the tikopia and ＂what raymond said＂.pdfVIP

Chapter 6 The Tikopia and What Raymond Said Judith Macdonald Once upon a time on my way to Tikopia, the captain of the ship on which I was traveling changed his mind about going to that distant island and unloaded me on the island of Santa Cruz, hundreds of miles from my destination. Know- ing that I would have some weeks to fill before another ship could rescue me, I introduced myself to everyone I met and let it be known that I was going to Tikopia as an anthropologist. I was told that one of the nurses at the local hos- pital was a Tikopia and that he was an expert on traditional childbirth prac - tices. I contacted him, and he agreed to tell me all he knew about childbirth in Tikopia. After giving me an hour of organized information, which I taped, he finished by saying, at least, thats what Raymond said. Such tales are increasingly becoming part of the folklore of fieldwork (see, for example, Clifford 1986b, 116): the shaman consulting the definitive ethnography, the chief with a degree in anthropology, and every Samoan with an opinion on Margaret Mead. In relating what happened in the field, they confirm the partial nature of both the occurrence and the resultant narrative. The partiality lies both in predilection and incompleteness: the story that we or they want to tell about ourselves, which necessitates omission and editing. Once upon a previous time, on my way to an undergraduate degree in English, I was diverted by the story of a small island that was as convincing as the best science fiction. The island was mapped, its people named, their every- day chatter reported, and their important statements recorded. The story had a beginning, a middle, and an end, which was equally the term of the ethnogra - phers visit, the yearly cycle of the island (the seasons of the d