Eating Christmas In The Kalahari Analysis

Ethnographic fieldwork in Anthropology certainly requires anthropologies to understand the limits and biases they will be exposed to while preforming their research. Through the text “Ethnography and Culture”, James P. Spradley discusses some of the concepts anthropologies must be aware of just as “naive realism”, “explicit culture” and “tacit culture”. These three concepts can be appreciated when reading Richard B. Lee’s selection “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari”.
Spradley describes “naïve realism” as the belief that all people define the real world in the same ways. For instance, when Lee was looking for the best animal for Christmas dinner he was looking for a huge mass up animal. He believed that his concept of a good animal to eat

was the same as that of the !Kung’s . Nevertheless, for the !Kungs a good animal to eat was the one that had the most fat instead of considering meat or size. “Naïve realism” affected Lee’s observations of the !Kung’s preferences, failing to realize their meaning of a “good kill”.
The Bushmen had a custom of making each other feel bad about their kills; an animal was never good enough. They would criticize themselves to in nasty ways so none would become arrogant. This is an example of “explicit culture”, for the Bushmen it was a normal thing to do; they all new the meaning behind this custom and it was important among the culture to maintain arrogance out of everybody’s system. They were all the same no matter how big their accomplishments were.
In the other had this is an example of “tacit culture” from Lee’s position. Although among Bushmen it was a normal thing to offend each other, Lee was no part of that culture and for him it was an unknown custom that offended him and made him feel bad about his own intensions. Lee’s intensions were to give the Bushmen the best animal he could find in order to show his appreciation to them, Lee didn’t intended to be arrogant. For the Bushmen, his animal was no different from the ones they hunted themselves so they continuously offended his choice. Bushmen weren’t aware of how this custom of theirs affected and offended Lee.
These three concepts and examples demonstrate how culture and civilizations differ from one another. Also, the difficulties and biases anthropologies are expose to throughout their research and fieldwork. The fact that in actuality anthropologies are aware of these concepts helps them provide better studies and collect more realistic information.