Colonialism and Ethnography: Foreword to Pierre Bourdieu's "Travail et travailleurs en Algrie" Author(s): Pierre Bourdieu, Derek Robbins, Rachel

Gomme Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 13-18 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3695052 . Accessed: 21/07/2011 13:34
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Colonialismand

ethnography

et Forewordto PierreBourdieu's Travail travailleursen Algirie

BY TRANSLATION DEREK ROBBINS & RACHEL GOMME

Derek Robbinshas translated 'Statisticsand sociology' (Bourdieu's introductionto Part I of Travailet travailleursen Algarie), with a commentary, as a Social Politics Working Paper,published by the School of Social Sciences, Universityof East London. He has also published translationsof texts by LucienLivy-Bruhl,Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant and Michel Foucault. Rachel Gommeis sub-editor
TODAY of ANTHROPOLOGY

PIERRE BOURDIEU
An extractfrom Travailet travailleursen Alg rie (Paris/TheHague: Mouton,1963, pp. 258-68). Pierre Bourdieu(1930-2002) was Professor of Sociology at the College de France, Parisfrom 1981 until his death, but he studied philosophy at the Acole Normale Superieure in the early 1950s and carried out anthropological research in Algeria - which he called 'fieldworkin philosophy' - during the Algerian War of Independence. He published some 40 major texts, the best knownof which are, perhaps, Outline of a theory of in practice(1972, 1977), Reproduction education,society and culture (1970, 1977) and Distinction (1979, 1984). Most of his sociological research in France progressed logically from his original anthropological studies and there was a coherent and continuous dialectical relationshipbetween his scientific studies and his social and political commitment. If we are to subject to scrutinythe ideology accordingto which all research conducted in a colonial situation is essentially contaminated,we need to remind ourselves of this ideology. 'If', Michel Leiris writes, 'for ethnography even more thanfor otherdisciplines,it is alreadyclear that pure science is a myth, we must in additionrecognize that under such circumstancesthe desire to be pure scientists weighs nothing against this truth; working in colonized who not only come from the colcountriesethnographers, onizing nation but are also representativesof that nation since it is the state which assigns our tasks, have less justification than anyone for washing our hands of the policies pursuedby the state and its agents in respect of these societies which we choose as our field of study and for which, in our encounterswith them, we have been careful - if only out of professionalastuteness- to show the sympathy and open-mindednesswhich experience has shown to be indispensableto the smooth progressof research.'" Complicitas we are, this all seems to go withoutsaying. We contrast 'pure' science with ideology enlisted in the service of a given power or a given establishedorder.And we add that the pure intention to create a pure science is The necessarilydoomed to failure.2 postulateon which the demonstration basedis thatthe ethnographer, is becausehe belongs to the colonizing society, bears the burdenof the original sin, that of colonialism. In orderto demonstrate this we need only make implicit reference to the wellof known argument historicismandsociologism according to which any social or historicalscience is relativebecause the historianandthe sociologist areparticipants a period in and a society. But in the specific case of ethnology, this historico-cultural embeddednessis seen as the foundation of a complicity, and thus an indelible culpability. 'In this is sense, therefore,ethnography closely linked to the colonial fact, whether ethnographers like it or not. In general they work in the colonial or semi-colonial territories dependent on their country of origin, and even if they of receive no direct supportfrom the local representatives their government,they are toleratedby them and more or less identified, by the people they study, as agents of the

55

and a professional translator from French and Russian into English. Her email is atrachel@uk2.net.

