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The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut
by
Nigel Barley (Goodreads Author)
When British anthropologist Nigel Barley set up home among the Dowayo people in northern Cameroon, he knew how fieldwork should be conducted. Unfortunately, nobody had told the Dowayo. His compulsive, witty account of first fieldwork offers a wonderfully inspiring introduction to the real life of a cultural anthropologist doing research in a Third World area. Both touching...more
Paperback, 190 pages
Published
September 1st 2000
by Ingram
(first published March 1st 1985)
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" Much has been written on the excellence of bats' navigation equipment. It is all false. Tropical bats spend their entire time flying into obstacles with a horrible thudding noise. They specialize in slamming into walls and falling, fluttering onto your face. As my own 'piece of equipment essential for the field' I would strongly recommend a tennis racket: it is devastatingly effective in clearing a room of bats."
Nigel Barley se fue a África y en un año tuvo hepatitis vírica, malaria, unos parásitos que ponen huevos bajo las uñas y que se tratan rebanando trozos de carne con una navaja, y todos los que pasaron sin diagnosticar. Perdió 18 kg y los dos dientes de delante.Además se aburrió muchísimo y pasó meses sin hablar con nadie en su lengua. Su vida sexual fue inexistente -de forma prudente porque sino seguramente habría vuelto con gonorrea, VIH y sífilis. No creo que hubiese sido capaz de resistirlo....more
This is an excellent book giving an honest account of how fieldwork often doesn't go as planned.
Unlikely much ethnographic writing Barley is able to reflect on the impact of his own actions and presence in the field without turning it into a long-winded, esoteric exercise in navel-gazing.
Instead he is able to be self-deprecating and humorous in a way that few anthropologists are.
Some academic anthropologists seem to regard Barley's work as a bit of a joke. However, this might be because he le...more
Unlikely much ethnographic writing Barley is able to reflect on the impact of his own actions and presence in the field without turning it into a long-winded, esoteric exercise in navel-gazing.
Instead he is able to be self-deprecating and humorous in a way that few anthropologists are.
Some academic anthropologists seem to regard Barley's work as a bit of a joke. However, this might be because he le...more
Sep 19, 2012
Bill
added it
This is the most entertaining book I've read all year. And I spent my vacation reading P.G. Wodehouse.
This book is an anthropological monograph. This is apparently an entire genre of literature, and this is the first one of them that I've ever read. The idea is that you go out to some third world village that nobody knows anything about, you live among the people, and then you come back and write about it.
Barley comes at this from a bit of an angle. First, he apparently was a theoretical anthrop...more
This book is an anthropological monograph. This is apparently an entire genre of literature, and this is the first one of them that I've ever read. The idea is that you go out to some third world village that nobody knows anything about, you live among the people, and then you come back and write about it.
Barley comes at this from a bit of an angle. First, he apparently was a theoretical anthrop...more
Can science be funny?
Author: Nigel Barley
Title: The Innocent Anthropologist. Notes from a Mud Hut.
Time: early 80s
Destination:
Northern Cameroon
Length: 2 years
Type: field research
Rating: 7/10
The humorous scientist
[Please note: I've been reading a German translation of this work.]
The story: British ethnologist NB does two years of field research in a small village of Cameroon. This might sound simple, but in fact it takes him two years to even get there, mainly because the bureaucratic obstacles ar...more
Author: Nigel Barley
Title: The Innocent Anthropologist. Notes from a Mud Hut.
Time: early 80s
Destination:
Northern Cameroon
Length: 2 years
Type: field research
Rating: 7/10
The humorous scientist
[Please note: I've been reading a German translation of this work.]
The story: British ethnologist NB does two years of field research in a small village of Cameroon. This might sound simple, but in fact it takes him two years to even get there, mainly because the bureaucratic obstacles ar...more
In the early 80s, a British anthropologists finds himself in the middle of nowhere Africa, in the small town of Poli, Cameroon in order to study the Dowayo tribe. Twenty-four years later, a California Peace Corps volunteer (yours truly) finds herself in the same town. What has changed? Not much. Still one dirt road. Still pervasive corruption. Still intense frustration. Still intense happiness and belonging.
This book and its companion ("Ceremony") were left in my mud hut (but I had luckily had s...more
This book and its companion ("Ceremony") were left in my mud hut (but I had luckily had s...more
My graduate school mentor gave me this book years ago after she read it, and I'm upset it took me this long to read it!
The book is an ethnography written for the general public. The author, Nigel Barley, is a British anthropologist who decides that in order to have true anthropology street cred, he needs to do some fieldwork. He settles on spending 18 months with the Dowayo of Cameroon in western Africa.
Anyone who has spent any kind of time dealing with the bureaucracy of visas and internation...more
The book is an ethnography written for the general public. The author, Nigel Barley, is a British anthropologist who decides that in order to have true anthropology street cred, he needs to do some fieldwork. He settles on spending 18 months with the Dowayo of Cameroon in western Africa.
Anyone who has spent any kind of time dealing with the bureaucracy of visas and internation...more
Hilarante. Un libro recomendado tanto para el viajero romántico como para el antropologo curioso, porque no todo lo que brilla en nuestros recuerdos (y los de otros) es oro. En primera linea es una etnografía expuesta desde una perspectiva poco común, donde el otro y el uno se conjugan en las situaciones mas extrañas. Entrelineas encontraremos una reflexión autobiográfica del difuso quehacer antropológico, y que personalmente considero, también es aplicable a otras ciencias sociales afines.
