Anthropology ethics of fieldwork is as followed: Do no harm, be open and honest about your work, obtained informed consent and necessary permission, weigh competing ethical obligations, make your results accessible and protect and preserve your records. For my field research, I will be interviewing and interacting with a female who belongs to a Native American tribe in the Pacific Northwest. I will be open to the experiences and do no harm while doing so. Consent and permission to partake in certain experiences in that culture is very important, and I will make sure to go through the proper avenues to obtain that permission, if I am lucky enough to do so. If there are any ethical obligations that arise, I will step back and look at it from a anthropologists point of view. Finally, any results that I get will be provided on my anthropology blog for anyone to see.
I chose to read part 1, chapter 3 “The Rememberers”. The chapter starts with Hochschild sitting with a Cajun pipefitter named Harold Areno. As Areno is showing her family pictures of him as a child, he beings to go into detail about the land on the bayou that his family grew up on. Areno talks about how him and his family lived off the land and only went to the store once a month to get extra ingredients that his family would need to make fresh ice cream from the milk that got from their cow. As the interview goes on, Areno’s wife and son show up to have lunch with him and Hochschild, continuing the reminiscing about how great and vibrant the Bayou was. As the memories continue, Areno tells Hochschild that the industry ruined the water and cypress trees around the bayou. Their son, Derwin remember the cypress’s as dead and the awful smell the water produces since he was born. He never experienced such a time as his father description. Areno continues by saying that his whole family, even himself and his wife, developed cancer because of the industry and water contamination. Areno and his wife are the only cancer survivors. As time moved forward once the contamination became known, Areno and his family rallied behind any political figure who put God and family first, like they do. With this mind set, they were hoping that cleaning would commence of the bayou but it still has yet to happen. Areno and fifty three families are tied up in a lawsuit with twenty-two of the companies that have attributed to the pollution of the bayou and deaths of their family members because of it. Areno, a god loving man and a believer in the rapture, tell Hochschild before she leaves, “we’re on this earth for a limited amount of time. But if we get out souls saved, we go to Heaven for eternity. We’ll never have to worry about the environment from then on. That’s the most important thing. I’m thinking long-term”.
Three points for this chapter that I would phrase into questions for my own field study would be as follows:
- How is the land different now then how you grew up? Or your parents or grandparents?
- What kind of elections do you have on the Reservation? What are some of the main issues voters tend to bring up?
- Has industry helped life on the Reservation? Why or why not?
life_Anthropology 