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Right:Arab guide infront of thepost office in the Europeansettlement,El Kantara,Algeria, c. 1914. The guide was employedby the French authorities,and accompaniedofficial visitors to variousparts of the interior

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But administration.'3 is this originalcomplicitydifferentin naturefrom that which binds the sociologist studying his own society to his own class? If class barriersseparate individualswithin a society, can class solidaritynot bring togetherindividualsin differentsocieties, across the coloMust we assume, as is often maintained,that nial barrier? only natives can conduct 'pure' ethnology? Why should such an ethical andepistemologicalprivilege exist? These are questions that we take good care not to ask, because they would distanceus from the firm groundof undisputed evidence. It is indisputablethat every action derives its meaning from the context in which it is performed,in this case the colonial system. This system is a given which the ethnologist has to allow for because he is placed, by the force and the logic of circumstances,within a social form which existed before he did, which is not of his making, and which he must accept even if he disapprovesof it or tries to dissociate himself from it. Moreover,it is a form from which he benefits even in his profession as ethnologist, the since, like any otherinterpersonal relationship, relation between observerandobserveddevelops againstthe background of the relationshipof dominationwhich has been objectively establishedbetweenthe colonizing society and the colonized society. For the ethnologist there follows from this an absolute imperative,not ethicalbut scientific:thereis no behaviour, attitudeor ideology which can be described,understoodor explained objectively without referenceto the existential situationof the colonized as it is determinedby the action of of economic andsocial forces characteristic the colonial
13

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL19 NO2, APRIL 2003

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do good. Thus we must admit clearly, to ourselves and to others,thatthe colonizer of good will is doomed to empty word-spinning,and that the first and only radical questioning of the system is thatwhich the system itself generates, namely revolution against the principleson which it is based. It is therefore importantthat the ethnographer give up the attemptto makehis 'mission' a reversecrusade designed to expiate the original crime, and separate the problems of science from the anxieties of conscience. Perhapsthe most impureof all motivationsis actuallythe moralistaim of pure intention. Denunciationsof the compromises of ethnology often mask the simple conviction that there is no pure science relatingto an impureobject, as if science andthe scientist (in 'participated' the ethnologicalsense) in the impurityof theirobject. But we shouldremindourselves of the advice old Parmenides gave to Socrates: there is no noble or ignoble subject for science. For example, though they aroused profound disapproval,the redistributionsof the populationin Algeria conductedby the Frencharmy represented an eminently appropriateobject of study for myriadscientific and humanreasons- not least because it will henceforthbe impossible to understand Algerianrural society without considering the extraordinaryand irreversible upheavalwhich they broughtabout. Whatwe can quitejustifiablydemandof the ethnologist is thathe do his best to restoreto othermen the meaningof theirbehaviours,a meaningof which, among otherthings, they have been dispossessed by the colonial system. Refusing to seek a refuge and an escape from his own anxieties in the dramasand anguishof others, the ethnologist can at one and the same time recognize thathis testimony is of no use to anyone and feel boundby the moralimperative of proclaimingwhat men have said to him - not for the sake of his saying it, but because they had this to say. How are these problems, so often posed in terms of conventions, manifested in the actual conduct of a study? There is no doubt that this research would have been impossible without an official sanction, indispensablein orderto avoid cross-examination officials;this sanction by was provided by the Institut National de Statistiques et d'Etudes Economiques. Statisticians and sociologists, groupedtogether in a scientific researchassociation, had to in common the clearly statedwill and determination do in theirpower to discoverthe truthandto make everything it known. The same contractboundthe personresponsible for sociological studies to the Algerian and French interviewers. From the very first day, the problemwas explicitly statedand everyone understoodthat,having chosen to undertakethis study ratherthan not to undertakeit - the only real choice - it was possible, allowing for some concessions essential to its completion,to conduct it with the desired degree of objectivity.If they managed,in spite of the brevityof theirtrainingin interviewtechniquesandthe difficult circumstances in which they had to work, to which follows, it gatherthe lively and real documentation is above all because they were passionately interestedin their interlocutorswith symthe researchand approached patheticattentiveness.Having decidedto conduct,in a difficult and, one might say, 'impure' situation, an investigationof which they expected anythingbut a confirmationof naive ideologies, they simply performedtheir task as public scribes, without deluding themselves that they were accomplishing a historic mission or a moral duty.6 Of all the difficulties presentto the study,those arising from the political situation might have seemed the most insurmountable.While, as Maurice Halbwachs rightly notes, war and revolutiontend to bring profoundchanges
ANTHROPOLOGYTODAYVOL 19 NO 2, APRIL 2003

