The Innocent Anthropologist : Notes from a Mud Hut [Paperback]

Nigel Barley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000

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 and hilarious, Barley's unconventional story--in which he survived boredom, hostility, disaster, and illness--addresses many critical issues in anthropology and in fieldwork.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I absolutely love this book and am using it this semester. The text is extremely readable and provides students with real insight into how fieldwork can go right even in the face of adversity." --Yvonne Downes, Hilbert College

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"The prevalence of factual data in anthropological monographs stems . . . from an attitude of 'when in doubt, collect facts.' This is, in a sense, an understandable approach. So off I went every day, armed with my tobacco and notebooks and paced out the fields, calculated the yields, counted the goats in a flurry of irrelevant activity. This at least had the virtue of making my weird and inexplicable ways familiar to the Dowayos and I began to know them by name." (from Chapter 6)

Product Details

• Paperback: 190 pages
• Publisher: Waveland Pr Inc (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1577661567
• ISBN-13: 978-1577661566
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #20 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Social Scientists & Psychologists

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accesible anthropology, September 24, 2003

By 

Amazonbombshell (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Innocent Anthropologist : Notes from a Mud Hut (Paperback)

You've got to love this book. I'm an anthro type anyway, but if I wasn't this book would still be highly entertaining and a great experience.

It's about a self-deprecating British anthropologist who goes to Cameroon to do fieldwork among a little-known tribe called the Dowayo. While he's there, he encounters strange foods, a crazy old missionary, an impossible French-speaking Dowayo assistant, illness, personal injury, beer parties in the fields, paranoid Dowayo men, and a host of other things that will alternately make you wince and laugh out loud.

For anthropologists, this is an amusing look at what it's REALLY like in the field, with none of the "blood and guts" left out. For the lay reader, it's a look at what anthropologists actually do, and a highly educational one at that. If you think anthropology is all about dead white men condescending to attend a "native" ceremony now and then, this book's a kick in the head. I loved it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a find, December 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut (Paperback)

I had the good fortune to discover this book when it was first printed, and have since read it more than once. It is both informative and painfully hilarious. Mr. Barley's books are some of the few which I always retrieve, after loaning them away.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An irreverent account of fieldwork, October 7, 2007

By 

W. Wedenoja (Springfield, MO) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Innocent Anthropologist : Notes from a Mud Hut (Paperback)

Nigel Barley is a social anthropologist and this is his account of his first fieldwork, a year living and studying the Dowayo people of Cameroon. Social and cultural anthropologists (also known as ethnographers) travel to exotic locales (sometimes in our own backyard) and live among a group of people for a year or more in order to come to know their way of life intimately and write about it. Most every Ph.D. student in the field will face this "rite de passage" in order to become "a real anthropologist," and is generally given precious little guidance in the matter, which seems cloaked in mystery and is therefore commonly a source of considerable anxiety. In recent years, the situation has been partially remedied with the publication of some texts on methods and techniques, as well as the development of courses on field research methods, but there is still little written on the human dimension - namely, what is life like "in the field"? This book joins a small club, which includes Malinowski's diary and Return to Laughter. What sets Barley's book apart is his wit. He faces some serious problems but - in retrospect at least - laughs at them. It is a very entertaining read. You will learn a lot about what to expect in the field. It will also be useful for anyone who will be living in Africa and possibly other developing regions, such as Peace Corps volunteers and missionaries. I was, however, uncomfortable throughout the book because the author seems to be very distant and detached from the people he lived with and studied. It is hard to find anything very positive about the Dowayo, and the book therefore serves to reinforce negative stereotypes about Africa and bolster Western superiority. I prefer the eloquence and wisdom of Return to Laughter.