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Friendship in anthropological ﬁeldwork: some ethical doubts

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EWA NOWICKA
Department of Sociology
University of Warsaw
Poland

FRIENDSHIP IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL FIELDWORK:
SOME ETHICAL DOUBTS

From research to friendship
Friendship is a relationship and at the same time a type of emotion, which may
take on a permanent character. My intention in this article is to show that it can
be, and often is, something else, namely a tool used in anthropological ﬁeldwork.
I am going to answer the following questions: 1. whether a certain emotional
relationship called „friendship” between researcher and researchee is a necessary
cognitive tool in the process of anthropological ﬁeldwork and 2. whether it is
possible to reconcile the process of intellectual and empirical discovery of social
reality, requiring a considerable detachment, and often treating people as research
„objects”, with friendship that by default is engaged and cannot be impartial. In
the West friendship has taken on a very speciﬁc meaning, but in different European languages it has different connotations. For instance the Polish word przyjaźń
is less vague than the English word „friendship”, but it is certainly weaker and
includes fewer obligations and duties than love (miłość). Always, however, regardless of minor cultural differences, the word conjures up associations with
something pleasant or positive; offering someone friendship is a true gift. I want
to ask whether this is true also in ﬁeldwork.
Three crucial elements of the concept of friendship should be discussed in
reference to anthropological research:
First, absence of beneﬁts is no barrier to friendship. Someone is our friend not
because they are resourceful for us, offer us goods or services, or intend to do so,
but because we like them and we think well of them. Yet, the following question
arises: is disinterested friendship possible in the research process? If so, is it pos-

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sible on the part of the ﬁeldworker and/or on the part of the researchee? Second,
friendship is a form of rapport generating symmetrical bonds between two people.
Yet, we know of unilateral friendships where emotions are not reciprocated. It is
in fact difﬁcult to ﬁnd an emotional relationship, profound and sincere, which
is totally symmetrical. Thus we may assume there is always an element of asymmetry in friendship. In the case of the relationship between researcher and researchee
this asymmetry appears already at the level of motivations, aims, and expectations.
The difference in motivations on both sides are endemic to the ﬁeldwork situation. There is a person who is studying someone else’s life, and they want to know
something about the other person, their everyday life, environment and so on. The
other person is clearly an object of research, regardless how strong the friendship
might be. The researchee most often does not feel the need to be investigated. There
are rare cases when anthropologists are invited or even hired to study a particular
group. Very seldom are anthropologists treated as physicians, psychotherapists, or
people to whom patients can come with their problems. Normally studied people
do not ask to be examined or expect a diagnosis, let alone to pay for it. Secondly,
researchees have little if any knowledge of the aims of ﬁeldwork, especially in the
case of (ethically doubtful) incognito participant observation. While it may be true
that researchees show an increasing interest in the researcher’s goals, researcher and
researchee cannot fully share motivations and intentions. This profound discrepancy
of goals is more than the asymmetry that is a standard feature of friendship.
Finally, friendship implies also a type of an obligation concerning mutual aid,
friendly and engaged personal exchanges. In 2001, for instance, I was persuaded
to give help to the daughter of an informant from Mongolia who wanted to enroll at Warsaw University. Two years later I received a letter from an one-time
informant living in Amga, Sakha Republic (Yakutia) with the dramatic question:
how to ﬁnd the grave of his grandfather, a Yakut who was a soldier in the Soviet
Army, and died on the Polish territory in 1945. I was asked by Roma informants
in a small Carpathian village in southern Poland to appeal to the local administration for extra funds for construction of a new house. Sometimes we are asked
or silently expected to write a book or an article supporting the material or ethnic demands of researched communities or popularizing the image of their customs, history, values as it is promoted by the group. In these cases, anthropologist
is seen as a spokesperson for the community and a defendant of their interests in
the face of various institutions.

Is friendship helpful in anthropological research?
First, I will focus on the perspective of the ﬁeldworker. This is necessary
for establishing to what extent amicable relations between anthropologist and
the researched community are helpful, or necessary in ﬁeld research.