Belkadi ben Namou,Arab interpreter(deira)and guide appointedto the HiltonSimpsonparty visiting Algeria c. 1914. Decorated by the French authorities,he was assigned to official visitors by the colonial government.

system. To maintainotherwise would mean, by a sort of ontological sleight of hand,conjuringaway what is in fact the essence of the situation,namely the system of 'predetermined, inescapable relationships independent of the will of individuals' by reference to which attitudes and behavioursare organized.This is the trueresponsibilityof the ethnologist. However this may be, we have to choose between the language of necessity, or fate, and that of freedom and responsibility.Unless we believe in a universaland original responsibility,are we not peddlingempty phrasesand false questionswhen we speak of the moralresponsibility or culpabilityof the ethnologist?We say: 'We cannot dissociate ourselves from the actions of the colonial administration, actions in which (as citizens and employees) we necessarily have our share of responsibility and from which, if we disapproveof them, it can never be enough to make futile attemptsto dissociate ourselves.'4What does this share of responsibilityconsist of? Is it a share of the responsibilitywhich weighs collectively on the colonizing nation?But what can we say aboutthis collective responsibility itself?5Isn't the aim of this desperate attemptto salvage responsibilityin an inescapablesituationin fact to snatch freedom from the grip of the system and thus to restorea wholly clear conscience, allowing us to feel that there is a place in such a universefor good will? Once we have chosen to pose the problem in ethical terms, we are obliged to recognize that, as long as the system persists, the actions with the most generous of formal intentionswill in practiceprove to be either completely futile or, because they take their meaningfrom the context, objectively bad. And we will always be open to the accusationof taking advantageof injusticein orderto

14

A Kabylefrom Tazairt, Algeria, photographedby Randall-Maciverfor the BritishAssociation, 1900.

MountedArab sheikh in ceremonialdress, Biskra, Algeria, 1920-21. The burnouswith braid indicates an office held underthe French authorities.

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and psychological action, the researchershad always to The questionsmost likely expect to be met with suspicion.8 to arouse distrust were obviously those which related, directly or indirectly,to politics.9But as soon as trusthad been established, everything that had previously been an obstacle became an asset. Thus the same questions could help to establisha true dialogue,because the interviewees saw the choice to ask these questions as an indication of true understanding."' Nowhere did we find that taking notes inspiredreticence; once trust had been established, the interviewees found it completely normal that their responses should be written down, and even sometimes insisted on it, no doubt seeing in this a confirmationof the seriousness of the study and of the interest taken in what 0i they said." cc. In the ruralcommunities,which are more stronglyintegrated,our task was made easier by the fact thattrust,like coI mistrust, was collective and global; by contrast, in the a urbansetting the effort to gain trusthad to be made again and again.'2 The researchersemphasizedthe fact that they 0 I were taking partin a study aimed at publicizing the living m? . ... cc. conditions of the Algerianpeople. In a revolutionarysituation, these are issues which carryweight, since everyone to the social structure divertthe attentionof those who knows that to describe is to denounce.13 But trust only and are completelyabsorbedby them from any otherconcerns, became complicity when the interviewer introducedhis we nevertheless hoped, by taking as our object the very own experience into the dialogue.'4On several occasions root of the most immediate and everyday concerns, to an interviewee, suddenlyinterrupting cautious and cona induce those interviewed to engage fully in dialogue.7 ventional statement, would say: 'Listen, scrap that and Thus, for example, each time we tried to question relo- let's startagain.' Most of the time the interview situation cated peasants about their former life, we met with was forgotten to such an extent that the informantsfelt shocked, even hostile surprise; on the other hand, we obliged to entertaintheirvisitors,offering them tea, coffee encounteredlively interest once we returnedto the only or fruit. Questioned about his income, an unemployed subject worthy of study in their eyes, their currentsuf- manual worker in Constantinereplied: 'We don't know what comfort is; as you can see, we don't even drink fering. Nevertheless, in an atmosphereof police interrogation coffee' - a discreet way of apologizing for failing to offer anything. Perceivedas an outsider,the ethnologistis notjudged by the criteriawhich operate in everyday relations between membersof the group. Algerian researchers,on the other hand, are immediately situatedin the social hierarchyby the interviewees,andthusencounterthe difficultiesarising from differencesin social status."It is easy to understand why, of all the possible combinations,the most effective interview team proved to be that consisting of one Algerian and one French interviewer. The team of two French people aroused mistrustand was always likely to garneronly conformiststatements,since the interviewees were inclined to express themselves less on their own behalf than as spokespeople for their community.On the other hand, when 'educated'members of their own communitywere present,intervieweestendedto adoptthe attitude they thought was expected of them, sometimes repeating a rote-learnedlesson. Moreover, a number of questions which could not have been asked by an Algerian, either because he would have been expected to know the answer or because they might have seemed improperif put by him, seemed naturalto the interviewees when they came from a French interviewer.'6Thus, a rationaldivision of labourwas graduallyestablishedin the mixed team."7 Reticence or outright refusal was only encountered among individuals at the highest social levels, especially among the semi-educatedwith a veneerof learning,whose . mistrust was groundedin the refusal to be treated as an object of study,in the fear of being made to look foolish, in the claim to understand the ins and outs of the study, all and finally, in the sense of the risks they ran, much more real for them thanfor people who, as they frequentlymainThose from the intermediate tained, had nothing to lose."8 workersin modem industries,who categories,particularly have none of that bourgeois cautiousnesswhich is mani-

