The Foreigner: Key Roles Within the Culture of Anthropology
Christina L. Birdsall-Jones, John Curtin Institute of Public Policy, Curtin University of Technology
The situation of the migrant as a foreigner in a foreign land is an established part of the panoply of human experience. It is not an established part of the panoply of human experience to seek out the status of foreigner as a career choice, which for anthropologists is an integral feature of the research experience. This is something that belongs uniquely to the culture of anthropology. The first field experience is regarded as having signal importance in the anthropologist’s acquisition of and participation in the culture of anthropology. This is in part because it is held to be the transforming moment in which the student becomes the anthropologist. Those students of anthropology who have conducted fieldwork leave the field as anthropologists. Those who do not conduct fieldwork remain students of anthropology. Two further elements of the field experience which may be thought of as defining the experience of anthropology are the ‘key informant’ and the experience of culture shock. How can we understand these definitive elements of the experience of anthropology as distinctive elements in the culture of anthropology?
