Learning from ‘the Other’, Writing about ‘the Other’

Abstract

Once, when writing down field notes in a Kipsigis compound, something happened which struck me deeply. A small, four-year-old boy, accompanied by his mother, entered the compound. Seeing me, the boy asked his mother: 'What is that man doing here? He is just sitting, writing and reading, but he doesn't know anything about the compound: he doesn't know how to care for the goats and the cows, and he knows nothing about the maize! What is is use?' The mother hastened to silence the boy, but in vain: the message was clear. Of course, as a fieldwork experience, the incident was far from unique: most anthropologists will recognize the lesson in modesty. In ethnography, the theme even has becom a topos. Perhaps anthropology is anomalous among social sciences in that within our discipline a tradition of refection on the 'ignorant researcher' (Borsboom 1996:104) has developed