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ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL19 NO2, APRIL 2003

15

The son of Bou Hafs ben Chenouf Sheikhof Mechounech,Algeria, 1914.

fested as a fear of committingthemselves, freely accepted the unspokencontractwhich is the only thing, in this kind of context, which can permit genuine dialogue. On the otherhand,they were also equippedto understand sitthis uationandto respondto it in a coherentmanner,unlike the unemployed, day-labourers and manual workers, who were as disconcertedby the researcher'squestionsas they were by the problemsof everydaylife.'9 in Thus, the experience of a studyundertaken the midst of a crisis in colonial society refutes the normative discourses andabstractsophistry.Because all of these actions are set in the context of the colonial system, relations between persons always appearagainstthe backgroundof the hostility which separates groups and constantly threatensto resurfaceto corruptthe meaning and the very existence of communication:effectively, because the two societies are separatedby a multitudeof institutionaland spontaneousbarriers, everythinghappensas if the logic of the system tended to reduce communicationto an indispensable minimum. In this context, the simple fact of appearingto the other's gaze alreadyin itself constitutesa language,in which physical type andclothing arethe signs and which most often forms the sum total of communication. Between colonizer and colonized, relations usually remain 'instrumental' and language, similarly, is only exceptionallyits own end. In the absence of deliberately instituted dialogue, behaviouris perceived as a set of signs within which the smallest detail - gesture, intonation, smile - acquires a symbolic value so that speech is always accompaniedby barely perceptible harmonics which give it its tonality. Because the colonized, as is often the case with oppressed people, pays extremely close attention to the smallest details of the behaviourof the dominantsociety, because he is prepared engage all of his sensitivityin an anodyne to exchange, he infallibly picks up these tiny details which incline him towardseithercomplete trustor hostility.20 The words or gestures which seem to us most conventionalgreeting,shakinghands, smile - arehere signs of recognition:breakingwith reciprocalavoidanceandthe inequality of the customary relationships, they have something miraculousaboutthem. Thus, because it inverts the usual direction of the relationship, the attitude of the French interviewer,who has come to listen, observe, learn and is understand, almostalways greetedwith a sortof wonder. Like every enquiry,but more so than any otherbecause of the circumstancessurrounding this studyis the resultof it, a host of compromises and sacrifices. To this extremely diverse object of study, we could only bring very limited methods of investigation.Moreover,since there were virtuallyno scientificallyestablisheddatain this field, stereotypes and prejudicesstill had currency- for example the idea, derived from individual examples, that there was a high level of instabilityin employment.Turningits back on a disintegrating worldwhose contradictions could not it have failed to discover,colonial science had no choice but to flee into times past. And indeed, when it was not devoting its efforts to supplying the colonial power with the means to establish and maintain itself (as with the for study of marabouts, example), when it did not go quite as far as providinga pseudo-scientificjustificationfor the prejudicesof the colonizing caste, it prudentlytook refuge in ethnology and pre-colonial history. Several studies motivated by an opposite intention gave only a selective andmutilatedversion of reality,more sentimentalthanscientific. Indicatorsof the decline in living standardswere collected, but less apparentthough no less dramaticphenomena, such as the disintegrationof social structuresor the debatebetweentraditionandinnovation,were ignored.