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It is generally agreed that values are involved in the process of gathering
data during ﬁeldwork. Moreover, emotions may be treated as crucial part of this
process. If Clifford Geertz (2000) is correct in saying that an impartial attitude
is neither natural nor easy to maintain, gathering insights into social reality thanks
to an emotional engagement should be fully justiﬁed. Geertz also argued that
characteristically anthropological ﬁeld research does not allow for the separation of professional and non-professional areas of life but that the two are always
intertwined. As a consequence, ethical problems permeate every stage of anthropological research.
Anthropologists themselves are not very different from the objects of their
research (Hastrup 1995: 45-60). This has further methodological consequences:
when an anthropologist attempts to investigate a topic, they may know it somehow introspectively from their own biographies. For example, when anthropologists intend to understand rituals of other cultures at the same time they participate and retain an understanding of rituals from their own culture. They acquire
knowledge through an analysis involving an individual experience of a particular
person. Anthropologists cannot collect data in a laboratory. Data collection in
anthropology entails a permanent relationship with various others. One cannot
use the microscope to ﬁnd the idea of hostility, obligations, people’s understanding of the past and present; there are no intersubjectively controlled tests. Yet,
anthropological work is by no means arbitrary. Some anthropologists have a better or worse understanding of their subject matter; there are some excellent and
some poor anthropological books. We know that step by step, little by little,
and sometimes instantly we understand more and more of the researched community. From time to time we experience discoveries, and we feel an obligation
to explain what we see in the ﬁeld to the outside world.
Many years ago Robert Redﬁeld (1947, 1956) admitted that anthropologists’
most important research tool is their own nature. By nature he meant more than
biological „equipment”; rather it constitutes a sort of cultural „equipment” of the
anthropologist as a member of a particular community, as well as a representative of a particular culture. Without prior experiences, emotions, we cannot count
on having insights into experiences, impressions, desires, and emotions of other
people. For these reasons interpretative anthropologists – but not only them –
questioned scientiﬁc strands in the discipline, insisting on the pertinence of evoking positive, accommodating attitudes towards the culture studied and towards
its people. Sympathy and empathy are indispensable conditions of effective ﬁeld
research.
If we accept, however, James Clifford’s claim about anthropological authority, namely that an interpretative theory of culture is doubtful in our times because we usually doubt intercultural representations (Clifford 1988: 21-54), we
run into the question of whether anything like intercultural communication is at
all possible. Back in the 1950s, Horace Miner, following Malinowski, argued

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that even extremely „exotic” customs gain a meaning if we look at them from
the level of intuitive understanding. He wrote that looking from a distance and
from above, from our privileged, safe places in a more economically developed
country, it is easy to perceive all the brutality and inadequacy of magic. Yet, without its power, „primitive man” could neither confront practical difﬁculties nor
manage to ascend to the „higher levels of civilization” (Miner 1956: 503-507).
This seems to be congruent with the idea of placing the observer in the position
of the researchee. So, in anthropological ﬁeldwork „proper” emotional attitude of
the researcher towards the researchee, entailing a sort of kindness, sympathy, and
friendliness, is key. Fieldwork, thus, is a combination of several elements, a mixture of observation, dialogue, hard work and friendship (Clifford 1997).
James Clifford is clear about the fact that emotions are an indispensable element of the cognitive process, though he admits that these should take the form
of controlled empathy. However, publicly expressed statements cannot be based
exclusively on these emotions. A frustrated author, not delighted with the negative attitudes of the objects of their observation, is likely to be ignored and her
work unpublished. It was precisely for this reason that Malinowski’s diaries, in
which these elements were openly expressed, caused such a scandal (Clifford
1997: 157). For the most part, the history of anthropology is one in which these
emotions, or at least their expression, were routinely suppressed. To be scholarly
meant to be, effectively, without emotions. Only recently have emotions begun
to be perceived as an element of scientiﬁc research. Can thus this recognition be
extended to those emotions associated with friendship?
Fieldwork entails an interaction with researchees. As a side effect, the ﬁeldworker may trigger changes in the researched society. For example, when asking
questions they provoke their subjects to reﬂect on issues they may have never
thought about otherwise. Anthropologists ask questions, are present here and
there, sometimes in expected and more often in unexpected ways. They walk
around, ask to be brought to important places and events. They make contacts
through being sympathetic yet not invasive, they explain why they came and are
interested in the group, place and people. Sometimes they talk about their own
life, family and their own country, answer questions concerning their private life,
and ﬁnally they establishes amicable relations and sometimes even friendships
with their researchees.
Yet why does the anthropologist attempt to make friendships in the researched
society? Why is it important? First, anthropologists are interested in the deeper
meanings of particular behaviors, ways of thinking, social and intellectual constructs, values, aspirations and desires. Without a certain dose of benevolence on
the part of researchees ﬁeldwork would not be possible, and so the anthropologist
needs friendly interlocutors. Without verbal communication with the members
of the researched society anthropologists are helpless in interpreting most of the
observed objects and behaviors. It is difﬁcult to connect mere external aspects

