SOCIAL TRENDS

Journal of the Department of Sociology of North Bengal University
Vol. 8, 31 March 2021; ISSN: 2348-6538

A Peer-reviewed National Journal

9

Empathy and Embeddedness in Social Science

Research: The Contrasting Methods of Malinowski

and Elwin

Sinjini Roy
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam

Government College, Rajarhat, New Town, Kolkata

Abstract: Empirical, field-based research in Social Sciences, are

neither bereft of empathy (the will to do good to and feel for others)

and embeddedness (involving oneself with the process of

transformation, while, at the same time, drawing consciousness about

it) nor are they obstacles in the way to draw an understanding about

social reality. This is the social science tradition that we inherit from

Marx and the post-Marxists (the scholars of German Critical School,

Gramsci, Althusser and so on), Levi-Strauss, C. Wright Mills, and the

feminists starting Simone de Beauvior to Julia Kristeva or Judith Butler.

The phenomenologists like Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz have

taught us how empathy for others’ subjective experiences and cognition

is the central component of the reflexive method through which the

subjective knowledge can be transcended into intersubjective (hence

universal) knowledge. This is in the space of the humanist social

science tradition which does not conform to the “scientific” non-

normative methodological tradition popularized by Comte, Durkheim

or Weber. In this paper I have discussed about the essences of the

“scientific” (read objective) and the empathetic methodological

traditions of two noted anthropologists, Bronislaw Malinowski and

Verrier Elwin, which represent two contrasting methods (although one

cannot claim that Malinowski never expressed empathy for the native

people he studied), and find out if one could strike a balance between

the two traditions while highlighting the significance of empathy and

embeddedness in field-based research.

Keywords: Empirical research, fieldwork, participant observation,

positivism, empathy, embeddedness, fieldwork as interaction, negotiated

information.



Sinjini Roy148

Introduction

One way of doing social research is the positivist way, where the researcher
is a distant, dispassionate observer-analyst of the social events, institutions
or facts, dedicated to follow the rigors of “scientific method” in production
of objective, universally valid knowledge. All textbooks on research
methodology would teach us to do research of this kind. In reality, however,
this prescription appears idealist, impracticable, ineffective and mythical,
because, even the crudest of all positivists take normative positions, explicitly
or implicitly, in their writings.  In research, in social sciences, we primarily
follow the humanist tradition, where the ideologies, values, interests, the
philosophy of life, the practicality all these factors come into play and we
end up producing “discourses” or social science concepts, in Foucauldian
sense, which combine the philosophy, text and a guide to social action (Hall
2004: 345-349).

There is no denying that all social science research should aim to reach at
objective knowledge and the researchers are trained to produce value-free
and shared knowledge unravelling the truth of the well-defined social facts
by studying the facts dispassionately, while distancing from the objects of
study by resorting to “value reference” rather than “value preference” and
without taking a normative position. This is precisely what we learn from
Weber’s interpretative methodology. However, any form of research and
production of knowledge is rooted in the praxis of bringing about social
transformation, following the Marxists and existentialists, and Foucault, who
assert that every discourse prompts an array of actions by the freedom-
loving individuals in their efforts to tear apart the hegemonic structures.
The social location, ideological position and interests of the researcher and
her empathy for fellow human beings are difficult, if not impossible, to
“bracket” (meaning, ‘to keep aside’ in phenomenological sense) in social
science research. Rousseau, one of the ideologues of French Revolution,
whom Levi-Strauss hails as the “father of anthropology” (Levi-Strauss
1963, 1966) and Levi-Strauss (1962, 1963, 1966), the French anthropologist,
and many others, have discussed the significance of empathy, which works
at the root of all social relations and actions, including research. Empathy
(the will to do good to others and respect others’ views), a universal human
quality, makes the researcher humble and drives her/him to reach out to
the knowledge produced by other scholars and thus elevate subjective
knowledge to intersubjective knowledge.

Fieldwork has been a proven method to draw “objective” knowledge in
sociology and social anthropology. The idea behind fieldwork is to get to



the roots of the subjectively constructed of realities of the individuals and
communities we study. In other words, in research we try to capture the
cognitive world of the individuals and groups and look for the common
patterns and also explore the “unconscious” following Levi-Strauss’
prescription. In an earlier article I have argued that there are three possible
ways “empathy” works in field-based research (Roy 2020: 168-180). First,
fieldwork, which has been the “heart and soul” of research, especially in
the field of social anthropology and sociology in the ethnographic tradition.
In fieldwork, the researcher gets into close-range interaction with the people
who constitute the field. While interacting with the people the researcher is
generally driven by “a will to human good”. In field both the researcher
and the researched operate as independent agencies and every bit of
information is thus negotiated. Second, empathy has been widely used as a
medium of drawing both subjective and intersubjective knowledge. The
phenomenologists like Husserl (1982) and Schutz (2004), and anthropologist
like Levi-Strauss have effectively used empathy as a means to arrive at
universal and shared knowledge. Third, empathy works in application of
knowledge to bring about the desired changes in society. Social science in
Marxist tradition is founded on the principle of using philosophy for social
transformation. The Marxists in general refuse to separate the process of
thinking from the process of doing, which they hold, work in an endless
feedback. Michel Foucault, endorsing the Marxist position, has observed
that every discourse translates into social action.