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More generally, rather than attempting to understand events and people in their irreducibleuniqueness, these researcherswere often contentto transposemodels drawn from the experience of industrialsocieties. The purely ethnographicapproachcame up against a realitywhich was too broad,too complex and too fluid for us even to think about generalizingfrom the conclusions offered by monographs,however numerous, as it would but have meantrunningthe risk thatparticular, particularly facts relegated more importantbut less obvious striking, aspects of reality to the background.Thus, the persistent impression of wretchedness and despair which haunts observersof urbanshantytowns could resultin a failureto note that the shanty town allows its inhabitantsto create, albeit at the lowest level, their own form of economic, But social and psychological equilibrium.2' how could the ethnographerfail to be aware of the deficiencies of the intuitionisminto which he is forced by the lack of such indispensable instrumentsas censuses analysable at the level of local units, civil statusregisters, or land registers - particularlywhen he is confronted with this immense field with its ill-defined boundaries, this world where urbanizationhas introduced, at least on the surface, a diversification of activities, and in which it would be unipointless to look for strictlydefined social structures, form models of behaviourand simple types of attitudes? Only statistical studies can identify pattern in diversity, levelling of the material hierarchyof lifestyles in apparent conditions of existence, and the latent order in manifest inconsistencies. On the otherhand, only ethnographic knowledge of the of work in ruraland urbansociety could supply problems the set of initial hypotheses used to draw up the questionnaire.22 Moreover,in the colonial situation,work is the preeminent locus of conflict between traditionalmodels and those imported and imposed by colonization - in other and words, between the imperativesof rationalization traditional cultures; it follows that statistical patterns can only be understoodif the model from which the current behaviourdrawsits meaning,even as it betraysor repudiANTHROPOLOGYTODAYVOL 19 NO 2, APRIL 2003

16

Shawia girl in the everyday dress of the early 20th century.Photo by M.W Hilton-Simpson,1920.

ates it, is reconstituted ethnology.Every action refersat by one andthe same time to the old model, which formedpart of a system now partiallyor completely destroyed,to the new situationand, finally, to the model which is to come, which can be detected in the eccentricities or contradictions of currentbehaviour.

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Collaborationbetween sociologists and statisticianswas useful firstly in allowing us to compensate for the weakness of the proceduresavailable and to adopt a method suited to a uniqueobject,by juxtaposingan ethnologically inspired study, which could offer the explanatory hypotheses, with descriptiveresearchrelating to a wider By population.23 comparingthe two sets of resultswe were able to perform a continual and reciprocal checking. datasuppliedby the statistical Knowledge of the structural studyallowed us to monitorthe validity of the sampleused in the sociological study andto verify or weight the sociological hypotheses;24 conversely,analysis of the interviews the statisticiansto process theirdatain an origencouraged inal way.25 Finally,becausethe social variationis relatively limited, in-depth study of a numberof typical cases from differentcategories allowed us to grasp the internalunity of the particular configurationof featureswhich makes up the individual.26 we analysedthe interviews,we had the As sense that the differences between individuals in a given category had much more to do with their level of awareness of theirsituationandtheirgreateror lesser capacityto express it clearly than with objective differences in their behaviourand attitudes.Thus, reading throughthe interof views of a homogeneousgroup,a sortof typical portrait the characteristicperson in this category would emerge; and quite frequentlythe deeperknowledge of a particular individual,encountered previouslyin the caf6 de la Marsa, the casbahor the Mahieddindistrict,providedthe intuitive link which allowed us to bring the disparate elements emerging from differentinterviews together into a living whole. At the very least, very often a statementmade by a more lucid subject, able to express himself more clearly, broughttogethereverything of which the others had presented a partial, blurred picture into a single clear and vibrantimage." Based as it is on unimpeachablestatistical data and on methodical analysis, the selection of typical individuals allows us to return, via a long detour and without the risk of lapsing into impressionistic intumethods of ethnography. itionism, to the traditional Thus, understandingcan only advance through a con-