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of human behaviors on the level of physical movements, or the material world
to the symbolic life of the group. The more intimate the verbal contact with the
studied society, the more trust the researcher establishes with the researched community, the more open the studied community becomes, and the more profound
and therefore better the material will emerge from the ﬁeldwork. Thus quite often
anthropologists try to be as nice as possible, sometimes even use ﬂattery, and they
ensure their hosts about their best intentions, respect, admiration and genuine interest. The researchees are entitled to treat all of this as proof of friendship, even
though all of them are elements of well-trained professionalism.
During the early years of our discipline there was little support for personal
contacts with researchees. Frank Hamilton Cushing became so close, so immersed within Zuni culture, that his ﬁeld data was not taken seriously by the
discipline of his time; the average anthropologist adopted an observational attitude, similar to that in the natural sciences. Cushing’s subjective, emotional description of Zuni culture was not treated as proper scholarly work (Clifford 1988:
21-54). Between 1920 and 1940 anthropology was increasingly based on longterm personal ﬁeldwork: participant observation, contact with individual members of the society studied (Clifford 1988: 21-54). One year in the ﬁeld living
together with informants became the mark of disciplinary belonging. One year
is not an arbitrary period. It is a meaningful period of initiation, and at the same
time it refers to the cosmic circle, the biological circle, the sequence of the seasons; it has a metaphysical meaning. In many cultures the period of mourning
after the death of near relative is just a year; after a full year a widowed individual
can remarry. One year without a break is a period that generates serious changes
in the researcher himself. Anthropologists coming back home after one year spent
outside their own culture becomes a sort of repatriate, a return migrant, a homecomer as described by Alfred Schutz (1964). The alternative concept of ﬁeldwork
as a series of periods of ﬁeldwork alternated with time spent at home is treated
as something that protects the anthropologist against this sort of transformation.
From the perspective of this paper the important question is whether the time
spent in constant contact with the researched group inﬂuences the possibility of
forming friendships with researchees. Moreover, is it necessary to undergo an
internal transformation, to be socialized into the culture being studied to such
an extent that friendship in its proper meaning occurs?
Anthropologist in the ﬁeld is, willingly or not, a person having certain features:
gender, physical appearance, age, ethnic background, religion, nationality, and
individual temperamental traits and character. These social and individual characteristics create relationships between researcher and researchee that include
emotional interaction. Every ﬁeldworker experiences a range of emotions during
his work, some of which are entirely tolerated while others are not accepted and
even condemned. The taboo which refers to sexual intercourse seems to be the
strongest, though it may be extrapolated to the entire sphere of strong emotional