In this paper I would particularly discuss the importance of empathy in
anthropological and sociological fieldwork. In this task I would draw from
the works of Bronislaw Malinowski and Verrier Elwin to give an idea of
two extreme and oppositional approaches to empathy and argue, drawing
from my own research, that what we need is a balance between the
scientific and the humanist traditions.

Empathy in fieldwork

In anthropology, “participant observation” is still considered the “ideal”
method of authentic data collection and scientific research. But there are
variants of participant observation and the researchers have to address the
universal “ethical” question as to whether the researcher should empathize
with the subjects of research and “go native” (to be an integral part of
native life) or remain a disinterested, distanced “other” out to collect
“objective data”. The researcher also confronts the questions whether

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“embeddedness” and “empathy” are avoidable in field-interaction and if
such an attachment is detrimental to production of “objective” knowledge.

The term “participant observation”, in practice, is broad enough to cover a
range of fieldwork methods from non-participation through passive,
moderate, active and complete participation (Spradley 1980: 59-62), but
we can delimit its scope to a situation where there is at least some interaction
and involvement, with certain degree of empathy, with the people being
studied. Using Spradley’s description (1980: 60-61), this would mean either
maintaining a balance between insider and outsider (moderate participation)
or doing what the people are doing (active participation), not merely gaining
acceptance, in order to better understand cultural rules for behaviour.
Therefore, the adjective “participant” becomes crucial for denoting
interaction with and involvement in the society being studied (Baker 1887:
15). The information about peoples’ lives and about their perceptions about
their experiences and culture could be subjected to interpretations with
varied degrees of abstraction, depending on the ethical standard of the
researcher and yet there will always be a claim of authenticity and objectivity
in the narratives thus produced.

Claude Levi-Strauss has upheld the value of empathy in drawing
ethnographic knowledge. Levi-Strauss borrowed the idea from Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, whom he regarded as the father of modern anthropology
(Levi-Strauss 1962). Pity or empathy, for Rousseau, entails a “desire for
identification with others” and a “total refusal of identification with
[oneself]”. The ethnographer can use himself “as his own instrument of
observation”. He can “learn to know himself objectively and at a distance
as if he were another person.” To do so, he must identify with “his” essential
humanity – what Rousseau called the humble third-person “he” within
himself. Only this “other” person within him can empathize with (or pity)
the concomitant others within those the anthropologist observes. In this
self-mediated and intersubjective context, ethnographic identification,
subsequent communication, and eventual objectification are possible. Levi-
Strauss argues that “the principle of ‘confessions’, written or
unacknowledged, is … basic to the work of every anthropologist”. In this
sense, Rousseau’s celebrated formula “the me is another” heralds both the
emergence of “unconditional objectivity” and the resolution of the
epistemological schism between self and other, outside observer and native
participant (Levi-Strauss 1962: 11-12).



Bronislaw Malinowski: The Unempathetic, Unembedded

Fieldworker

Bronislaw Malinowski, the “mystic hero” of participant observation (Levine,
citing Stocking, 1985: 339) wrote the Argonauts of the Western Pacific

(1922), which has been credited by Levine as “the first principled
instantiation of participant-observation as the ne plus ultra (the high point)
of anthropological field methods” (Levine 1985: 339).

Malinowski had put two and a half year long intensive fieldwork in writing
the anthropological classic Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922). He
made three long expeditions to the islands in the Pacific; he spent the first
a half year on Toulon among the Mailu, and two years on the Trobriands
(June 1915-May 1916, and Oct. 1917-Oct. 1918). During these periods
Malinowski developed his methods and carried out his research, which
was later to be seen as an important breakthrough in methodology and a
major landmark not only in British social anthropology but in social
anthropology around the globe.

With his training in physics, mathematics and the scientific method
Malinowski made efforts to develop anthropology as a science based on a
scientific method. In the introduction to Malinowski’s Argonauts of the

Western Pacific (1922) he proclaimed:

No one would dream of making an experimental contribution to
physical or chemical science, without giving a detailed account of
all the arrangements of the experiments; an exact description of
the apparatus used . . . (etc.) In Ethnography, where a candid
account of such data is perhaps even more necessary, it has
unfortunately in the past not always been supplied with sufficient
generosity, and many writers do not ply the full searchlight of
methodic sincerity, as they move among their facts and produce
them before us out of complete obscurity’ (1922: 2-3).

As early as in 1913 W. H. R. Rivers, the British anthropologist, made a
similar prescription:

The essence of intensive work ... is limitation in extent combined
with intensity and thoroughness. A typical piece of intensive work
is one in which the worker lives for a year or more among a
community of four or five hundred people and studies every detail
of their life and culture ... by means of the vernacular language’
(Rivers 1913: 7).