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stant interchangebetween evidence drawnfrom intimacy - blinding evidence, in both senses of the word - and the evidence of statistics- blind evidence which needs to be deciphered.The familiarityderived from participationin the environment,dialogue and observationcould not do withoutthe laboriousdetourvia figures, graphsand calculation. Yet nothing would be more presumptuousthan to identify sociological science with that which is only one aspect of it, namely the mathematicalprocessing of data, andto regardthe gatheringof facts, in the form of dialogue with the particularobject, the specific individual, as the less important aspect of the research..

devant le 1Michel Leiris,'L'ethnographe

colonialisme', TempsModernes,August 1950: 359

(myemphasis). in is argument couched 2 Eventheterms which aresignificant: is already 'it clearthat','wemustin addition that','wehavelessjustification recognize thananyone...'Theartof persuading rather than
convincing. Or rather,the artof preachingto the converted. 3Leiris op.cit.: 358. 4 Leiris op.cit.: 360. 5 However naive it may appear,this problem hauntssome consciences: is the break-upof traditionalsocieties the result of harmfuland unjust policies, or the consequenceof an unavoidable evolution?In short,is it caused by will or by fate? If it is truethatthese phenomenaare simply the result of the clash of two civilizations, and if we can explain them purelythroughthe laws governingthe phenomenaof culturalcontact,it becomes clear that the responsibilityof the dominantpower, our
ANTHROPOLOGYTODAY VOL 19 NO 2, APRIL 2003

responsibility- since this is the issue - is lifted. Not completely,however: we could, like Oedipus,have tried to escape this destiny.Thus it might be claimed that the only responsibilityof the Western man is that,unwittinglyor throughself-interest,he intervenedin societies which were none of his concern.From this propositionwe could conclude equally well either that the only thing to do is to that we must continue withdrawor, on the contrary, in orderto atone for our originalcrime. 6 Thanksare due to MadameMarie-Aimde Hdlie, MademoiselleDjamila Azi, Messieurs Mohammed

Damien Samuel Azi, Raymond Guedj, Cipolin,

Hdlie, SeddoukLahmer,Ahmed Misraoui,Mahfoud Nechem, Titahand Zekkal. 7 'A war does more thansimply stirup national society,slowing passions.It profoundlytransforms down or paralysingsome of its functions,creatingor developingothers.Above all, it simplifiesthe of structure the social body, causingan extreme reduction,as Spencernoted,in the differentiation

betweenparts... The same is trueof revolutions,and perhapseven of those periodsof politicalunrestin to which, fromthe outside,nothingappears have of changedin the structure the social body.The functionsmay be the same, andcontinueto be carriedout. Merchants, workers,government officials, peasantsretaintheirpositions.But their thoughtsare elsewhere;theirfamily,professionaland social life continues,but on a muchmore automatic basis, andwith muchless personalengagement.All activitywhich is not politicalin natureis therefore similarlyreduced.'M. Halbwachs,Les causes du suicide;Introduction, 9-10. p. 8 Two anecdotessuffice to give an idea of this atmosphere:'Wewent to the subject'shome at 10.15 to am; as he was not therewe arranged returnat 2.00 in the afternoon.At 2.00 he was waiting for us in front of the building.He said to us at once: "On22 July the police came and asked the same questions as your friends(i.e. the interviewersresponsiblefor We gatheringthe basic data).I told my superiors."
17

