Stumbling Toward Truth

Book excerpt: The essayists in Stumbling Toward Truth are anthropologists who have paused to share personal experiences that uncover important truths theyve learned by living with and trying to understand others. The twenty-nine poignant fieldwork tales collected here reveal much about what anthropology can teach about others as well as ourselves, the spirit of the ethnographic enterprise, and issues of crosscultural humanity and humaneness. Readers will discover from these once-private stories from around the world that much of what anthropologists learn about themselves and others is totally unanticipated. Oftentimes, cultural truths and unexpected realities are stumbled upon. These lessons, none for which social science training offered adequate preparation, remain perhaps the most memorable and critical of fieldwork.