Odd Man Out: The Participant Observer in an Absolutist Setting

Abstract

The time has long past since fieldwork was done primarily in remote, preliterate societies. Today's fieldwork is frequently located close to. home, at least in a geographic sense (see Messerschmidt, 1981). This proximity usually precludes the need to learn a new language, to puzzle through exotic belief systems and political structures, or to learn how to participate in the life of a community with few important points in common with one's own. Nonetheless, fieldworkers may be culturally distant from the people and institutions encompassed by their field site. When this is the case, they are still strangers despite their proximity to home, and they must be alert to the requisites of gaining access, on the one hand, and of maintaining it, on the other. In both instances, proper role behavior is essential. Behaving properly, generally speaking, is the primary focus of this article. The several issues I will discuss were generated by my recent eighteen months of research in a fundamentalist Christian school and church. As a Jew, both at the time of my entry in and departure from the pseudonymnous Bethany Baptist Church and Bethany Baptist Academy, I was, and indeed remained, the odd man out. This was the basic fact affecting my relationship and response to the world of Bethany. Bethany Baptist Academy is a K-12 school with approximately 350 students, 70 percent of whom are from Bethany Baptist Church families. At the time of my study, it was eight years old and'financially viable. It had established itself as a respectable educational institution in the community of Hartney, the city of 50,000 people in which it is located. Based on the relatively low turnover rates of both students and teachers, I judge it to be a stable school. In short, Bethany Baptist Academy gives every indication of having a secure future. The issues I will explore in this article are (1) the nature of the participant observers' deception, (2),the limits of the role deception they practice to advance their work, and (3) the limits of the human participant observers' role. In this third point, I am using Freilich's distinction between the human and the\research participant observer. The former refers to behavior and outlook that characterize researchers in general, as human beings, unrelated to the requirements of the6ir research projects. The latter refers to behavior fashioned to be effective for research purposes (Freilich, 1970:535-36). Before discussing these issues, I will describe the background of my study, the fieldwork procedure, and my role in and reactions to Bethany.