EthnoQuest: Student Field Guide and Workbook

Rating:
Summary: A Naive Introduction to Ethnographic Fieldwork
Review: One area that introductory cultural anthropology courses lack is the opportunity to conduct a field study. This is impractical for reasons that need no elaboration--there is no onvenient Yanomamo shabono, Guatemalan community (such as the "Ixil village" Benjamin Colby proposed at UC Irvine), or !Kung band nearby to train students in the complexities of ethnographic inquiry.

The next best thing is a simulated program, and here EthnoQuest is the first attempt that I know of to fill this need. I am using the program for the second time in an introductory course, and though flawed, it is a useful teaching device.

The program is a portrayal of Amopan ("Nowhere"), a fictional Nahuatl village located east of Mexico City. The program consists of a series of still photographs simulating dialogue between ethnographer and informant, supplemented by "films" of the British ethnographer Bronislaw Edmund Radcliffe-Pritchard (a composite name of four British social anthropologists) who has conducted a study of Amopan back in 1965. The sidebar includes a "knapsack" containing Nahuatl-English glossaries, helpful hints, and other items; a "Wise Man" in Aztec noble dress serving as the guide; and an exit function in the form of footprints.

There are six units in all: preparation for the field study, entry into Amopan, taking a genealogical census, working in the fields, participating in an open-air market, and making queries about the Day of the Dead.

In many respects, it ia a cheesy program. The graphics are half photograph, half cartoon. The persons portrayed look very mestizo and not at all indigenous Nahua. The names of some informants are corny (Juan Jefe, or "John the Chief," as town mayor? Juan Milpero, or "Juan the Farmer," as a typical campesino? Give me a break!). The manila "letters" sent by the funding agency and that contain the questions at the end of each unit are amatuerish drawings any ten-year-old could sketch.

Notwithstanding, it is a useful supplement. The student does get some exposure to questions that the ethnographer might actually ask, encounter ticklish situations that all fieldworkers inadvertently walk into, and make choices between appropriate and inappropriate interview questions (although some are all too obvious). The student gets diverse perspectives on topics from different informants, from mayor to priest to ordinary campesino. He or she is encouraged to observes things and events of the village. Finally, the ethnography is clearly based on a composite of actual field studies of Nahuatl-speaking peoples, and so is useful in that regard.

Overall, it is disappointing that Frances Berdan and her colleagues have not made a better effort to portray a realistic situation: more convincing models who actually look like native Mexicans, real-life surnames (such as "Sra Hernandez" for the schoolteacher or "Zauhtli" and "Tochtli" for two of the women, which are actually used), and photographs instead of childish drawings for manila envelopes or family albums.

These notwithstanding, and in the absence of better programs, EthnoQuest is an adequate supplement for anthropology instructors who want to include a fieldwork component in their introdutory course. I only hope that the authors will improve their graphics in a future edition, and do something about those hokey names.