaucratic transformations then oc-
other dimensions than those recognized in law... . curring in American universities.22 Frazier's and
It is the culture which makes men face toward the Veblen's oeuvres are, in effect, examples of quali-
facts of the class system and away from the ideals tative research based on data acquired over the
of the American creed" (pp. 448, 453). course of rich and varied life experiences. In these
Ethnographic studies that followed in this tra- studies it is impossible to disentangle the method
dition were guided by a nostalgia for nineteenth- of study from either the theory employed or the
century small-town values, an American past that person employing it. Such a method would appear
no longer existed, but during the heyday of which— to be the ultimate desideratum of ethnographic
so it was supposed—there had existed a society research.
in which all had been brothers and sisters. The ethnographic orientation at the University
However, neither the civil otherhood conceived of Chicago was given a new twist by William
by Park nor the classless brotherhood sought by Foote Whyte. Whyte made what was designed to
Hollingshead could account for American soci- be formal research into part of his life experience
ety's resistance to the incorporation of blacks. It and called it "participant observation." The Chi-
was to address this point that E. Franklin Frazier cago Sociology Department provided Whyte with
(1894-1962) would stress the "otherhood" of the an opportunity to report, in Street Corner Society
American Negro. Building on the teachings of (1943a, 1955, 1981), his findings about Italian
both Park and Du Bois, Frazier began his socio- Americans residing in the North End of Boston.
logical studies in Chicago with an analysis of the That work, initially motivated by a sense of moral
various lifeways within the black ghetto. In the responsibility to uplift the slum-dwelling masses,
process, he discovered both the ghetto's separate- has become the exemplar of the techniques appro-
ness and its isolation from the larger social and priate to participant observation research: Whyte
political economy. In his later evaluation of the lived in the Italian neighborhood and in many but
rise of the "black bourgeoisie" (1957a) he saw it not all ways became one of the "Cornerville"
as a tragic, although perhaps inevitable, outcome boys.23 Although he presents his findings about
of the limited economic and social mobility avail- Cornerville descriptively, Whyte's theoretical stance
able to the black middle classes. Based on his remains implicit. The book has an enigmatic qual-
observations of largely university-based black mid- ity, because Whyte presents his data from the
dle classes, Frazier presented their lifestyle as an perspective of his relationships with his subjects.
emulation of the lifestyle of the white middle That is, Whyte is as much a researcher as he is a
classes: as such, his monograph on the subject subject in his own book; the other had become the
should be regarded as much as a study of the white brother of Italian ghetto dwellers.
bourgeoisie as of the black. Frazier's ethnographic Anthropology at the University of Chicago was
studies were based on almost a lifetime of obser- also informed by a qualitative orientation. Until
vation, not only of this specific class, but also of 1929, anthropology and ethnology at that univer-
African American ghetto dwellers in Harlem and sity had been subsumed under "historical sociol-
Chicago, of black families in the rural South and ogy" in a department called the Department of
the urban North, and of Negro youths caught up Social Science and Anthropology. Anthropologi-
in the problems of their socioeconomic situation cal and ethnological studies were at first directed
(see Frazier, 1925, 1957b, 1963, 1939/1966, 19407 by Frederick A. Starr, formerly head of ethnology
1967,1968). Frazier's work stands apart, not only at the American Museum of Natural History (Diner,
because it points to the exclusion of blacks from 1975). Starr became a Japanophile after his first
both the American ideal of brotherhood and the trip to Japan, while he was on assignment to bring
then-emerging civic otherhood, but also because a few of the Ainu people to be displayed, like Ota
its research orientation drew on the life histories Benga, at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904
of his subjects and on his own experience. (Statler, 1983, pp. 237-255). A separate Depart-
The importance of personal experience in eth- ment of Anthropology was established in 1929,
nographic description and interpretation is im- but, unlike Starr's, it reflected the orientation
plicit in all of Frazier's work. His methodology developed by the sociologists W. I. Thomas and
and chosen research sites are comparable to those Ellsworth Paris (see Paris, 1970, p. 16). One year
employed by a very different kind of ethnogra- before the advent of the new department, Robert
pher—Thorstein Veblen. In such studies of Ameri- Redfield presented his dissertation, A Plan for the
can university ghettos as The Higher Learning in Study of Tepoztlan, Mexico (1928). Borrowing
America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Uni- from Tonnies's (1887/1957) dichotomous para-
Qualitative Methods: Their History in Sociology and Anthropology 35

digm, gemeinschaft-gesellschaft, and drawing upon retical significance of their study was often ne-
VonWiese's and Becker's (1950/1962,1932/1974) glected in the wake of the controversy that arose
sacred-secular continuum, Redfield asserted the over its publication and the charge that they had
virtues of "the folk culture" and what he would not done enough to conceal the identities of the
later call "the little community" (Redfield, 1962, town's leading citizens (Vidich & Bensman, 1968,
pp. H3-144; see also Redfield, 1930,1941,1960, pp. 397-476), their concluding observations—
1950/1962b; Redfield & Rojas, 1934/1962a). namely, that there had occurred a middle-class
Regarding the metropolis as a congeries of un- revolution in America, that the rise and predomi-
happy and unfulfilled others, Redfield stood op- nance of the new middle classes had altered the
posed to the values associated with urban life and character and culture of both the cities and towns
industrial civilization. He extolled the lifestyles of America, and that "governmental, business,
of those nonindustrial peoples and small commu- religious and educational super-bureaucracies far
nities that had resisted incorporation into the glob- distant from the rural town formulate policies to
ally emerging metropolitan world. In his final which the rural world can respond only with re-
essay, written in 1958, the year of his death, sentment" (p. 323; see also Bensman & Vidich,
describing an imaginary conversation with a man 1987)—challenged the older paradigms guiding
from outer space, Redfield (1963) abjured the field research on community life.