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Malinowski asserted that a field-based researcher must fulfil three primary
conditions: (1) that “the student must possess real scientific aims, and know
the values and criteria of modern ethnography”, (2) that “he ought to put
himself in good conditions of the work, that is, in the main, to live without
other white men, right among the natives”, and (3) that “he has to apply a
number of special methods of collecting, manipulating and fixing his
evidence” (Malinowski 1922: 6).

Anthropologist like Hsu has questioned Malinowski’s honesty about his
own prescriptions. Hsu (1979: 518) has observed that had Malinowski not
been stuck in War time entangle, isolated by the war (The World War 1)1,
he would not have endeavored to stay in the field for so long.  His
explorations in the field, in Hsu’s assessment, have made Malinowski the
first to make anthropology an observational science by living near the natives,
although he never “went native” showing empathy for the people he studied
and his participation in the cultural activities of the natives was an act of
well-calculated strategy, a rational action driven by interest, in Weberian
sense.

  Although Malinowski is widely held as the trend setter in participant there
is ample scope to doubt his honesty about his participation in native life.
The fundamental question is if Malinowski had developed any empathy for
the Trobriand Islanders, who had hosted him for more than two years and
made him famous or if he was a shrewd “calculative rationalist” in using
the natives. The world of anthropology had to wait till the publication of his
Diary in 19672. The Diary brought to light the shocking notes written in
Polish which stablish, beyond doubt, that although Malinowski nursed a
scientific temper, he was a disinterested fieldworker and lived among the
natives with a great deal of aversion.   The Diary reveals that he did not
have the temperament to relish life among the natives. One gains the
impression that the long field expeditions were like an interminable ordeal,
and that only his self-discipline and uncompromising ambition drove him
on.

Malinowski was an unwilling fieldworker in the Trobriand Island as he
nursed a “feeling of hopelessness and despair” and had the symptoms of
“culture shock”. He wrote: “I had periods of despondency, when I buried
myself in the reading of novels, as a man might take drink in a fit of tropical
depression and boredom” (Malinowski 1922: 4).

Malinowski recommended that a good fieldworker should “really be in
contact” with the natives but his presence in the field should be
inconspicuous, so that the natives carry on in their natural course, rather



than the ethnographer empathizing with them. For him, “the native is not
the natural companion of the white man, and after you have been working
with him for several hours … you will naturally hanker after the company
of your own kind” (1922: 7). Drawing on the native perception of him
Malinowski wrote: “as the natives saw me constantly every day, they ceased
to be interested or alarmed… In fact, as they knew that I would thrust
upon my nose into everything, even where a well-mannered native would
not dream of intruding, they finished by regarding me as part and parcel of
their life, a necessary evil or nuisance, mitigated by donations of tobacco”
(1922: 7-8).

Fink (1955: 62) calls Malinowski’s type as “incomplete participation”, in
which the there is little integration with the field and the anthropologist
remains an external observer. Malinowski was honest in admitting that he
was by no means trying to live as the natives lived; living among the natives
was for him a far cry from what is now called “going native”. Powdermaker
(1967: 36) has observed that Malinowski’s “extraordinary empathy” is
nothing short of a myth. Noted anthropologist Clifford Geerts, who read
the Diary in 1967, commented that the publication of the Diary not only
“destroyed one final idol”, but also shattered the image of anthropology.
The image of the fieldworker, who was largely acknowledged as “the
fieldworker with extraordinary empathy for the natives”, stood shattered
as Malinowski turned out to be a “hypocritical narcissist” (Geertz 1967:
12). Although Malinowski never claimed to be driven by empathy for the
natives, he actually despised them in his Diary saying: “As for ethnology, I
see the life of the natives as utterly devoid of interest or importance,
something as remote from me as the life of a dog” (1967: 169).

Many entries in the Diary speak of Malinowski’s dislike for the natives and
his own “longing for civilization” (1967: 155). Instead of being a theorizing
tool, the diaries were used as a therapeutic release for all kinds of pent-up
frustrations. Often, if he is not complaining about his poor health or telling
of his longings for his fiancée, he is cursing the natives as “bloody niggers”3,
Hsu (1979:518) counted some 69 entries in which Malinowski expresses
various degrees of aversion toward the natives. A glaring example is the
expression: “On the whole my feelings toward the natives are decidedly
tending to Exterminate the brutes” (emphasis in original) (1967: 69). These
entries seem to be hard to rhyme with such (sparse) statements as in the
introductory chapter of Argonauts, “. . . with the capacity of enjoying their
company and sharing their games and amusements, I began to feel I was
indeed in touch with the natives, and this is certainly the preliminary condition
of being able to carry out successful fieldwork” (1922: 8).

