Description:
In a recent article in Anthropology and Humanism, Ellen Badone (1995) raises, but does not pursue, an issue that has concerned me for some time. She points out that she reacted unfavorably to a healer who used techniques that Badone regarded as manipulative in her own culture. She suggests that difficulty in suspending disbelief points to an advantage in cultural distance in anthropological fieldwork. My suggestion is that we should learn another lesson from her experience: that cultural distance and exoticism sometimes disguise the reluctance on the part of anthropologists to make judgments that are important to the cultures they study. If we protect ourselves from unfavorable reactions through cultural distance, we are cutting ourselves off from an important element in people's understanding of their society.