condition of mutually assured destruction that By 1963, Roland L. Warren would take note of
characterized the Cold War, despaired of halting what he called "the 'great change' in American
the march of technocentric progress, conflated the communities" and point out how a developing divi-
pastoral with the premodern, and concluded by sion of labor, the increasing differentiation of inter-
lamenting the rise of noncommunal life in the ests and associations, the growing systemic relations
metropolitan city. Redfield's orientation, Rous- to the larger society, a transfer of local functions to
seauean in its ethos, would provide a generation profit enterprises and to state and federal govern-
of anthropologists with a rustic outlook—a post- ments, urbanization and suburbanization, and the
missionary attitude that sought to preserve and shifts in values that were both cause and conse-
protect the lifeways of the primitive. His was the quences of these changes had been accompanied by
antiurban variant of Puritanism, a point of view a "corresponding decline in community cohesion
that held small-scale, face-to-face communities to and autonomy" (see Warren, 1972, pp. 53-94). In
be superior to all others. To those ethnologists effect, community ethnography would not only have
who followed in the ideological footsteps of Red- to adjust to the encroachment of the city and the
field, these communal values seemed representative suburb on the town, but also enlarge its outlook to
of primordial humanity.24 embrace the effects of the state and the national
A counterimage to that of ethnography's ro- political economy on the towns and villages of the
mance with small-town, communitarian and pri- Third World as well as of the United States (see, e.g.,
mordial values of primitivism was offered in 1958 the ethnographies collected in Toland, 1993; see
when Arthur J. Vidich and Joseph Bensman pub- also Marcus, 1986). ('The point is," Maurice Stein
lished their ethnographic account of "Spring- [1964, p. 230] observed in his reflection on nearly
dale," a rural community in Upstate New York.25 six decades of American community studies, "that
As their title forewarned, this was a "small town both the student of the slum and of the suburb [and,
in mass society."26 Its situation, moreover, was he might have added, the small town] require some
typical of other American towns. Springdale's sort of total picture of the evolution of American
much-vaunted localism, its claims to societal, eco- communities and of emerging constellations and
nomic, and political autonomy, were illusions of converging problems"; p. 230. Had the practitio-
a bygone era. Their "central concern," the authors ners of American community studies taken their
observed in their introduction to a revised edition point of departure from Otto von Gierke's, 1868/1990,
released 10 years after the original publication of or Friedrich Ratzel's, 1876/1988, orientations,
their monograph, "was with the processes by which they might have been more critical of the "Rous-
the small town (and indirectly all segments of seauean" variant of Tonnies's outlook from the be-
American society) are continuously and increas- ginning of their research. [See McKinney, 1957])27
ingly drawn into the central machinery, processes
and dynamics of the total society" (Vidich &
Bensman, 1968, p. xi).
In so presenting their findings, Vidich and The Ethnography of Assimilation:
Bensman reversed the direction and exploded
what was left of the mythology attendant upon the
The Other Remains an Other
gemeinschaft-gesellschaft (Parsons, 1937/1949,
1973) and folk-urban continua in American so- A breakdown in another fundamental paradigm
ciological thought (Duncan, 1957; Firey, Loomis, affected the ethnographic study of ethnic and
&Beegle, 1950; Miner, 1952). Although the theo- racial minorities. Until the 1960s, much of the
36 L O C A T I N G THE F I E L D

sociological outlook on race and ethnic relations tained, reintroduced, rediscovered, or invented
had focused on the processes and progress of the customs of their old-world forebears in mod-
assimilation, acculturation, and amalgamation ern America (Kivisto & Blanck, 1990). Stanford
among America's multiverse of peoples. Guided M. Lyman (1974, 1986) combined participant ob-
by the cluster of ideas and notions surrounding servation with documentary and historical analy-
the ideology of the "melting pot," as well as by the ses to show that the solidarity and persistence
prediction of the eventual assimilation of every- over time of territorially based Chinatowns was
one that accompanied the widely held under- related in great measure to persistent intracom-
standing of Robert E. Park's theory of the racial munity conflict and to the web of traditional group
cycle, ethnographers of America's many minority affiliations that engendered both loyalty and al-
groups at first sought to chart each people's loca- tercation. Kramer and Leventman (1961) provided
tion on a continuum that began with "contact," a picture of conflict resolution among three gen-
passed consecutively through stages of "compe- erations of American Jews who had retained many
tition and conflict" and "accommodation," and but not all aspects of their ethnoreligious tradi-
eventually culminated in "assimilation" (for criti- tions despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that
cal evaluations of Park's cycle, see Lyman, 1972, the third generation had become "children of the
1990b, 1992b). Although by 1937 Park had come gilded ghetto." Richard Alba (1985, 1989, 1990)
to despair of his earlier assertion that the cycle reopened the questions of whether and how Euro-
was progressive and irreversible (see Park, 19377 pean ethnic survival had occurred in the United
1969b), his students and followers would not give States, pointing to the several dimensions of its
up their quest for a pattern and process that prom- presentation, representation, and disintegration,
ised to bring an ultimate and beneficent end to and carrying out, once more, a study of Italian
interracial relations and their attendant problems. Americans, a group often chosen by sociologists
When the ethnic histories of particular peoples for ethnographic studies seeking to support, op-
in the United States seemed to defy the unidirec- pose, modify, or reformulate the original assimi-
tional movement entailed in Park's projected se- lation thesis (see, e.g., Covello, 1967; Cans, 1962;
quence—for example, when Etzioni's (1959) re- Garbaccia, 1984; Landesco, 1968; Lopreato, 1970;
study of the Jewish ghetto showed little evidence Tricarico, 1984; Whyte, 1943a, 1943b).
that either religion or custom would be obliter- The reconsideration of assimilation theory in
ated, even after many years of settlement in Amer- general and Park's race relations cycle in particu-
ica; when Lee's (1960) discovery that Chinatowns lar produced a methodological critique so telling
and their old world-centered institutions persisted that it cast doubt on the substance of that hypothe-
despite a decline in Sinophobic prejudices; when sis. In 1950, Seymour Martin Lipset observed that
Woods's (1972) careful depiction of how 10 gen- "by their very nature, hypotheses about the inevi-
erations of settlement in America had failed to tability of cycles, whether they be cycles of race
erode either the traditions or the ethnoracial iden- relations or the rise and fall of civilization, are not
tity of a marginalized people, the Letoyant Cre- testable at all" (p. 479). Earlier, some ethnogra-
oles of Louisiana (see also Woods, 1956); and, phers of racial minority groups in America had
more generally, when Kramer (1970) had docu- attempted to construct lengthier or alternative cy-
mented the many variations in minority commu- cles that would be able to accommodate the find-
nity adaptation in America—there arose a cacoph- ings of their field investigations. Bogardus's (1930,
ony of voices lamenting the failure of assimilation 1940; Ross & Bogardus, 1940) three distinctive
and calling for a resurgence of WASP hegemony cycles for California's diversified Japanese com-
(Brookhiser, 1991, 1993), or expressing grave munities and Masuoka's (1946) warning that three
apprehension about America's ethnocultural fu- generations would be required for the accultura-
ture (Christopher, 1989; Schlesinger, 1991; Schrag, tion of Japanese in America and that the third
1973). generation would still be victims of "a genuine
Even before popularizers and publicists an- race problem" evidence the growing disappoint-
nounced the coming of an era in which there ment with assimilation's promise. Others, includ-
would be a "decline of the WASP" (Schrag, 1970) ing W. O. Brown (1934), Clarence E. Click (1955),
and a rise of the "unmeltable ethnics" (Novak, Stanley Lieberson (1961), and Graham C. Kinloch
1972), some sociologists had begun to reexamine (1974, pp. 205-209) came to conclusions similar
their assumptions about ethnicity in America and to that of Park's 1937 reformulation—namely,
to rethink their own and their predecessors' find- that assimilation was but one possible outcome of
ings on the matter. In 1952, Nathan Glazer caused sustained interracial contact, and that isolation,
Marcus Lee Hansen's (1938/1952) hitherto over- subordination, nationalist or nativist movements, and
looked work on the "law of third generation re- secession ought also to be considered.