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ties. Clifford comments on this taboo with irony, writing that ﬁeld researchers
may love but they cannot desire the objects of their interest. Sexual involvement
is usually treated as too strong, affecting the process of data collection. While
a certain manipulation of distance and proximity is acceptable, too much proximity is treated as likely to distort any descriptive perspective. Sexual relations, in
this way, are rather rejected as a source of cultural knowledge, though nobody
would question the profound insight into the researched culture that they may
afford the researcher. The same applies to undergoing trance during native rituals
or using hallucinogenic drugs, though both of these taboos are transgressed in
practice (Clifford 1997).
I need to stress here that it was never forbidden to form friendships with researchees, though deep friendship may shorten the distance between two sides
and thus threaten impartiality. But only physical sexual intercourse is totally
rejected for methodological as well as moral reasons. The researchee becomes
in this case simultaneously an object of observation and subject of interaction,
whose subjectivity cannot be denied. Clifford questions this taboo, asking why
a common bed should be a worse source of anthropological knowledge than
a common meal (Clifford 1997).
However, it should be remembered that friendship has important consequences for both sides. It also has its ethical dimension. Introducing an emotional bond between researcher and researchee means intruding into the studied
society. Friendship with a researchee may lead to serious, sometimes positive
but also sometimes even tragic, consequences for the latter. On the one hand,
in certain situations it may furnish an element of social and cultural capital for
the researchee. There are cases when contact with a foreigner – especially a foreigner from a more privileged background or country – becomes the source of
prestige and social position. On the other hand, in some societies friendship with
a foreigner is stigmatizing, can be interpreted as a sort of sin or treachery, a lack
of loyalty. It can be thus the cause of ostracism or at least disapproval. This was
the case with Roma groups to which I will now turn.

Ficowski and Papusza
The story of friendship between a Polish poet and writer, Jerzy Ficowski, and
a Romani woman, Bronisława Wajs (her Romani name was Papusza, meaning
„doll”), is an instructive example. Papusza was born in 1909 (or 1910) in Lublin.
She met Ficowski in 1949 during the Roma people’s traditional summer travels to
western Poland. This was the time when the communist regime adopted the policy of making Roma „productive” – they were persuaded or even forced to give
up their nomadic lifestyle and assimilate. In 1950 Papusza’s family, like many
other Roma families, decided (or rather was swayed and cajoled) to embark on

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a sedentary life. Ficowski met Papusza when he was 25 and she was 40, still traveling with her family. They met in the western part of Poland, where Ficowski
was running away from the secret services (Machowska 2011: 52-53) and was
gathering information about war experiences of the Polish Roma. Papusza was
presented to him as a Gypsy poet. She stood out from the rest of the Roma because she was literate, she eagerly read books and newspapers and was keen on
education. She had no children. To mitigate her sense of loneliness, she adopted
an orphan boy. Her husband Dionizy Wajs was convinced that Ficowski was
„great man who writes books and may write a book about them” (Machowska
2011: 51). Ficowski and Papusza quickly became friends. She started to call him
my „little brother” (pszałoro) and openly expressed a strong fondness of him.
When Ficowski discovered her literary talent, he started to admire her sensitive personality. They had long conversations and exchanged many letters. Papusza told her younger „brother” about the details of Roma life, their customs
and values. She also taught Ficowski her native language. Because Papusza had
having relatively good knowledge of the Polish language, she was a good teacher.
Delighted and charmed by her „songs without a tune”, her personality and her
way of thinking, Ficowski inspired and instigated her to write down her poetic
improvisations. This way he transformed her traditional Gypsy oral style into
a written form requiring more consistency and compact form without repetitions
(Machowska 2011: 36). Then he collected and translated her poems, introduced
them to other Polish writers and published them with his own commentaries.
One of the established poets who were particularly fond of Papusza’s work was
Julian Tuwim – at the time one of the authors most revered by the communist
authorities. Together with Ficowski, Tuwim succeeded in getting special stipend
for Papusza. At ﬁrst she refused the money but later on she accepted it, being in
a ﬁnancial predicament.
In the 1950s and 1960s Ficowski became (and in a way still remains) Poland’s
greatest authority on Roma culture. Papusza was a priceless and often indispensable informant for him, who thanks to her was introduced to the Romani – a „secret knowledge” that was inaccessible at the time and not revealed to outsiders.
Papusza realized how dangerous this liaison could become for her – especially
after her poems were published. She asked Ficowski personally and the Polish
Literary Association to withdraw the book, arguing that she would be „skinned
alive” by her own people should the poems be published (Ficowski 1986). Yet
nobody listened to her. The literary and scholarly world wanted to have a new
exotic poet revealing the truth about Romani life and ways of thinking. Moreover,
Papusza was useful politically as an example of a „good Gypsy” on her way to
assimilation (Ficowski 1965), something that was as much in vogue back then as
multiculturalism is today. In spite of his declarations that the poems he translated
and published never contained any elements of „Gypsy secrets”, especially those
pertaining to their moral code, she was later accused by members of her tribe of

