Hortense Powdermaker's Stranger And Friend

Hortense Powdermaker, a world-renowned cultural anthropologist, spent her life studying the lives of others. She wanted to gain insight into cultures and societies different than hers. Throughout her lifetime, Powdermaker strived to give those who can’t always speak for themselves, a voice of their own. Powdermaker’s book, Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist, highlights four different cultural contexts in which she did fieldwork over the course of her life as an anthropologist. Powdermaker conducted ethnographic research in Lesu, Mississippi, Hollywood, and Zambia, all of which are outlined in this book as well as other books dedicated to each specific project. Each of these ethnographic research projects that she conducted were …show more content…
In Lesu, Powdermaker first conducted a census; she created a genealogy to determine kinships and the ages of the villagers. She then took notes constantly while she observed the way of life in Lesu. She had many informants who introduced her to the community, allowing her to participate in many activities such as feasts and rituals, which she would have otherwise been an outsider for. She practiced participant observation in Mississippi also, where she accounts, “Every Sunday morning I went to a Negro church, to each denomination in turn. This was a useful way of meeting many people representing all social classes, since everyone went to church.” However she did not take as many notes in Mississippi as she had in Lesu because in Lesu, Powdermaker was more of an acting anthropologist; everyone knew who she was and why she was there. However, in Mississippi, she had to do some playacting of her own much like the blacks did with the whites, hiding her faith and often her specific research in order to build rapport and trust from both the white and black communities. Powdermaker’s main method in Indianola was interviews, and when it came to interviews, Powdermaker illustrates, “During the first couple of weeks I experimented taking notes during the interview and with not writing, but doing it immediately afterwards, sitting in my car a short distance away. The latter method gave fuller data and more intimate details, even though I ran the risk of forgetting some points.” In Hollywood, her main method was interviewing as well, on the other hand, while in Hollywood, Powdermaker reveals, “I was not the functioning feeling, as well as thinking, human being that I was in other field research. Feelings were muted. I saw myself as an objective scientist.” These interviews took place in either a “studio office, in the home of the interviewee, or over lunch in a restaurant, but never on a