turn" to be republished,28 sparking a renewed Those seeking to rescue the discredited deter-
interest in documenting whether, how, and to minism of Park's original cycle from its empiri-
what extent the grandchildren of immigrants re- cally minded critics turned to policy proposals or
Qualitative Methods: Their History in Sociology and Anthropology 37

hortatory appeals in its behalf. Wirth (1945) urged plethora of ethnographies that offered little in the
the adoption of programs that would alleviate the way of theoretical advancements but much more
frustration experienced by members of minority of the detail of everyday life among minorities
groups who had been repeatedly rebuffed in their and other human groups.
attempts to be incorporated within a democratic During the two decades after 1970, ethnologi-
America; Lee (1960, pp. 429-430) converted her cal studies of African American, Amerindian, Mexi-
uncritical adherence to Park's prophecy into a can American, and Asian peoples also cast con-
plaintive plea that Chinese ghetto dwellers live up siderable doubt on whether, when, and to whose
to it-that is, that they assimilate themselves as benefit the much-vaunted process of ethnocultu-
rapidly as possible (see also Lyman, 1961-1962, ral meltdown in America would occur. Ethnogra-
1963). Still others resolved the ontological and phies and linguistic studies of black enclaves,
epistemological problems in Park's cycle by treat- North and South, slave and free, suggested that
ing it as a "logical" rather than "empirical" per- the tools employed in earlier community analyses
spective. Frazier (1953) suggested that, rather had not been honed sufficiently for sociologists
than occurring chronologically, the stages in the to be able to discern the cultural styles and social
theory might be spatiotemporally coexistent: "They practices that set African American life apart from
represent logical steps in a systematic sociologi- that of other segments of the society (see, e.g.,
cal analysis of the subject." Shibutani and Kwan Abrahams, 1964,1970,1992; E. Anderson, 1978;
(1965), after examining the many studies of inte- Bigham, 1987; Blassingame, 1979; Duneier, 1992;
grative and disintegrative social processes in ra- Evans & Lee, 1990; Joyner, 1984; Liebow, 1967;
cial and ethnic communities, concurred, holding for an overview, see Blackwell, 1991). Other crit-
that although there were many exceptions to its ics observed that sociological studies of the "Ameri-
validity as a descriptive theory, Park's stages can dilemma" had paid insufficient attention to
provided a "useful way of ordering data on the politics, civil rights, and history (Boxhill, 1992;
manner in which immigrants become incorpo- Button, 1989; Jackson, 1991; Lyman, 1972; V. J.
rated into an already-established society" (see Williams, 1989). Anthropological studies of the
pp. 116-135). Geschwender (1978) went further, culture-preserving and supposedly isolated Na-
holding that Park's race relations cycle was "an tive American nations and tribes had to give way
abstract model of an 'ideal type' sequence which in the face of a rising ethnoracial consciousness
might develop" (p. 25). (Cornell, 1988; Martin, 1987; Sando, 1992), se-
In 1918, Edward Byron Reuter had defined lective demands for the return of Amerindian
America's race issue as "the problem of arriving museum holdings (Berlo, 1992; Clifford, 1990;
at and maintaining mutually satisfactory working Messenger, 1991; Milson, 1991-1992; "A Mu-
relations between members of two nonassimilable seum Is Set," 1993), Indian recourse to American
groups which occupy the same territory" (Reuter, courts in quest of redress and treaty rights (see T.
1918/1969, p. 18). After a half century of socio- L. Anderson, 1992; Jaimes, 1992), and political
logical studies had seemed to demonstrate that alliances and the tracing of ethnohistorical de-
virtually none of the racial or ethnic groups had scent that would connect Amerindians with His-
traversed the cyclical pathway to complete as- panics, African Americans, and Jews (Forbes,
similation, America's race problem seemed not 1973,1988; Gutierrez, 1991; Tobias, 1990; Vigil,
only to be immense, but also to have defied as 1980). Mexican American studies moved from
well as defined the basic problematic of socio- early historical institutional studies through eth-
logical theory. Such, at any rate, was the position nographies of farmworkers, and in the 1980s be-
taken by the ethnological anthropologist Brewton came part of the new postmodernist revolution.29
Berry (1963), whose field investigations would To the Amerasian peoples conventionally treated
eventually include studies of various peoples in by ethnographic sociologists—namely, the Chinese
Latin America as well as several communities of and Japanese—were added more recent arrivals,
previously unabsorbed racial hybrids in the United including Koreans, Thais, Vietnamese, Cambodi-
States (see also Lyman, 1964). Having shown that ans, Laotians, and the Hmong (see, e.g., Chan,
none of the proposed cycles of race relations 1991; Hune et al., 1991; Knoll, 1982; Nomura et
could claim universal validity on the basis of al., 1989; Okihiro et al., 1988; Takaki, 1989).
available evidence, Berry and Tischler (1978) And, as in the instance of Mexican American
observed, "Some scholars . . . question the exist- ethnographers, a shift in issues and methods is
ence of any universal pattern, and incline rather beginning to emerge—moving away from debates
to the belief that so numerous and so various are about whether and how to measure assimilation
the components that enter into race relations that and acculturation and toward such postmodern
each situation is unique, and [that] the making of topics as the character, content, and implications
generalizations is a hazardous procedure" (p. 156). of racial discourse about Asians in America (e.g.,
Berry's thesis, though not necessarily intended in K. J. Anderson, 1991; Okihiro, 1988). As East
this direction, set the tone for the subsequent Indians, Burmese, Oceanians, Malaysians, and
38 L O C A T I N G THE F I E L D

other peoples of what used to be called "the Ori- this method in the past have all but been aban-
ent" began to claim common cause with the ear- doned by contemporary ethnographers. The so-
lier-established Asian groups (Espiritu, 1992; Ig- cial-historical transformations of society and con-
nacio, 1976; Mangiafico, 1988), but insisted on sciousness in the modern world have undermined
each people's sociocultural and historical integ- the theoretical and value foundations of the older
rity, as well as the right of each to choose its own ethnography.