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transgressing fundamental rules concerning the separation of Roma life from the
non-Romani, gadzio world (Ficowski 1965).
Ficowski published photos of Papusza and her family members. This too became a source of suspicion for the Roma. They asked literate people to read the
article and found out that their customs, unknown by others for some 500 years,
became revealed (Machowska 2011: 56). The early 1950s was traumatic time for
the nomadic Roma communities – it was the time of the policy of „settlement and
productivity”. It lead to a rapid and forced assimilation. When Papusza was invited to Warsaw, she was accused by her tribesmen of being traitor who was used
by the authorities for persuading Roma to settle permanently. The turn of 1940s
and 1950s was also difﬁcult for Ficowski. He stressed later on that his knowledge
of Romani dialects was an effect of his earlier interest in the culture and his efforts to master the language much before he met Papusza. He ensured that he
tried (in vain) to persuade the elders of the tribe that his knowledge of the core of
Gypsy customs did not come from Papusza.
Nonetheless, Papusza suffered physical assaults already in the autumn of
1950, and an attempt was made on her life. She survived but as a result she
suffered serious physical injuries and a psychological trauma. Finally Papusza
became „ritually contaminated” (magerdi) and unanimously excluded from the
Roma community by the highest council of elders and the head of the Roma, being accused of revealing secret elements of Roma culture concerning mageripen
– ritual purity and impurity, oaths, Gypsy taboos and divination (Machowska
2011: 52). She became a nobody, a person who did not belong – neither a Roma
nor a Pole. She broke off her contact with Ficowski and the entire gadzio society.
Forced to remain silent, she also stopped writing her poems. In 1953 and then in
1965 Ficowski published his ﬁrst books on Roma culture and history, which are
still a source of information on Roma traditions and their normative system. The
books made its author a famous, popular and highly esteemed person.
The fate of Papusza, unfortunately, was entirely different. Ostracized by her
tribe and banned as a disloyal person, transgressing the most important norms of
romanipen, lonely and sick, she ended her life on January 8, 1987, after a long
stay in a secure psychiatric hospital and then cared for by her sister as a seriously ill and old woman in a small town of Inowrocław (Bartosz 2004). Was Ficowski aware of his responsibility for the harm he had done to the Gipsy poet?
In 1986, a year before Papusza died, Ficowski wrote: „I was lucky to have met
Papusza. I was the one who discovered her. Papusza had the misfortune of knowing
me. Because of me, in spite of my good intentions, she suffered a great harm”
(Ficowski 1986: 209-210).
Ficowski spoke openly about his non-malevolent „sin” and emphasized deep
friendship that had resulted from his wandering with the Wajs family. „Had I not
met Papusza, the world would not have learned about a wonderful Gypsy poet,
but she would have been happier” (Ficowski 1986: 209-210).