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Malinowski was not an “active” or even “moderate” (Spradley 1980: 60)
participant, except on very rare occasions. Only once he writes in his Diary:
“To encourage them to play … I began to kasaysuya myself (a circle
dance/game). I indeed exercise, moreover I could learn more taking part
personally” (1967: 280-281). One might classify him in Spradley’s typology
(1980: 59) as practicing “passive participation”. He held the place of a
petty lord with servants, dealing out tobacco to insure tolerance from the
natives for his incessant interrogations. Indeed, Malinowski was a questioner
who worked a great deal with informants; and he was a systematic observer,
for few people would have accumulated so much data: statistical
documentation reduced to charts for an overview of the societal framework;
minute observations of daily life; and a wide range of original material,
including myths and folklore, transcribed in the native language. An unbridged
gap existed between Malinowski and his Trobrianders. Some scholars
(e.g., Firth 1957; Fortes 1957; Nadel 1957; Leach 1963 cited in Geertz
1967: 12) attribute his frequent misinterpretation of Trobriand magic, religion,
kinship, economy, law and psychology, to this gap.  Wax has observed that
although he gave the natives “flesh and blood”, which is seldom found in
anthropological accounts, he made the error in his theoretical interpretations
of portraying them as “Europeans in dusky skins” (Wax 1972: 12).

However, a more balanced account of Malinowski as an anthropologist is
quite possible. The two field visits, the first among the natives of the Mailu
in New Guinea and the second among the aborigines in a gap of about four
years between 1914 and 1918, which resulted the Diary (1967) and the
Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), bring to light Malinowski’s
differential approaches, one full of disliking and devoid of empathy and full
of likings and empathy for the natives. Clifford Geertz (1967), as we have
shown above, was harsh in his review of Malinowski’s Diary, where he
was which was in his true self venting the frustration of a young man away
from his love and own people, trying to grapple with the odds of life in the
midst of an alien tribe and inhospitable condition. The Diary, for Malinowski,
was a kind of dialogue with himself. About 20 years later, Geertz gave a
balanced assessment of Malinowski as an anthropologist in his book Works

and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (1988). In this book Geertz
took a broader view of Malinowski as an anthropologist as was reflected in
his published writings and revised his earlier assessment. In his ethnographic
writings, Geertz opined, Malinowski “tried to project two antithetical images
of himself – on the one side the empathetic Absolute Cosmopolite with
fellow feeling for the savages he studied, and on the other the Complete
Investigator (Geertz’s terms), dispassionate, rigorously objective.” (quoted



from Raymond Firth’s new “introduction” to the Diary of 1989 edition, pp.
XXIX-XXX). According to Geertz, “High Romance and High Science …
easily yoked” in the writings of Malinowski (Geertz 1988: 78-79). Thus, if
we go by Geertz’s reading of Malinowski, the Diary represents only one
and not to be told unempathetic side of Malinowski but going by his other
writings it is difficult to say he was completely unempathetic towards the
natives he had studied.

 Being in positivist mould, Malinowski treated the social facts as external
to the researcher and was driven by the wrong perception, as did Durkheim,
that the external facts are like “things” and could be studied like the “objects’
of material sciences with precision and in totality and the anthropological
knowledge thus produced would be “objective” and universal. Treating
social facts as dry objects, in essence, means overlooking of the human
sentiments, passions, the world of feelings, the uncertainties in cognition,
and romanticism, which constitute the inseparable parts of any social relation
or the way of life of the people.  During the course of his fieldwork, therefore,
he remained detached from the objects of study as an external dispassionate
observer. He forgot a fundamental fact, which was made clear by Max
Weber and the phenomenologists, that there could be a gap between the
“fact” and the “understanding about the fact” at the level of social
participants who we study and at the level of the anthropologist.

Verrier Elwin: The Empathetic Fieldworker

One can find an alternative approach, so different from that of Malinowski
in the work of Verrier Elwin, who had come to India as a missionary and
established Gond Seva Mandal (Society for the Services of Gonds) with
his team in Karanjia in erstwhile Madhya Pradesh. He always tried to be
an integral part of the people among whom he had worked and worked for
their wellbeing. Elwin lived 22 years in Madhya Pradesh and married a
Gond girl, who accompanied Elwin in almost all his field trips in Madhya
Pradesh and Orissa. In Elwin’s admission, this helped him making initial
contact and rapport building with the local people (Misra 1971: 102). His
love for the tribal communities in India finds reflection in tribal development
policy for the North East, the Panchsheel (See Nehru 1953-54), which he
had drafted for the Government of India. His commitment to the tribal
cause was total as he relinquished the British citizenship and his membership
of the Church, to become a follower of Gandhi and later an administrator in
the Government of India.

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While working among the tribal communities Elwin did not intend “to take
an exclusive interest in the tribes but were concerned with everybody who
was poor and exploited” (Elwin 1964: 105). His objective, as he proclaimed,
was “to build up a settlement to help the people and to base our policy and
way of life on a mixture of Franciscan and Gandhian ideas.” But once he
decided to do intensive research among the tribes where he lived, as well
as those in other parts of India, he remembered the responsibilities of a
social scientist despite his empathy for the people. Elwin’s humanistic
approach influenced his methodology but he did not see it as a hindrance to
his scientific pursuit. This is how he explained his position: “there is nothing
whatever hostile to scientific enquiry in having an intense and affectionate
interest in the people one studies, in desiring their progress and welfare and
in regarding them as human beings rather than as laboratory specimens”
(Elwin 1964: 141). He approached his anthropological studies with a literary
bias and was proud of having a humanistic background. This is why he
declared: “the study of folktales and myths, which some people regard as
unworthy of the notice of a serious scholar, brought home to one the
importance of the fears and anxieties of the people and the need to ensure
that we did nothing that would intensify them” (Elwin 1964: 142).

