Spy-glass

Spy-glass Thus far, as I have come to understand as a student of anthropology, being a successful ethnographer must involve providing an accurate and ethical representation of the culture on the other side of Hurston’s “spyglass” while at the same time taking into consideration one’s own biases and experiences that affect the situation at hand and the representation itself. With these things in mind, getting at the tacit culture can be very difficult, especially when we also have to consider how our own ethnic and racial backgrounds will affect our ability to obtain information from informants. This becomes clear when reading Carol Stack’s Call to Home, in which she, as a white women, attempts to capture the essence of the Diasporas of the Southern African-Americans who are once again returning home from the “white” city. While reading, I found myself pondering how clever her approach to connect with her informants is. Before the reader even looks at the table of contents they are confronted with a quote from Bernice Johnson Reagon that evokes images of soul searching and a spiritual journey of finding one’s self.. This theme carries over into the text with Stack’s question of home, culture, writing, stack’s, stack, people, informants, white, wall, theme, text, style, spiritual, soul, searching, representation, reading, own, one’s, itself, information, important, ethnographer, country, city, change, call, again, affect, wrought, writes, work, women, while, whether