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Why friendship? Individual aspects
The attempt to establish friendships with researchees is, from a psychological
point of view, entirely understandable. Let us pursue the stages of anthropological ﬁeldwork and the situation when friendship plays a role of a research tool.
Making friends is not only important from the professional point of view but also
from the point of view of individuals immersed in a foreign and often unintelligible social context, in which they may experience loneliness. Anthropologist
intuitively, unconsciously and – if I may use the word – instinctively keep in
touch with those who make their life in the ﬁeld easier. Clifford Geertz described
the emotions anthropologists go through during the work in the ﬁeld – they
feel more alienated and not as intellectually aloof as they would like to (Geertz
2000). The period of ﬁeldwork, even if it is shorter than the traditionally required
12 months – is the time of extreme focus, and hard work, when professional skills
are required, but at the same time it is a big part of time in researcher’s life, when
they not cease to be human beings with certain – differing from one person to another – emotional needs and levels of resistance to loneliness (Barley 1983). Anthropologist cannot be professionals for 24 hours a day, though they may try to.
They sometimes feel both physically and psychologically „under the weather”,
physically and mentally exhausted, feel the overwhelming unintelligibility of the
surrounding social reality. They wait for new ideas, for informants (who may not
react enthusiastically to their inquires), for supplies that do not arrive on time because of weather or other unknown reasons. These difﬁculties spur them to seek
a closer contact with people nearby wherever it seems possible.
This strategy seems to be the more attractive and meaningful, the longer
the ﬁeldwork. By the way, we now treat ﬁeldwork much more ﬂexibly than
in the times of Bronisław Malinowski, Edward Evans-Pritchard or Meyer Fortes.
The changes in understanding the ﬁeld are serious factors in simultaneous diminishing and increasing the quest for friendship with researchees. The one year of
research that was traditionally recognized as indispensable was a true challenge.
Now more and more often it is replaced by shorter and repeated ﬁeld visits, punctuated by reﬂecting, reading and writing at home. Malinowski spent two years
on the Trobriand Islands between 1914-1918. He too took breaks from the ﬁeld,
so he could regain his physical and psychological stamina by immersing himself
in a culture that was more familiar to him. He traveled to Australia and visited
universities and cities resembling European ones in order to maintain contact with
people intellectually and culturally similar to him. Psychologically it is signiﬁcant that during these months of „gathering new forces” Malinowski embarked
on a serious love affair which culminated in marriage. While reading his diary,
we have no doubt that intensive affection gave him the strength to overcome
feelings of alienation and loneliness. Malinowski had no practical chance to

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establish friendships with his informants, the cultural distance between the European anthropologist and the „savage islander” made this sort of relationship impossible. He had no choice, and had to ﬁnd profound emotional relations outside
the ﬁeld. Today, by contrast, anthropologists are more likely to feel „on an equal
footing” with their informants. And by and large, uncertainty and alienation can
be treated as a positive stimulating factor.
Such are individual and very personal causes and motives for seeking friendship with researchees. Of course during our ﬁeldwork – the same way as in our
own society – we meet people who are nice, polite, interesting, intellectually attractive as well as those whom we estimate as dull, stupid, hostile, malicious and
even repulsive. Moreover, there are entire societies and cultures which we ﬁnd
pleasant and attractive as a whole, evoking feeling of mutual understanding and
those in which we feel awkward, uneasy, totally unintelligible, evoking feeling
of distance and alienation. Evans-Pritchard is a good example, with his difﬁcult
experiences in the Nuer society that displayed an unfriendly, sometimes even
hostile attitude towards him (Evans-Pritchard 1940).
Anthropologists constantly beneﬁt from assistance of their informants, their
time and the practical advice concerning everyday life they give. Without researchees’ hospitality ﬁeldwork would be entirely impossible. Researcher, as it
was shown in the Trobriand rule of reciprocity, feels obliged to offer a countergift. Often it takes the form of loyalty towards the society, or its particular members. This loyalty has always been associated with our discipline and is – in my
view – the moral basis of anthropology at large.
Initially interest in distant cultures was associated with developmental and colonial engagement with the non-European world, sometimes including humanitarian
as well as educational activities, such as Christianization, with the self-proclaimed
aim of „bringing civilization” to the „natives” or „savages”. Today anthropologists
are less self-conﬁdent, and often question their ability to change other people’s
lives. They are more cautious in making grand statement about what is good for
other cultures. Anthropologists are in contact with people who often live in dire
straits and who may expect that scholars presence or intervention may improve
their living standards. Yet, Geertz (1984) sounds bitter and pessimistic when writing of the helplessness of anthropologists in their attempts to be loyal towards his
researchees. They share few interests with their informants and have almost no possibility of inﬂuencing their lives. This is also why, Geertz argued, anthropologists
cannot count on the researched community for help and understanding.
Geertz (2000) is correct in saying that at the majority of research in contemporary social sciences requires a certain degree of humanistic sensitivity. When
anthropologists do not want to apply the method of giving to their informants
colorful beads, we must offer ourselves – our friendship. It means in practice that
the research relation becomes really personal and individualized. We have only
one choice – to become friends with our informants (Geertz 1984). Anthropolo-