How embedded he was with the people he studied could be gauged from
the following words in his Autobiography:

For me anthropology did not mean “field-work”: it meant my whole
life. My method was to settle down among the people, live with
them, share their life as far as an outsider could and generally do
several books together.... This meant that I did not depend merely
on asking questions, but knowledge of the people gradually sank in
until it was part of me (Elwin 1964: 142).

So much was his embeddedness with the people that studying people and
living amidst them became his way of life; he refused to segregate his
“empathy for the people” and the responsibilities of an anthropologist. For
him, it became a way of life.

 Elwin’s method to comprehension was an integral part of his initiatives for
the wellbeing of the people. He often drew the attention of the administrative
for the betterment of “his people”. He believed:

This need not mean any lowering of the standards of research, still
less a bias towards any particular theory. For it is the glory of
science to direct the radiance of truth into the dark places of human
life and transform them (Elwin 1964: 132-33).



Elwin’s field diary, 1932-1935, titled Leaves from the Jungle: Life in a

Gond Village, provides the background for an analysis of his basic
theoretical problem in each of the four monographs (The Baiga 1939, The

Agaria 1942, Maria Murder and Suicide 1943, and The Maria and their

Ghotul 1947), and the analysis of the contextual and human aspects of the
field situation in each case. The diary gives a vivid picture of the situation
in which he lived, and his method of establishing rapport with his informants.
It also gives an overall view of his life, explaining his drive for undertaking
later scientific inquiries. A review of the diary in The New Statesman

contains the following comments that reflect Elwin’s work at the time and
explicate the nature of his mission. About the ashram that Elwin had set up
in the midst of the Gonds, which he used as the meeting point with the
locals, the reviewer writes:

Mr. Elwin’s ashram with its chapel and dispensary, its school and
its rest house and its leper colony, is built in the Gond manner, but
with little details of sanitation, etc., that the Gonds have overlooked,
and with flowers everywhere where flowers will grow. Here where
all creeds are honoured and Christianity is practised rather than
preached, Mr. Elwin and his Indian friends live and work (The

New Statesman, London, October 24, 1936, p. 8).

Speaking about this contextual situation and the human aspect of field
methods, Elwin said: “My nearest English neighbors were a hundred miles
away: I was thus compelled not only to work but to relax in tribal company”
(Elwin 39: xxviii). As a “participant community-worker” rather than just an
observer, he was able to identify himself with other members of the
community and thus obtain information about the feelings of the people.
Such a situation gave him the opportunity to understand the people, their
traditions and problems in great depth. By identifying himself with the people
and their problems and at the same time observing with an eye of a scientist,
Elwin lived up to a social scientist’s standards. Benjamin Paul observes:
“Participation implies emotional involvement; observation requires
detachment. It is a strain to try to sympathize with others and at the same
time strive for scientific objectivity” (Paul 1953: 441). But to Elwin,
“scientific objectivity” meant not to solve a particular “small-scale
hypothesis” but to understand the core-problem of a culture in order to
device means of preserving the culture rather than allowing it to fall before
an alien culture. Further, he had a role more unique than that of an
academician, a missionary or an administrator. This in one way gave him

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the opportunity to understand the culture in its many-faceted expression.
Elwin wrote:

I had the further advantage of being neither an official who might
seem too alarming nor a missionary who might seem too respectable.
I was simply regarded as an amiable and eccentric person who
was interested in everybody and everything, and to whom people
could say anything that came into their heads. I was the Bhumia-
sahib (Elwin, The Bagia, 1939: xxviii).

 In Elwin’s admission the Bagias had accepted Elwin as their own man,
bara bhai and a mamuli admi (an ordinary man).  Elwin wrote:

One of the greatest compliments an ethnographer could be paid
was given me by a Baiga in Pandaria. We had visited his village
and been received with great friendliness but none of the fuss and
deference which the touring officer generally receives. One of my
company was annoyed at this and said to the villagers: ‘Here is a
sahib; he must be someone important. Why don’t you make proper
arrangements for his reception?’ The Baiga laughed at this. ‘We
know it’s only bara bhai (the usual name for me). He is such an
ordinary man (mamuli admi) that when we see him coming, we
say, oh, it’s only bara bhai, there’s no need to bother’ (Elwin
1939: xxviii-xxix).

 By not following a routine path in the collection of folklore and by devoting
himself to a cause, Elwin created his own methodology in the field. No
method can be right for all situations; since methodology helps in
understanding a situation and new situations demand adjustments in
methodology. In The Baiga, Elwin collected short autobiographies of men
and women “for these give a clear and immediate insight into those things
which the Baiga themselves consider memorable.” (The Bagia xxviii). At
the same time, he was in a position to check his data with the help of these
autobiographies. In addition to this particular methodology in corroborating
his observations with the autobiographies, Elwin also described his unique
experiences and the native people’s assistance to him in cases of physical
distress. He recalled one such situation:

The next morning, I was standing in the forest when a large pig
lumbered up to me with a leaf in its mouth which it dropped at my
feet. I was rather moved by this-sort of Francis among the bird’s
touch, I thought and then forgot all about it. But no sooner had I
returned home than I went down with a violent attack of fever.



