Participant observation as a system of contextualization of the ethnographic methods: Esther Hermitte's field research in the Chiapas Highlands, 1960-1961

Abstract

This paper analyzes the scope of the term "participant observation" as an ethnographic technique to collect data. By means of written documents that belong to a specific research process, we open access to the myriad activities developed by Argentine social anthropologist Esther Hermitte in the Chiapas Highlands in 1960-1, which ended up in her discovery of a supernatural political system. Such activities, which seem to complement or even supplement the real techniques [interviews, questionnaires, surveys] of the proper research, turn participant observation into a device that helps the researcher to become familiar with the contexts that render meaning to what happens in the researcher-tzeltal Indians relationship. In this view, participant observation leaves the realm of the techniques, unilaterally conceived by the academic field, and becomes an expression that encompasses the ways in which the people and their researchers negotiate the terms of their encounters and, in so doing, produce [mutual] understanding and knowledge