path within U.S. society, it became clear that the With the present abandonment of virtually every
trend toward ethnographic postmodernism would facet of what might now be recognized as the
continue (see, e.g., Hune et al., 1991; Leonard, interlocked, secular, eschatological legacies of
1992). Comte, Tonnies, Wissler, Redfield, Park, and Par-
In 1980, Harvard University Press issued its sons—that is, the recognition that the "compara-
mammoth Harvard Encyclopedia of American Eth- tive method" and the anthropology of primitivism
nic Groups (Thernstrom, 1980), a work that in- is inherently flawed by both its Eurocentric bias
cludes not only separate entries for "Africans" and its methodological inadequacies; the determi-
and "Afro-Americans" but also individual essays nation that the gemeinschaft of the little commu-
devoted to each of 173 different tribes of Ameri- nity has been subverted by the overwhelming
can Indians and reports on each of the Asian force of the national political economy of the
peoples coming to the United States from virtu- gesellschaft; the discovery that assimilation is not
ally all the lands east of Suez. Harold J. Abraham- inevitable; and the realization that ethnic sodali-
son's entry, "Assimilation and Pluralism," in ef- ties and the ghettos persist over long periods of
fect announces American sociology's awakening time (sometimes combining deeply embedded in-
not only from its dream of the eventual assimila- ternal disharmonies with an outward display of
tion of every people in the country, but also from sociocultural solidarity, other times existing as
its conflation of assimilation with Americaniza- "ghost nations," or as hollow shells of claimed
tion: "American society . . . is revealed as a com- ethnocultural distinctiveness masking an accul-
posite not only of many ethnic backgrounds but turation that has already eroded whatever elemen-
also of many different ethnic responses.. . . There tary forms of existence gave primordial validity
is no one single response or adaptation. The vari- to that claim, or, finally, as semiarticulated asser-
ety of styles in pluralism and assimilation suggest tions of a peoplehood that has moved through and
that ethnicity is as complex as life itself (p. 160; "beyond the melting pot" without having been
see also Gleason, 1980; Novak, 1980; Walzer, fully dissolved in its fiery cauldron)—ethnogra-
1980). phy and ethnology could emerge on their own
For the moment, pluralism had won its way terms.31
onto paradigmatic center stage.30 But even that No longer would ethnography have to serve the
orientation did not exhaust the possibilities or interests of a theory of progress that pointed to-
dispose of the problems arising out of the pres- ward the breakup of every ethnos. No longer
ence of diverse races and peoples in America. In would ethnology have to describe the pastoral
1993, together with Rita Jalali, Seymour Martin peacefulness, proclaim the moral superiority, or
Lipset, who had criticized Park's formulation of document the psychic security supposed to be
an inevitable cycle leading to assimilation four found in the villages of the nonliterate, the folk
decades earlier, observed that "race and ethnicity societies of non-Western peoples, the little com-
provide the most striking example of a general munities of the woods and forests, the small towns
failure among experts to anticipate social devel- of America, or the urban ethnic enclaves of U.S.
opments in varying types of societies" (Jalali & or world metropolises. No longer would ethnog-
Lipset, 1992-1993, p. 585). Moreover, the cele- raphy have to chart the exact position of each
bration of pluralism that now prevails in social traditional and ascriptively based status group as
thought obscures recognition of a fundamental it moved down the socioculturally determined
problem: the self-restraint to be placed upon the pathway that would eventually take it into a mass,
competitive claims put forward by each ethnic class, or civil society, and recompose it in the
and racial group. process.
Liberated from these conceptual and theoreti-
cal constraints, ethnography and ethnology are,
for the first time as it were, in a position to act out
Ethnography Now: their own versions of the revolution of "life"
against "the forms of life"—a cultural revolution
The Postmodern Challenge of the twentieth century that Simmel (1968) fore-
saw as both imminent and tragic. Just as Simmel
Historically, the ethnographic method has been predicted that the cultural revolutionaries that he
used by both anthropologists and sociologists. saw emerging in pre-World War I Europe would
The guiding frameworks for those who have used oppose both marriage and prostitution on the
 Qualitative Methods: Their History in Sociology and Anthropology 39

grounds that each was a form of the erotic and that hypothesis and to require its reformulation. After
they wished to emancipate the erotic from all "certainty" has been attained, "for purposes of
forms of itself, so the new ethnographers pro- proof, cases outside the area circumscribed by the
claim themselves to be self-liberated from the definition are examined to determine whether or
weight of historical consciousness, relieved of the not the final hypothesis applies to them." If it
anxiety of influence (see Bloom, 1979),32 and, in does, it is implied, there is something wrong with
effect, content to become witnesses to and report- the hypothesis, for "scientific generalizations con-
ers of the myriad scenes in the quixotic world that sist of descriptions of conditions which are always
has emerged out of the ruins of both religion and present when the phenomenon is present but which
secular social theory (see Kundera, 1988). are never present when the phenomenon is ab-
The proclamation of ethnography as a self-de- sent." The two keys to the entire procedure, Man-
fining orientation and practice in sociology and ning points out, are the definition of the phenome-
anthropology and the importation of the postmod- non under investigation and the formulation of
ernist outlook into it took place recently, irregu- the tentative hypothesis. Ultimately, however, as
larly, and in somewhat disorderly moves. Alek- Manning concedes, despite its aim, analytic in-
sandr Solzhenitsyn (1993) once pointed out that duction does not live up to the scientific demand
"no new work of art comes into existence (whether that its theories "understand, predict, and control
consciously or unconsciously) without an organic events." After a careful and thoroughgoing cri-
link to what was created earlier" (p. 3). Such also tique of the procedure he has chosen over its
remains the case in social science, as will be methodological competitors, Manning asserts, "Ana-
shown with the new developments in sociological lytic induction is not a means of prediction; it does
and anthropological ethnography. not clearly establish causality; and it probably
One beginning of the emancipatory movement cannot endure a principled examination of its
in ethnographic methodology is to be found in claims to [be] making universal statements." In-
Peter Manning's seminal essay, "Analytic Induc- deed, Manning goes further, pointing out that,
tion" (1982/1991). Seeking to set ethnography on "according to the most demanding ideal standards
an even firmer foundation of the symbolic inter- of the discipline, analytic induction as a distinc-
actionist perspective and hoping to reinforce its tive, philosophical, methodological perspective is
connections to the classical period of the "Chi- less powerful than either enumerative induction
cago school," Manning sought first to warn any or axiomatic-modelling methods." Manning's es-
practitioners of the sociological enterprise against say seems about to eject a method intrinsic to
employing any "concepts and theories developed ethnography from the scientific community.