The local magicians waited on me, and soon diagnosed the cause-
the witch of Bohi, annoyed at my presence in the village, had put
magic into a leaf and sent it to me by her pig. They immediately
took necessary measures and I recovered (Elwin, Autobiography,
p. 149).

 This is a true account of the participant observation, which demonstrates
Elwin’s keen observation and analytical power, and, at the same time, gives
him raw anthropological facts about that which Malinowski has called the
“imponderabilia of actual life”.

The central theme of The Agaria (1942), Elwin’s second monograph, was
the “marriage of myth and craft.” In this book he highlighted the importance
of a long stay in the midst of the tribal communities in order to grasp the
essence of their life. He castigated the hit-and-run approach of the
anthropologists saying:

There is a tendency to scamp personal investigation on the spot, to
make brief visits of a fortnight or less to a district and then write
about it, to conduct inquiries from the veranda of a dak bungalow
(The Agaria, p. xxxi).

Elwin also criticized such an interview conducted by another investigator
in his presence and with the help of a police officer since he was convinced
that this method will never take the anthropologist anywhere close the
facts.

For the purpose of obtaining exploratory information on the Agaria, Elwin
made several trips to different areas to get first-hand information about the
distribution of the tribe. He understood clearly that reliance on government
records and officials was not helpful. Dependence on assistance from
administrators in that particular period of time was unsuitable for scientific
consideration, as Elwin explained:

... the Tahasildars of certain districts in the Province were asked
to compile lists of villages in which there were Agaria smithies.
This, you would say, was a simple enough business and, since
government taxes the smithies, almost a specialty of Revenue
officials. Yet every list was hopelessly inaccurate and useless, not
only for the purpose of science but even as guide to research (The

Agaria, p. xxiv)

 Reaffirming his belief in the necessity of fieldwork in such a situation,
Elwin declared:

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Sinjini Roy160

 You cannot observe mankind from the howdah of an elephant.
There is no substitute for fieldwork. There is no substitute for life
in the village, among the people, staying in village houses, and
enduring the physical distress as well as the possible
misunderstandings that may arise (The Agaria, p. xxxi).

Elwin believed that “the truth is told to those who are loved,” and data
cannot be “bought by presents of liquor and tobacco.” To be a fieldworker
among the tribes of India requires “long residence, intimate personal contact,
knowledge of local idiom” and “trained Indian assistants.” For this reason,
as indicated earlier, he frequently criticized hastily-made generalizations.

On this count Elwin criticized W. Reuben monograph on the Asur tribe
entitled Eisenschmiede und Dimonen in Indien (1939) saying: “Reuben’s
monumental Eisenschmiede und Damonen in Indien was written after a
sojourn of only a month among the Asur of Chota Nagpur. No scholar,
however brilliant, can expect the results of such hastily gathered inquiries
to be accepted” (The Agaria, p. xxxii).

 Elwin’s comments in The Agaria were not based on hypothetical
assumptions relating the iron smelters with the mythological Asurs but,
instead, on contemporary beliefs. Describing how mythology vitalizes crafts
and how beliefs are ingrained in the life of the people, he writes:

Special reverence is always due to fire: it must not be kindled for
some days after a death; it is dangerous to swear by fire; if a man
urinates on fire, his penis may become swollen and covered with
sores. This happened to an Agaria boy in Bhanpur (Karanjia). He
tried many remedies without effect: at last, he gave food-offering
to Agyasur and recovered (The Agaria p. 117).

The Agaria is full of such personal observations which reveal his intimate
relationship with the people, “the people that lived every moment of their
lives for an ancient craft and by a living myth.” He championed their cause
based on what Elwin considered the decay of the industry, which created
anxiety, fear and poverty among the people. S. C. Roy, in the foreword to
the book, lauds Elwin for his method, which combines scientific method
with empathy:

... we are filled with admiration at the clear and comprehensive,
accurate and scientific and yet deeply sympathetic delineation of
the life and manners and mentality of one of the poorest and lowliest
but withal most interesting forest tribes of India. Indian ethnology
is fortunate in securing the wholehearted (and let us hope lifelong)



services of a consummate scholar and a sturdy champion of the
poor and the oppressed in Mr. Verrier Elwin, whose name is now
a household word among the aborigines of the central provinces
(The Agaria, p. xxxii).

In sum, in The Agaria, Elwin depends on the collection of folktales, beliefs
and myths of the people connected with the age-old craft of iron-smelting.
Particularly in the section on myth, he quotes a number of his personal
experiences and observations, a technique that is a rarity in anthropological
or folkloristic work in India. These observations give a lucid picture of the
human aspect of the field situation.

