Is Ethnography Possible? A Critique of "African Odyssey"

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Abstract
Two ethnographers--both female, white, and North American--studied "the same" people in East Africa, at almost the same time, and came up with very different results. This uncommon occurrence provides an opportunity to explore possible effects of differing observers on ethnographic results, where initial formulations of problems were not sharply dissimilar. Internal variation among the people studied can explain only part of the divergence in results; different field situations seem to have led the Nyiha to present different behavior to the two observers. It is suggested that much of what Slater describes as "Nyiha culture" may be an accurate account of Nyiha exclusionary maneuvers. Further, the two ethnographers differed in theoretical backgrounds, expectations of field work, biases, and categorization of the people studied.

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