to deal with the problems of such other disciplines Manning's frank appraisal of the weaknesses of
as behavioristic psychology, economics, medi- analytic induction is "drawn from a positivistic,
cine, or the natural or physical sciences." He deductive model of the scientific endeavor, a model
identified analytic induction as a procedure deriv- seizing on a selected group of concerns." The
able from George Herbert Mead's and Florian proponents of that model seek to set the terms and
Znaniecki's writings on scientific method, and he limits of the social sciences according to its crite-
observed that it had been employed with greater ria. In fact, though few American scholars seem
or lesser precision by such classical Chicago eth- to know much about either the long history or the
nographers as Thomas and Znaniecki, and, later, irresolution of debates over epistemological mat-
by Robert Cooley Angell, Alfred Lindesmith, and ters in the social sciences, the very issues of
Donald Cressey. Distinguishable from deductive, those debates are central to the questions the
historical-documentary, and statistical approaches, positivists are raising (see, in this regard, Rorty,
analytic induction was "a nonexperimental quali- 1982, pp. 191-210).
tative sociological method that employs an ex- In his defense of analytic induction, Manning
haustive examination of cases in order to prove invokes an unacknowledged earlier critique by
universal, causal generalizations." The case method Sorokin (1965), namely, "that what is taken to be
was to be the critical foundation of a revitalized [appropriate] methodology at a given time is sub-
qualitative sociology. ject to fads, fashions, and foibles." Manning goes
The claim to universality of the causal gener- on to credit analytic induction with being a "vi-
alizations is—in the example offered by Manning able source of data and concepts" and with help-
as exemplary of the method33—the weakest, for ing investigators to sort out "the particulars of a
it is derived from the examination of a single case given event [and to distinguish them from] those
studied in light of a preformulated hypothesis that things that are general and theoretical." Erving
might be reformulated if the hypothesis does not Goffman, surely a sociological practitioner whose
fit the facts. And "practical certainty" of the (re- methodological orientation is akin to but not the
formulated) hypothesis is obtained "after a small same as analytic induction, goes even further,
number of cases has been examined." Discovery however. Opposing, in a defense of his own brand
of a single negative case is held to disprove the of ethnographic sociology, both system building
40 L O C A T I N G THE FIELD

and enumerative induction, in 1961 he wrote, "At "persuasive fictions" (Baudrillard, 1988a, pp. 27-
present, if sociological concepts are to be treated 106; Norris, 1990).
with affection, each must be traced back to where The postmodern ethnographer takes Simmel's
it best applies, followed from there wherever it tragedy of culture to be a fait accompli: It is not
seems to lead, and pressed to disclose the rest of possible at the present time to emancipate free-
its family. Better, perhaps, different coats to clothe floating life from all of its constraining forms
the children well than a single splendid tent in (Strathern, 1990). The postmodern sociologist-
which they all shiver" (p. xiv). A decade later, ethnographer and his or her subjects are situated
Goffman (1971) dismissed the scientific claims in a world suspended between illusory memories
of positivistic sociologists altogether: "A sort of of a lost innocence and millennial dreams of a
sympathetic magic seems to be involved, the as- Utopia unlikely to be realized. From such a posi-
sumption being that if you go through the motions tion, not only is the standpoint of the investigator
attributable to science then science will result. problematic (Lemert, 1992; Weinstein & Wein-
But it hasn't" (p. xvi). stein, 1991), but also that of the people to be
With the waning of interest in, support for, or investigated. Each person has in effect been "touched
faith in the older purposes for doing ethnology, by the mass media, by alienation, by the economy,
by the 1970s there had also arisen a concomitant by the new family and child-care systems, by the
discontent with the epistemological claims as well unceasing technologizing of the social world, and
as the latent or secretive political usages—(see by the threat of nuclear annihilation" (Denzin,
Diamond, 1992; Horowitz, 1967)—of the main- 1989, p. 139). And, if the anthropologist-ethnog-
stream perspectives of both sociology—(see Vidich, rapher is to proceed in accordance with the post-
Lyman, & Goldfarb, 1981)—and anthropology— modern perspective, he or she must, on the one
(e.g., Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Fox, 1991; Man- hand, become less fearful about "going primitive"
ganaro, 1990). An outlook that could be used to (Torgovnick, 1990) and, on the other, contend
carry out research projects and at the same time with the claim that Eurocentric imagery has at-
to treat the very resources of each discipline as a tended virtually all previous reports from the "primi-
topic to be investigated critically was needed. tive" world (Beverly, 1992; Bhabha, 1990a; Dir-
Postmodernism appeared and seemed to fill that lik, 1987; Turner, 1992; West, 1992). For these
need. ethnographers, Helmut Kuzmics (1988) observes,
Toward the end of his essay, Manning hints at "The claim that the 'evolutionary gradualism' of
the issue that would explode on the pages of the theory of civilization renders it incapable of
almost every effort to come to terms with postwar explaining the simultaneous appearance of civili-
and post-Cold War America: "In an age of exis- zation (in a narrower sense than is presupposed
tentialism, self-construction is as much a part of by the highest values of the Enlightenment) and
sociological method as theory construction." What 'barbarism' still needs to be confronted more
he would later perceive as a reason for developing thoroughly" (p. 161).
a formalistic and semiotic approach to doing field- As analytic induction advocates propose, let us
work (Manning, 1987, pp. 7-24, 66-72) was that begin with a definition of the new outlook—the
each construction would come to be seen as inex- postmodern. Charlene Spretnak (1991), a critic of
tricably bound up with the other and that each much of the postmodernism she surveys, provides
would be said to provide a distorted mirror image one that is comprehensive and useful:
of both the body (Cornwell, 1992; Featherstone,
Hepworth, & Turner, 1991; Feher, 1989; Sheets- A sense of detachment, displacement, and shallow
Johnstone, 1990, pp. 112-133; 1992) and the self engagement dominates deconstructive-postmod-
(Kotarba & Fontana, 1987; Krieger, 1991; Zaner, ern aesthetics because groundlessness is the only
1981), of both one's Umwelt and the world of the constant recognized by this sensibility. The world
other (the concept of Umwelt is developed by is considered to be a repressive labyrinth of "so-
Gurwitsch, 1966). But for those who accepted the cial production," a construction of pseudoselves
critique but rejected neoformalism as a technique who are pushed and pulled by cultural dynamics
for ethnography, there opened up a new field of and subtly diffused "regimes of power." Values
investigation—representation. Hence some of the and ethics are deemed arbitrary, as is "history,"
best postmodern ethnography has focused on the which is viewed by deconstructive postmodernists
media that give imagery to real life (Bhabha, as one group or another's self-serving selection of
1990b; Early, 1993; Oilman, 1991; Minh-ha, 1991). facts. Rejecting all "metanarratives," or suppos-
Justification for turning from the fields of lived edly universal representations of reality, decon-
experience to what is represented as such is the structive postmodernists insist that the making of
assumption that the former is itself perceived every aspect of human existence is culturally cre-
holographically, calling for the thematization of ated and determined in particular, localized cir-
representation as a problem in the construction of cumstances about which no generalizations can be
Qualitative Methods: Their History in Sociology and Anthropology 41

made. Even particularized meaning, however, is text.35 The ethnographic enterprise is to be con-
regarded as relative and temporary, (pp. 13-14) ceived as a task undertaken all too often by an
unacculturated stranger who is guided by what-
Spretnak's definition permits us to see how the ever the uneasy mix of poetry and politics gives
postmodern ethnographer proceeds. The postmod- to his or her efforts to comprehend an alien cul-
ernist ethnographer enters into a world from which ture. Above all, an ethnography is now to be
he or she is methodologically required to have regarded as a piece of writing—as such, it cannot
become detached and displaced. Such an ethnog- be said either to present or to represent what the
rapher is in effect reconstituted as Simmel's (1950) older and newly discredited ideology of former
"stranger" (see also Frisby, 1992) and Park's (1929/ ethnography claimed for itself: an unmodified
1969a) and Stonequist's (1937/1961) "marginal- and unfiltered record of immediate experience
ized" person (see also Wood, 1934/1969, pp. 245- and an accurate portrait of the culture of the
284). Like those ideal-typical ethnographers-in- "other."