Un es...more
Un es...more
A nice little ethnography of the Dowayo people of western Africa written by a very dryly hilarious Brit. His purpose, he states at the outset, is to write what it’s really like to be an ethnographer, and to include all the absurdities and difficulties he experiences along the way. Since most of ethnography is confusion, frustration, illness and loneliness, this is very entertaining. One amusing passage:
“Faced with the impossibility of eating off the land, I decided to keep my own chickens. This,...more
“Faced with the impossibility of eating off the land, I decided to keep my own chickens. This,...more
This was brilliant! I may make my 101 class read it. Except they're too young in the field to get the professional jokes. Oh, it was funny. I think the best part of the whole thing was his comment on getting language slightly wrong and saying very politely to an honorable woman, "Hi, so nice to see you, you cuXX."
We've all done it! At least if we've done fieldwork in another language, we've done it.
We've all done it! At least if we've done fieldwork in another language, we've done it.
If you thought "anthopology" sounds like a boring subject, read this one and laugh out loud.
Me pareció un fascinante y divertidísimo estudio sobre el choque de culturas (en este caso, la occidental y la de una primitiva tribu del Camerún) sin prejuicios o la superioridad que cabe esperarse cuando escribe un occidental.
Me pareció un fascinante y divertidísimo estudio sobre el choque de culturas (en este caso, la occidental y la de una primitiva tribu del Camerún) sin prejuicios o la superioridad que cabe esperarse cuando escribe un occidental.
The perfect antidote to the pretentious, arid novel I just finished reading (which so many people on Goodreads raved about...). Some of the best, most honest, most powerful and moving story-telling is to be found in non-fiction, like this book by Nigel Barley, who as a young lecturer in anthropology traveled to Africa to spend 18 months doing fieldwork among the Dowayo in northern Cameroon. A great book.
Hilarious account of anthropological fieldwork in Cameroon.
A very enjoyable read. The author visits a pagan tribe in the backlands. He finds a french speaking christian who works as his translator (disaproving naturally of the pagan ways of his fellow tribesmen) but his first problem is getting hold of a beer bottle - at the time in Cameroon you could only buy a bottle of beer if you had a bottle to give to the seller.
The author discovers that monkeys find him attractive and he has a series of...more
A very enjoyable read. The author visits a pagan tribe in the backlands. He finds a french speaking christian who works as his translator (disaproving naturally of the pagan ways of his fellow tribesmen) but his first problem is getting hold of a beer bottle - at the time in Cameroon you could only buy a bottle of beer if you had a bottle to give to the seller.
The author discovers that monkeys find him attractive and he has a series of...more
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Feb 17, 2012
Maria
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
favoriten,
archäologie
Großartig. Mehr kann man zu diesem Buch kaum sagen, denn es beschreibt witzig, schonungslos und liebevoll die ethnologische Arbeit. Der Autor hat sich über ein JAhr bei einem Bergvolk in Nordkamerun aufgehalten - und mir mit seinem Buch bewiesen, dass all meine eigenen Eindrücke aus meiner Feldarbeit, die mir bislang immer sein einsam und unvermittelbar vorkamen, genauso auch anderen Forschern zustoßen. In gleicher Form und gleicher Intensität und, verblüffenderweise, sogar mit gleichen Gedanken...more
Given that I had to read it for class - so it's not a book that I would have bought on my own will, it did surprise me how much I liked it. Mainly because of how much it made me think about my own environment.
买了纸书，却看了扫描版。实在是笑的我满床打滚，对作者十分同情二十分分佩服，丫太凄惨了…我们对它者有许多不切实际的幻想。现实往往是残酷的。
the author sent me this book himself after I contacted him. a very good book and should be read by anyone interested in travelling and anthropology.
A friend gave it to me to read, I hadn't read anything for years and I loved it and read it so fast. He later introduced me to Carlos Castenada.
Una visión desmitificadora de África, de los africanos y de los europeos que por allí andan. Muy entretenido
Nigel Barley isn't sure he wants to do actual fieldwork as an anthropologist, but since it seems to be expected, and he's got nothing else particularly interesting to do, he goes to Africa to study the culture of the Dawayo people. The book is a mixture of memoir, cultural observation and self-deprecating humor. Barley lays bare the fairly selfish and sometimes wrong-headed motivations of anthropologists from the beginning of the book, but his fieldwork is clearly thorough and complete. The book...more
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A thoroughly enjoyable read, probably because Barley lived relatively close to where I did my Peace Corps service. I not only understood a lot of his anecdotes but had lived them myself.
I love this book, funny and the author really have great sense of humor, I love it~
Anthropologist in Cameroon 1970s. -- Funny and interesting.
Me ha gustado mucho el libro, con situaciones realmente hilarantes y con información altamente curiosa, aunque no me recuerda a los libros de antropología para nada, la vertiente que ofrece Barley en el libro es más a modo de novela, de confidencia incluso con el lector, ya que carga contra todos los mitos de los antropólogos que conocemos a través de otras novelas, y que parecen super-hombres dispuestos a sufrir todo tipo de situaciones altamente complicadas sin ni siquiera despeinarse. Un libr...more
Exactly what fieldwork is like. Laughed so much in some parts, I cried. Thank you, Nigel, for sharing this with us all.
This one is a very interesting and funny book, I really enjoy it.
A MUST READ book if you want to do understand fieldwork
Belly-laugh funny as well as informative
Funny narrative of crosscultural misadventures.
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