An Analysis Of The Innocent Anthropologist By Nigel Barley

Kathryn Paige Buckman Anthropology 160 Section 014 In the “Innocent Anthropologist” by Nigel Barley, he starts his tale from the very beginning of his journey in west Africa’s Dowayo, a place in the mountains of Cameroon. He writes this book so the reader or aspiring anthropologist can get a better understanding of his own very first field work and how culturally different other places are outside of what we do in our own cultures and ways of life. His main point in this book, so far, is to educate the readers on various ways of different lives and to teach the reader a little more about countries, villages and tribes we never knew existed and go into detail that’s there is so much more to life than the lives we live. As far as I have read, right now, Barley, from my understanding, is giving us information which forms a comparison to our minds as to the way his culture, or any other cultures does things, and theirs do things, from the cultural practices, the food they eat, the jobs they have, etc. His main points to us are generally to go

Which in a way isn’t very striking because if you think about it, they really don’t have much to red in their cultures because they don’t have signs, everything is located in huts but it also makes me wonder what they learn when they are in school. Still very interesting to me. Something else I found very striking was the fact they have very, very bad diseases and Barley states: “Dowayos always keep wounds open and remove a dressing as soon as they are out if sight” (Barley 61). I figured since they were scared of possibly catching Malaria they would keep the bandages on. Lastly, another thing that struck me was that when Dowayo’s would talk to people they would stare at the floor and murmur words and that signified they were listening as to our culture we normally look at them eye to eye and that signifies that we are directly hearing and listening to