spite-of-themselves, this social scientist begins The postmodern critique has engendered some-
work as a self-defined newcomer to the habitat thing of a crisis among present-day anthropolo-
and life world of his or her subjects (see Agar, gists. As in the response to other crises, a new
1980; Georges & Jones, 1980; D. Rose, 1989). He self-and-other consciousness has come to the fore,
or she is a citizen-scholar (Saxton, 1993) as well and the imperatives of reflexivity have shifted
as a participant observer (Vidich, 1955). Older attention onto the literary, political, and historical
traditions and aims of ethnography, including es- features of ethnography as well as onto career
pecially the quest for valid generalizations and imperatives, all of which have hitherto been over-
substantive conclusions, are temporarily set aside looked. Engaging themselves with these issues,
in behalf of securing "thick descriptions" (Geertz, such disciplinary leaders as Clifford Geertz, Mary
1973) that will in turn make possible "thick inter- Douglas, Claude Levi-Strauss, and the late Victor
pretations"—joining ethnography to both biogra- Turner have blurred the old distinction between
phy and lived experience (Denzin, 1989, pp. 32- art and science and challenged the very basis of
34). History is banished from the ethnographic the claim to exacting rigor, unblinking truth tell-
enterprise except when and to the effect that local ing, and unbiased reporting that marked the bound-
folk histories enter into the vocabularies of mo- ary separating one from the other.
tive and conduct employed by the subjects.34 Be- Rereading the works in the classical ethno-
cause crossing the postmodern divide (Borgmann, graphic canon has now become a critical task of
1992; I. Chambers, 1990) requires one to abandon the highest importance. A new form of structural-
all established and preconceived values, theories, ist method must be devised if we are to dig be-
perspectives, preferences, and prejudices as re- neath the works and uncover both their hidden
sources for ethnographic study, the ethnographer truths and their limiting blinders. That canon is
must bracket these, treating them as if they are now to be seen as a product of the age of Occi-
arbitrary and contingent rather then hegemonic dental colonialism and to have been methodologi-
and guiding (Rosenau, 1992, pp. 25-76). Hence cally constrained by the metropole ideologies and
the postmodernist ethnographer takes seriously literary conventions that gave voice and quality
the aim of such deconstructionists as Derrida (e.g., to them. Yet these ethnographies are not to be
1976, 1981), Lyotard (e.g., 1989), and Baudril- relegated to the historical dustbin of a rejectable
lard (e.g., 1981, 1983, 1988b), namely, to dis- epoch of disciplinary childhood by today's and
privilege all received texts and established dis- tomorrow's anthropologists. Rather, in consid-
courses in behalf of an all-encompassing critical eration of the fact that few of the latter will follow
skepticism about knowledge. In so doing, the career trajectories like those of Malinowski or
ethnographer displaces and deconstructs his or Powdermaker—that is, either spending decades
her own place on the hierarchy of statuses that all of their lives in residence with a nonliterate Oce-
too often disguise their invidious character as anic people or moving from the ethnographic task
dichotomies (see Bendix & Berger, 1959; for a of observing at close range a group of South
postmodern analysis of a dichotomy, see Lyman, Africans to another, living among blacks in a
1992a). To all of these, instead, is given contin- segregated Mississippi town, and then to still an-
gency—the contingencies of language, of self- other, closely examining how the Hollywood film
hood, and of community (Rorty, 1989; C. Taylor, industry became a "dream factory,"—the ethnolo-
gist of the present age and the immediate future is
For anthropologists, the new forms for ethnog- likely to do but one ethnography—a dissertation
raphy begin with a recognition of their irreducible that stakes his or her claim to the title of ethnolo-
limitation: the very presentation of ethnographic gist and to the perquisites of an academic life
information in a monograph is a "text" and there- spent largely away from the field. Moreover, ca-
tore subject to the entire critical apparatus that the reer considerations are not the only element af-
postmodern perspective brings to bear on any fecting ethnology. The "field" itself has become
42 LOCATING THE FIELD

constricted by the march of decolonization and world has now entered its Fourth Epoch (follow-
the modernization that has overtaken once "primi- ing Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern
tive" peoples. For these reasons, rereading old Age), and that this latest epoch is in fact the
ethnographies becomes a vicarious way to expe- "postmodern period" (Denzin, 1989, p. 138). The
rience the original ways of the discipline, whereas ethnographic method appropriate to this period,
criticizing them provides the ethnologist with a Denzin goes on, is one that is dedicated "to un-
way to distance him- or herself from modernist derstanding how this historical moment univer-
foibles. Except for the dissertation ethnography salizes itself in the lives of interesting individu-
and for those anthropologists who choose to move als" (p. 189). Method and substance are joined in
in on the turf of the equally postmodern sociologi- the common recognition that everyone shares in the
cal ethnographers of urban and industrial settings, same world and responds to it somehow. The study
the ethnographic task of anthropology may be- of the common condition and the uncovering of
come one devoted to reading texts and writing the uncommon response become the warp and woof
critiques. The "field" may be located in one's of the fragile but not threadbare sociological skein
library or one's study. of the postmodern era.
