Why can the most difficult moments in the field turn out to be the most important moments for learning about the culture?
In a far off country, thousands of miles away from home or a different socio-cultural community close by - A researcher is charged with the enormous task of understanding as well as integrating with a culture likely to be wholly or partially foreign at best. In spite of all the knowledge one can gain about a different culture from sources such as books, journals, documentaries and even past research work - it cannot be understood in its entirely without experiencing it directly; precisely the reason why research is given so much importance. What makes it an especially difficult task is that the general object of research paves the path to the specific object of research and more often than not proves to be laborious in the extreme. The general object of research being a culture - that took hundreds, maybe …show more content…
Hanna’s association with a Rastafarian boy in a community that looked down upon the said group of people for a plethora of reasons led to her being accused, ostracized, abandoned by the community and eventually expelled by her homestay mother. Coming from a fairly homogenous community - enjoying a commonality of norms to a large extent as well as one that held every human being as equal, Hanna was unable to understand the sharp divisions amongst the inhabitants of a remote Barbadian village. Her seemingly simple and innocent decision further alienated her from the already novel and alien culture she was studying and elicited hostility from the community; whose norms she was blatantly
In a far off country, thousands of miles away from home or a different socio-cultural community close by - A researcher is charged with the enormous task of understanding as well as integrating with a culture likely to be wholly or partially foreign at best. In spite of all the knowledge one can gain about a different culture from sources such as books, journals, documentaries and even past research work - it cannot be understood in its entirely without experiencing it directly; precisely the reason why research is given so much importance. What makes it an especially difficult task is that the general object of research paves the path to the specific object of research and more often than not proves to be laborious in the extreme. The general object of research being a culture - that took hundreds, maybe …show more content…
Hanna’s association with a Rastafarian boy in a community that looked down upon the said group of people for a plethora of reasons led to her being accused, ostracized, abandoned by the community and eventually expelled by her homestay mother. Coming from a fairly homogenous community - enjoying a commonality of norms to a large extent as well as one that held every human being as equal, Hanna was unable to understand the sharp divisions amongst the inhabitants of a remote Barbadian village. Her seemingly simple and innocent decision further alienated her from the already novel and alien culture she was studying and elicited hostility from the community; whose norms she was blatantly