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gists too are often welcome with „beads” of a kind. This pertains to stories „prepared” for the stranger. An old Koriak shaman, even before being asked to tell
or show something, will take out his old shaman paraphernalia from the closet,
and tell shaman stories because he has already been taught by Russian ethnographers what anthropologists are likely to be interested in. The Roma know that
the gadzio like Gypsy music and dancing, so they always present these elements
of their life, which often differ strongly from Roma music and dance practiced
inside the society. At any rate they carefully hide their intrinsic social traits such
as ideas about ritual purity, contamination, the caste-like social structure and the
generally orally transmitted moral code.
The researcher, through even superﬁcial manifestations of friendship or rather
friendliness, may believe that he has received everything he wanted to. The translation of friendship into speciﬁc goods or services may be very simple: giving
money, a bag of sweets for children, toys and books in the Romani house. In fact,
researchees increasingly expect that these acts of friendship result in something
more, such as the representation of Roma community interests in contacts with
local or even national government or an improvement of their image in the media.
In this way the anthropologist becomes the mouthpiece of the researched group
(Clifford 1997: 52-91).
The problem signaled by Geertz (2000) arises not only when we are engaged
in the study of the Global South. Even when we work in Europe, with the group
which is not far from our own values and culture, the discrepancy between the interests of the researcher and informants or potential informants is organically profound. If a non-Lutheran anthropologist is researching the Lutheran community
in his own town in Poland, a community with a high rate of university education,
then in spite of multiple common traits and cultural and historical roots, there is
still an irreducible difference of interests (Nowicka 1993).
When I approached Lutheran priests and community members, they were not
forthcoming; I had to make the effort of making various contacts. One thing they
did expect from me, however, was a book that would counter popular misconceptions about Lutherans in Poland, and that would demonstrate their Polish roots
and value system. Here the ﬁgurative beads changed into a particular image of
the studied group popularized with the use of the professional skills of the anthropologist and at the same time a „commodity” which was used in a sort of an
anthropological barter. This is another way in which friendship may arise as the
result of the efforts on the part of ﬁeldworker.

Conclusion
Our discipline has undergone a serious transformation during the last decades.
Even if we do not accept postmodern arguments, we must admit that postmo-