Given the postmodern ethnographers' episte- The postmodern is a cultural form as well as an
mological stance and disprivileged social status, era of history. As the former, like all the forms
two fundamental problems for the sociological noted by Simmel, it invites and evokes its coun-
version of the new ethnography are its relation- teracting and rebellious tendencies. It too, then,
ship to social change and social action, and the is likely to suffer the penultimate tragedy of cul-
applicable scope of its representations of reality. ture—the inability to emancipate life from all of
The first problem has been posed as well as its forms (Weinstein & Weinstein, 1990). How-
answered by Michael Burawoy et al. (1992) in ever, in this era, the sociologist-ethnographer will
their conception of "ethnography unbound" and not merely observe that history; he or she will
the role of the "extended case method." They participate in its everlasting quest for freedom,
direct the ethnographer toward the macropoliti- and be a partner in and a reporter on "the pains,
cal, economic, and historical contexts in which the agonies, the emotional experiences, the small
directly observed events occur, and perceive in and large victories, the traumas, the fears, the
the latter fundamental issues of domination and anxieties, the dreams, fantasies and the hopes" of
resistance (see also Feagin, Orum, & Sjoberg, the lives of the peoples. These constitute this era's
1991). Norman Denzin (1989), a leader of post- ethnographies—true tales of the field (Van Maanen,
modern approaches to ethnography, approaches 1988).
the generality issue in two distinct though related
ways. His advice to ethnographers is that they first The methods of ethnography have become highly
immerse themselves in the lives of their subjects refined and diverse, and the reasons for doing
and, after achieving a deep understanding of these ethnography have multiplied. No longer linked to
through rigorous effort, produce a contextualized the values that had guided and focused the work
reproduction and interpretation of the stories told of earlier ethnographers, the new ethnography
by the subjects. Ultimately, an ethnographic re- ranges over a vastly expanded subject matter,
port will present an integrated synthesis of expe- limited only by the varieties of experience in
rience and theory. The "final interpretive theory modern life; the points of view from which eth-
is multivoiced and dialogical. It builds on native nographic observations may be made are as great
interpretations and in fact simply articulates what as the choices of lifestyles available in modern
is implicit in those interpretations" (p. 120). Den- society. It is our hope that the technological re-
zin's strategic move out of the epistemological finement of the ethnographic method will find its
cul-de-sac presented by such daunting observa- vindication in the discovery of new sets of prob-
tions as Berry's specific skepticism about the lems that lead to a greater understanding of the
possibility of making valid generalizations in an modern world.
ethnoracially pluralist society, or by the growing Although it is true that at some level all re-
skepticism about the kind and quality of results search is a uniquely individual enterprise—not
that sociologists' adherence to positivistic and part of a sacrosanct body of accumulating knowl-
natural science models will engender (T. R. edge—it is also true that it is always guided by
Vaughan, 1993, p. 120), is to take the onset of the values that are not unique to the investigator: We
postmodern condition as the very occasion for are all creatures of our own social and cultural
presenting a new kind of ethnography. He encour- pasts. However, in order to be meaningful to
ages, in effect, an ethnographic attitude of en- others, the uniqueness of our own research expe-
gagement with a world that is ontologically ab- rience gains significance when it is related to the
surd but always meaningful to those who live in theories of our predecessors and the research of
it (see Lyman & Scott, 1989). Thus he concludes our contemporaries. Social and cultural under-
his methodological treatise by claiming that the standing can be found by ethnographers only if
Qualitative Methods: Their History in Sociology and Anthropology 43

they are aware of the sources of the ideas that Poole (1992). For further history and discussion of the
motivate them and are willing to confront them— de Las Casas-Sepulveda dispute and its implications for
with all that such a confrontation entails. ethnohistory and ethnology of the Americas, see Hanke
(1949/1965, 1959/1970, 1974).
7. A fine example is the ethnographic study by
Bishop Robert Henry Codrington (1891) titled The Mela-
nesians. Codrington's study provided the sole source
Notes for Yale University anthropologist Loomis Havemeyer' s
(1929) chapter on the Melanesians (pp. 141-160). See
1. For a discussion of the fundamental similarities Codrington (1974) for an excerpt from The Melanesians
between so-called quantitative and qualitative methods, titled "Mana." See also the critical discussion in Kuper
see Vidich and Bensman (1968, chap. 13). (1988, pp. 152-170).
2. Here we merely gloss a serious problem in the 8. A good example that also illustrates the anthro-
philosophy and epistemology of the social sciences and pologists' despair over the disastrous effects of mis-
present one possible approach to it. Some of the issues sionary endeavor on native life and culture is to be
are discussed and debated in such recent works as those found in the last published work of William Hale R.
by C. W. Smith (1979), Rabinow and Sullivan (1979), Rivers (1922/1974).
G. Morgan (1983), Fiske and Schweder (1986), Hare 9. Thus if the reader wishes to peruse one well-
and Blumberg (1988), Ashmore (1989), Minnich (1990), known exposition of "primitive" culture, George Peter
Bohman (1991), Sadri (1992, pp. 3-32, 105-142), and Murdock's (1934) Our Primitive Contemporaries, as an
Harr6(1984). example of one aspect of the "comparative method," he
3. Many of the issues raised by this new outlook or she will discover therein ethnographies of 18 peoples
are treated in the essays collected in A. Rose (1988). who occupy time and space coincident to that of the
4. The following draws on Lyman (1990a). author, arranged in terms of geography, but—with the term
5. This orientation differs from that used by Thucy- primitive as the descriptive adjective in use through-
dides (1972) in History of the Peloponnesian War. His out—making the title of the book historically (that is,
observations were made from the perspective of a par- diachronically) oxymoronic. For a thoughtful critique,
ticipant who detached himself from the norms of both see Bock (1966).
warring sides while never making explicit his own val- 10. Two exceptions to this mode of ethnocentric
ues. His book has confounded legions of scholars who expression are worthy of note: William Graham Sumner
have attempted to find his underlying themes, not un- (1840-1910), who coined the term ethnocentrism, seemed
derstanding that the work is replete with ambiguities also to suggest that the failure of either Congress or the
that do not lend themselves to a single viewpoint. For courts to do anything to halt the lynching of Negroes in
various perspectives on Thucydides' work, see Kitto the South signaled something less than that nation's rise
(1991, pp. 136-152), Kluckhohn (1961, pp. 4, 34-35, to perfected civilization that other ethnologists were
55, 64-66), Humphreys (1978, pp. 94, 131, 143, 227- willing to credit to America and to other republics of
232, 300-307), and Grant (1992, pp. 5, 45, 148-149). the Occident: "It is unseemly that anyone should be
6. When discussing the crimes committed by the burned at the stake in a modern civilized state" (Sum-
Spaniards against the Indians, Hosle (1992) states: "It ner, 1906/1940, p. 471; see also Sumner, 1905/1969).
is certainly not easy to answer the following question: Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) used such categories as
Were the priests who accompanied the conquistadors "savagery" and "barbarism" tongue-in-cheek, often treat-
also responsible, even if they condemned the violence ing the moral codes and pecuniary values of the peoples
committed, insofar as their presence in a certain sense so labeled as superior to those of the peoples adhering
legitimized the enterprise? It is impossible to deny that to the Protestant ethic or the spirit of capitalism, and
by their mere presence they contributed to Christianity disputing the claims of Aryan superiority so much in
appearing as an extremely hypocritical religion, which vogue in his day (see Veblen, 1899/1959, 1914/1990,
spoke of universal love and nevertheless was the relig- 1919/1961a, 1919/1961b; see also A. K. Davis, 1980;
ion of brutal criminals. Yet it is clear that without the Diggins, 1978; Tilman, 1991).
missionaries' presence even more cruelties would have 11. The Human Relations Area Files were repro-
been committed. Hypocrisy at least acknowledges in duced, marketed, and distributed to anthropology de-
theory certain norms, and by so doing gives the op- partments in other universities. This not only added an
pressed the possibility to claim certain rights. Open element of standardization and uniformity to culture
brutality may be more sincere, but sincerity is not the studies, but also made it possible for the analyst of
only value. Sincere brutality generates nothing positive; ethnography to forgo a trip to the field. That this ap-
hypocrisy, on the other side, bears in itself the force proach is still in vogue is illustrated by two researches
which can overcome it" (p. 236). If it does anything, by the Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson (1982).