In Songs of the Forest (1935) Elwin (along with his collaborator Hivale)
collected folk poetry of the Gond. Examining any of Elwin’s tale or song
collections, one easily finds that they meet the standards of a scientific
exercise. Unlike many of the Indian Folktale collectors, Elwin strove to
present his collections as authentic documents of tribal life. In a review of
the Folk-Tales of Mahakoshal, Norman Brown explains:

... Mr. Elwin, himself a man of literary skill, feels the literary content
of his stories throughout, though he scrupulously refrains from any
doctoring or “improving” or even from excluding stories that have
little, if any, artistic quality. With high appreciation of the value
these stories have to the people among whom they circulate, and
of the worth of these “primitive” people and their culture, he offers
them as ethnological material. They are given in direct and most
commendable-and for Indian folk-tales unusually-un bowdlerized
form (Brown 1948: 186).

 Elwin’s methods of collecting various genres of folklore varied according
to the situation and the problem of language in the areas concerned. Working
among the tribes of Madhya Pradesh he “went native”; he stayed among
them, became one of them, and through his love and affection for the
people won them over. All members of the community were his informants,
and they “opened their hearts.”  (From the comments of Prof. Walter
Kaufmann). He did not set out to find singers or tale-tellers; they were all
around him. Elwin collected everything, with the help of his team, while
around the firesides in the little villages, on his tours through the hill areas
of Madhyapradesh. In addition to texts, he included vivid descriptions of
the social function of the telling situation.  In one such description he said:

We will give two more examples of the tales told by the fireside in
these little villages among the Satpura Hills. They were given us

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Sinjini Roy162

by Hothu the Baiga in a remote village of Bilaspur. It was a strange
and absorbing sight to watch in the firelight the wild handsome
faces of the Baigas as they listened to Hothu, himself a tall, striking-
looking man, naked save for a scanty loin-cloth, his long hair tied in
a knot hanging on one side of his head, in his ears large rings of
white and blue beads. Certainly, he had the gift of speech. He told
his stories with slow expressive gestures, long pauses, a touch of
poetry in his repetitions, and an inimitable trick of crumpling up his
forehead at the funny bits. His first story was in form exactly
parallel to the Saila songs, a theme progressing gradually through
various grades of innocence to a highly vulgar termination (Elwin
and Hivale 1935: 28).

My Fieldwork Experience in an Urban Setting

I chose to work on the Life of the Middleclass Aged in Kolkata for my
PhD, which has been published as a book (Roy 2019). Two things dragged
me to social gerontology when I was looking for a research topic for my
Ph.D. First, my close proximity with my own grandmother and grandfather
and empathy for the other elderly whom I interacted with in course of
growing up, and second, the media-created view that the elderly are the
victims of neglect and ill-treatment at the hands of their own children and
family members.

I conducted my fieldwork in phases for over two years between 2013 and
2015, covered 120 families for background survey and conducted 64 case
studies of the families of the elderly persons, in Salt Lake area and in two
old-age homes in South Kolkata. The families in my study were all from
middleclass background, largely free of economic hardship. All had high
level of education, many were doctors, engineers, college or university
professors, high officials and so on.

I had to use all personal contacts to reach out to the elderly persons and
use all my cultural capital to build some kind of rapport based on mutual
trust and liking. There were a few cases of rejection and in some cases the
interactions remained at the level of formal interviews. I took all my
informants as the “givers” while I was the “taker” and therefore I
approached them with all humility and gratitude. For them, I was the next-
door girl, naïve, who could be shown some “pity”, given some advice and
trusted to be taken in the private space of lived experiences. Because of
my past interaction with my own grandparents as their granddaughter helped



me draw an empathetic discourse about the elderly (a combination of
cognition, articulation of the cognition in language and treatment of them)
which, perhaps, worked consciously or unconsciously as the foundation of
my approach and interaction with the elderly in the field.

I was living in Salt Lake during the period of my fieldwork, in the same
neighbourhood of many of my informants. We used to meet in banks, market
place, on the street, at the auto stand or bus stand, on social and political
gatherings, and so on. The brief and informal interactions helped trust
building. Having known that I was a trained singer some of my informants
started inviting me to perform in the family functions as well as some social
functions. Many of my informants were singers themselves or had interest
in Rabindrasangeet. Having known each other’s interest in music we turned
many interview meetings into performance sessions. While working in the
old-age homes, I attended many of the evening prayer sessions, and sang
prayer songs along with the elderly boarders and participated in their
collective social functions.

  One thing that I really cherish about my field work is that through close
interaction with the elderly I managed to establish a very strong bond with
some of my respondents, and the relations that turned out to be intimate,
based on mutual care, love and respect. After the interview sessions got
over many of my respondents invited for lunch or dinner before I left for
my native place (Siliguri). Some of them asked me to visit them whenever
I get time and sing some songs for them. The most wonderful thing is that
even after returning to my native place I am in regular touch over telephone
with some of the respondents with whom I have developed intimacy. They
call me asking about my health, my music and insist that I should visit them
whenever I go to Kolkata next. I visited them as a researcher, a stranger,
yet brief spells of interactions have helped establish life-long bonds. I was
the taker and the respondents were the givers and the exchange was never
reciprocal yet they showered on me unconditional love and “pity”.  A close
look at the problems of the senior citizens made me a mature and sensitive
self and tied me into relations of mutual empathy. Rousseau’s idea of pity,
which has been endorsed by Levi-Strauss, as one of the foundational rules
of social relations (or social structure) always fascinates me. I look at my
life and the people around me in the same light. My interaction with my
respondents, which was a thoroughly learning experience rooted in empathy
and embeddedness, changed my approach towards life and my relationship
with my parents and all the elderly people I live with and see around me in

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Sinjini Roy164

the social setup. I went to my field as a researcher but came out as a
granddaughter.