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dern writers are the midwifes of a turn in anthropological consciousness: methodological, epistemological and ethical. Any self-satisfaction or certainty regarding the moral meaning of doing anthropology have now been shattered. More and
more both researcher and researchee are working in the same institutions or at least
meet there (Fatyga 1999). For instance, I regularly meet Roma leaders, with whom
I worked as an anthropologist in the ﬁeld, in the Ministry of the Interior. We attend
the same meetings. There are different relations with them than those that Boas or
Malinowski had with the objects of their ﬁeldwork. The ministerial hall with the
round table is also a ﬁeld for me, but I am not the only observer; my Roma colleagues and at the same time researchees are observing me too (Fatyga 1999).
The same applies to the Autonomous Koriak Unit in Kamczatka, where I have
contact with local intellectuals. Moreover, I have a sense of sharing a common intellectual ground when I talk with a „simple hunter” in northern Yakutia (Sakcha
Republic) in Siberia, when he discusses with me the latest statistics concerning
support among Polish citizens for the European Union. Our informants become
sometimes our friends and our guides to their culture. We ﬁnd that we have common favorite books, common life experiences, common problems out of which
sometimes differences of, say, attitude to death, spiritual life, religion may appear
as differing, not easily understandable and exotic. We may have, however, exactly the same type of university training. Intellectual, social and cultural distance
between researcher and researchee is today shorter than it was half a century ago.
The researchee becomes more and more our partner in the social, political, intellectual, and „last but not least” emotional senses.
I agree with Geertz (2000) that intercultural friendship is possible and valuable for anthropology. For the informant the beneﬁts of anthropological research
can be of various kinds: a feeling of being part of an important project, pride in
one’s own culture and a competent knowledge of it, a chance to express private
opinions in the presence of a neutral outsider, to say nothing of direct and indirect material beneﬁts (Geertz 2000). Nevertheless, friendship between them is
distorted by the difference of interest and cultural perspective. Yet, friendship,
as I deﬁned it earlier, should be a sort of relationship based on lack of beneﬁts.
According to Geertz, friendship is terminated when the informant’s starts feeling
cheated. I would suggest that often the researcher may feel cheated, though for
them it should be a professional risk they should be prepared for.
In the time of Boas and Malinowski’s ﬁeldwork, the researcher controlled
totally the research situation. Today the situation is quite different. Results of
anthropological research are no longer shared only with fellow scholars at international conferences – nowadays local intellectuals from the researched groups
have access to it too. Sometimes local groups use work published by anthropologists to further their own particular interests, and struggle to better their lives.
Sometimes local leaders, treated as friends by anthropologists, protest against the
publication of certain data or statements. They may attempt to befriend anthro-

Friendship in anthropological ﬁeldwork: some ethical doubts

121

pologists in order to „recruit” them as their „ethnic experts”. Sometimes they propose concrete material rewards for such a cooperation, but more often limit the
access to their customs. In this way researcher becomes a tool in the hands of the
researchees, rather than vice versa. Anthropology becomes a servant no longer of
colonial authorities or other external forces but of the ethnic community and its
leaders. We must remember, however, that anthropology has never been an ethically and politically neutral discipline – it has always been used by somebody –
and that the situation has changed only in the sense that at present, the ones who
want to make use of it are the members of researched societies.
Key words: friendship, ﬁeldwork, ethical sensitivity

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Evans-Pritchard E.E.
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Falorykta, w: J. Ficowski, Demony cudzego strachu: wspominki cygańskie,
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Ewa Nowicka

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Ewa Nowicka
FRIENDSHIP IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL FIELDWORK:
SOME ETHICAL DOUBTS
(Summary)
Friendship is a relationship and at the same time a sort of feeling, which may take on
a permanent character. This article shows that it can be and often is something else, namely a tool in anthropological ﬁeldwork. The author tries to answer the following questions:
1. whether a certain emotional relationship called „friendship” between researcher and
researchee is necessary as a cognitive tool in the process of anthropological ﬁeldwork,
2. whether it is possible to reconcile the procedure of intellectual and empirical insight
into social reality – which requires considerable distance, impartiality, the descriptive
„objectivist” attitude that sees the researched reality, including the researched people, as
objects – with friendship which is engaged and not at all impartial, and 3. whether friendship between researcher and researchee is morally neutral. I discuss the story of the
friendship between a poet and writer, the ﬁrst specialist in Roma culture in Poland and an
excellent ﬁeldworker, Jerzy Ficowski, and a Gypsy (Polska Roma) woman, Bronisława
Wajss (Romani name: Papusza), as an instructive example. The fate of Papusza, unfortunately, was tragic. Ostracized by her tribe and banned as a disloyal person, transgressing
the most important norms of romanipen, lonely and sick, she ended her life. Her case
demonstrates the way in which ethical sensitivity in research is a hard exigency.
Key words: friendship, ﬁeldwork, ethical sensitivity

T.96_nowicka.pdf

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