Hosle's defense of Christianity reveals the difficulty Patterson relies on Murdock's "World Sample" of 61
still remaining in debates over universalistic as opposed slaveholding societies (out of a total of 186 societies),
to relativistic values and leaves wide open any resolu- which are arranged geographically, but rearranges them
tion of the problem. See also Lippy, Choquette, and temporally to make them serve a developmentalist thesis
44 L O C A T I N G THE F I E L D

that seeks to uncover the variations in as well as the 19. Radin (1935/1970, 1936/1971a) also did field-
functional origins of slavery. On the basis of this method, work among the Italians and Chinese of San Francisco.
it is not surprising to find that in the sequel to his study 20. Clark Wissler (1940/1966a, 1938/1966b) estab-
Patterson (1991) believes he can show that "the Tupi- lished his credentials on the basis of a lifetime in service
namba, the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the south- to ethnohistorical and ethnographic study of the United
erners of the United States, so markedly different in States.
time, place, and levels of sociocultural development, 21. Although not carried out at the University of
nonetheless reveal the remarkable tenacity of this cul- Chicago, this study bears the stamp of that school's
ture-character complex" (p. 15; emphasis added). approach.
12. For the conceptualization of a sector of the world's 22. In that report, he was the first to see the new role
peoples as belonging to the Third World, as well as for of the university president as an administrative "Cap-
the conceptualization of "developed" and "undevel- tain of Erudition," the beginnings of university public
oped" or "underdeveloped" societies, see Worsley (1964, relations designed to protect the image of learning, and
1984). the business foundations in real estate and fund-raising
13. That capitalism had contributed to underdevel- (endowments) of the university system in the United
opment in both the European overseas empires and States.
America's homegrown "ghetto colonialism" became an 23. In 1992, when new questions were raised about
assumption and even an article of faith that could shape the ethnocultural and ethical aspects of Whyte's study
the perspective of posttraditional ethnography (see of "Cornerville," a symposium reviewed the matter
Blauner, 1972; Marable, 1983; see also Hechter, 1975). extensively (see "Street Corner Society Revisited," 1992).
14. For a historical view on eschatological, millen- 24. A social variant of Redfield's perspective found
nial, sacred, and secular "end-times" theories, as well its way into some of the urban community, ethnic en-
as other modes of chronologizing events, see Paolo clave, and small-town studies of America that were
Rossi (1987). conducted or supervised by anthropologists or Chicago
15. It should be noted that American ethnography sociologists (see Hannerz, 1980; Lyon, 1987; Suttles,
up to the beginnings of World War II focused almost 1972, pp. 3-20). (A revival of ecological studies rooted
exclusively on American Indians and the aboriginal in the idea that the uses of space are socially constructed
inhabitants of American colonies. Anthropologists' in- was begun with the publication of Lyman & Scott,
terests in the high cultures of Central and South Amer- 1967; see also Ericksen, 1980.) As early as 1914, M. C.
ica were archaeologically oriented and were designed Elmer, a promising graduate student at the University
both to fill in the "prehistoric record" and to fill muse- of Chicago, had written a Ph.D. dissertation on social
ums. Some ethnographic work was carried out in the surveys in urban communities that reflected the shift
U.S.-controlled Pacific Islands (in association with the from the church to the "scientific" survey tradition in
Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Hawaii). Margaret Mead both the social gospel movement and the discipline of
worked on American Samoa and is one of the earliest sociology; seven years later, Raleigh Webster Stone
of the nonmissionaries to ethnograph a Pacific Island. (1921) in effect signaled that the transition to a newer
Her work, aimed in part at criticizing the Puritanical orientation was well under way when he offered The
sexual mores of America, overstated the actual situ- Origin of the Survey Movement as his Ph.D. dissertation
ation in Oceania and eventually led to a counterstate- at Chicago. In 1933, Albert Bailie Blumenthal submit-
ment (see Freeman, 1983; Holmes, 1987; Mead, 1928/ ted A Sociological Study of a Small Town as his doctoral
1960a, 1930/1960b, 1949/1960c, 1935/1960d). dissertation at the same university (Paris, 1970, pp. 135-
16. This was the same perspective used by anthro- 140). However, the central thrust of ethnological stud-
pologists who administered the Japanese relocation cen- ies in Chicago's sociology department after Robert E.
ters during World War II and who had had some of their Park had joined its faculty concerned community and
training on the reservation. For accounts by those an- subcommunity organization within the city (see, e.g.,
thropologists who moved from Amerindian to Japanese N. Anderson, 1959), and, for some, how the gemein-
American incarceration ethnography and administra- schaft could be reconstituted in the metropolis (see
tion, see Leighton (1945), Wax (1971), Spicer, Hansen, Fishman, 1977; Quandt, 1970).
Luomala, and Opler (1969), and Myer (1971). For a 25. That ethnographies of small towns and large
spirited critique, see Drinnon (1987). cities adopted an approach more or less consistent with
17. For some representative ethnographies of the the macropolitical-economic orientation emphasized by
southwestern Amerindian peoples, see Schwatka (1893/ Vidich and Bensman is evidenced in works by P. Davis
1977), Nordenskiold (1893/1979), McGee (1899/1971), (1982), Wallace (1987), Arsenault (1988), Campbell
Goddard (1913/1976), White (1933/1974), Spier (19337 (1992), Moorhouse (1988), and Reid (1992).
1978), and Kluckhohn (1944). See also Eggan (1966, 26. Earlier, Vidich (1952, 1980) had contributed to
pp. 112-141). the reconsideration of anthropological approaches to
18. A recent ethnography of the Zuni by Tedlock so-called primitive societies, reconceiving such studies
(1992) both reflects upon and critically appraises Cush- as requiring an orientation that focused on the effects
ing's work among that tribe. of global colonialism and its rivalries on the structure