Go where you are driven, take what you are given, and, when in doubt, be silent

In honor of election day in the United States I thought I’d tip my hat to Richard Fenno’s book _Home Style: House Members In Their Districts_, whose long appendix on pariticpant observation is the location of one of my favorite fieldwork dictums: go where you are driven, take what you are given, and, when in doubt, be silent. It’s one of my favorite pieces on participant observation because it challenges so many of the things that anthropologists take for granted: Fenno’s work was with people much more powerful than him, and he considers objectivty to be a goal which is not only unproblematic but desireable. Some day (at this point it’ll be like 2011) when I’m teaching a fieldwork methods course Fenno will definitely be on my list. Happy election day all!

Alex Golub is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He studies mining and petroleum development in Papua New Guinea, as well as American culture in to the online game World of Warcraft. You can contact him at rex@savageminds.org