Conclusion

I did not stay in the field for a long time as Malinowski or Elwin did since
they studied “other societies”, which were so different from that of their
own. Malinowski’s was a reluctant stay in the midst of the aboriginals and
he had to stay longer because of disturbing political developments and he
could not come out of his rootedness in European culture and develop a
liking for the aboriginals. Malinowski, however, was not completely bereft
of empathy for the “primitive” but the demands of production of “scientific
knowledge” kept him detached and unembedded ethnographer. Elwin, in
contrast, “went native” breaking free all his cultural inhibitions, married a
tribal girl, lived amidst the tribal population and empathise with them, yet
came out with ethnographic accounts of great scientific value. Empathy
and embeddedness mixed with the demands of scientific knowledge
production constituted the backbone of Elwin’s method. It is almost
impossible to emulate either Malinowski or Elwin in modern day fieldwork,
one can however, combine the strategies of both these iconic ethnographers
in fieldwork depending upon the demands of the research project at hand
and the field situation. The scholars who study their own and known society
and culture are always (albeit unconsciously) a participant observer; because
they can easily relate the findings from the field with the own lived
experiences. The formal fieldwork is a kind of planned extension of an
otherwise normal course of social interaction. Through social participation
and dialogue the researcher can come out with a negotiated insight of the
life of the population under research.

Right from our undergraduate days we have been taught that sociology is
an objective science, an idea that has been endorsed by Andre Beteille and
many other sociologists and anthropologists in India (Beteille 2002) and
that we have to detach ourselves (in emotive and value terms) from the
subjects of our study (Weber 1949). But when we approach our field of
research and start interacting with the subjects of our study, we tend to
take it as a form of social interaction in which both the parties (the
researcher and the subject) approach with all the human qualities like
emotions, passion, pains, and sufferings and will to care for the fellow
human beings. From my year-long field work experiences, I have learnt
that when the two sides trust each other they relate to each other with



certain degree of compassion while often transcending the rules of a formal
meeting and travel to the private space (in the space of mutual feelings).
They share their problems, pains and joys, achievements and regrets of life
to each other with an unconscious will to relate to the other with a hope for
moral support. Even mere sharing of each other’s pains can have a
therapeutic effect. In this interaction the researcher is the one who is the
taker and therefore the primary beneficiary of the interaction. But she
cannot approach the interaction in the line of “calculative rationalism” (in
Weberian sense or as Malinowski did at times); rather she travels into the
private space searching for “grandparents” in the elderly, who, in turn see
an image of their children or grandchildren living in distant places. The
subjects in the field too try (mostly unconsciously) to connect to the
researcher (in varying degrees, depending on the degree of mutual liking),
and share their emotions, sufferings and joys. I understand that without this
emotive and empathetic connect the fieldwork remains formal and the data,
thus collected, remain superficial. The fundamental question therefore is
can two sensitive persons remain unconcerned about each other’s problems?
Probably not. The other relevant question could be whether the outcome
of such research would be “objective”. I would answer in the negative to
the first question and “yes” to the second one. Because without the emotive
and empathetic connect with the subjects, the fieldworker is most likely to
return with the superficial numeric information and the outcome of such
research would be without heart and soul. As has been demonstrated by
Verrier Elwin in all his ethnographic accounts, empathy for the local
population does not come in the way to the production of true accounts of
their life. Discourses, thus produced, will also include a strong will to bring
about “desired changes” in the life of the people.

Notes

[An earlier version of this paper was presented in a national seminar on
“Ideology, Art and Science in Social Sciences” organized by the Department
of Sociology, North Bengal University, on 6-7 March 2020. I am thankful
to the scholarly participants who had commented on the paper and gave
valuable suggestions.]

1. Being a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, he was formally
seen as an enemy and was required to report regularly to the
Australian police (Skalnik 1982: 32); and because of the wartime
situation, he was prevented from doing any but local travel. It was

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Sinjini Roy166

with the help of his anthropological friends that he gained permission
to do fieldwork in New Guinea.

2. Malinowski’s second wife published his field diaries under the title

A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term in 1967, after Malinowski’s
death. Malinowski wrote the notes expressing his anguish and
frustrations as he felt culturally estranged amidst the people of a
completely different culture. Questions have been raised on why
Malinowski did not publish the Diary himself and if he would have
approved the idea of publishing it.

3. It has been claimed that the word “niggers” is an incorrect translation

of the Polish word Malinowski used in his field diary and his students
and close associates were firm in their opinion that Malinowski
was, by no count, a racist. The appropriate translation should have
been “natives” (See Raymond Firth, the first “Introduction” to
Malinowski’s A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (1967).

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