showed our interviewers'identificationand assured him thatthis was a strictlyanonymousstudy;despite this, he remainedmistrustfulfrom the beginningto the end.' 'It was in the Belcourtdistrict,'two other researchers recount;'the subjectwas polite but clearly uneasy,and asked us if we had been sent by the Committeefor Public Safety.When we burstout I laughing,he relaxedand said: "Everything have just told you was because I didn'ttrustyou. I couldn't trustyou just like that;now I know who you are. You can ignore the answersI gave you, and start centrein the again."At Matmata,a redistribution Ch1lif plain, interviewersfound 'spontaneous' informants,the new leaderschosen by the French from a 'trainingcourse'. army,who were returning (These quotationsand those which follow are taken from the discussionwith the full groupof interviewersheld at the end of the study.) 9 This was the case with the question about whetherthe informantbelonged to a tradeunion, and sometimes the question aboutthe causes of unemployment. 10'At the end of one interviewin Oran,the workerwe had been interviewinginsisted on accompanyingus to the trolleybus.It was dusk, he was walking beside us, visibly moved: "Thank you," he said, "you have allowed me to pour out my heart."' " The tape recorderwhich would have been for invaluable,particularly the study of interviewees' linguistic system (languageused in relationto the issues raised, at differentpoints in the interview,linguistic interferencesetc.) could not be used, owing to lack of resourcesand above all because we were concernedthatit would arouse a mistrustwhich would be too difficult to overcome. Workingin teams of two, the interviewershad to learn the questionnaire heartso that they could by ask questions in a naturalmannerand did not risk the jolting the interviewee into remembering interview situation.While one of them maintained the dialogue, the other wrote down the interviewee's responses verbatim.The integratednatureof the meant that it was likely that the questionnaire interviewee, following the logic of his own responses, would answer some of the questions before they were asked:the interviewers'task was to follow the interviewee'strainof thoughtand then briefly recap at the end of the interview,asking all the stipulatedquestions in the actualwords of the Thus we hoped to combine the questionnaire. advantagesof a closed interviewwhich could be statisticallyprocessed and a free interview,or indeed a monograph. 12 'In the ruralsetting trustspreadsquickly. If just one person publicly shows trustin us, that is, is willing to discuss certainproblemswith us openly and answerus sincerely,collective resistance disappears.That is when we learn aboutthe warningsand ordersissued by the authorities.The attitudeof the authoritiesand their suspicion of us can, if we know how to use them, be very useful to us because it attractsattentionto us and, to the extent that it dissociates us from them, helps to turn the situationto our advantage.' andtradersareless trusting, 13 'Craftspeople becauseof the questionsaboutincome. A worker,on the otherhand,is not afraidto declarewhat he earns; he is all the morewilling to since he wishes to denouncethe exploitationof which he is the victim; often he shows his pay and tax slips.' was betterwhenever we 14 'The atmosphere talked of our own problemswhich are, afterall, not so differentfrom those of the interviewee.Relating our situationsin this way very much helps the smooth flow of the interview.It was also a markof greattrustwhen people asked us personalquestions, aboutour family, for example, but generallyonly those who judged that we were of the same social class did so; agricultural workersand shanty-town
18

the dwellers would not have dared.Unsurprisingly, only time someone asked me this kind of questionit was a colleague of my father's(a schoolteacher).' The qualityof the interviewsvaries "1 considerablydependingon whetheror not thereis a difference in the social origin of interviewerand interviewee.Thus a researcherwho obtained excellent interviewswhen he talked with subworkersin cities and proletarian proletarian encountereddifficulties every time he had to deal with people from the middle and upperclasses. 'Withthe Prefect's attach6in M. I had problems:he barely answeredme and surveyedme with contempt from behind his desk, as if I was a subordinate.' And in fact everythingaboutthis researcher dress, speech, bearing- bespoke his lower-class origins . 16 'What?Now you're asking me aboutmy wife?' exclaimed an Algiers refuse collector when the Algerianinterviewerasked him aboutwomen and work. " Particular difficulties arose throughthe of participation a young Algerianwoman in the research.While in middle-classenvironmentsshe obtainedexcellent interviews, among the lower classes her demeanour,her bearing,her mere presence shocked people or caused distortions.In a discussion of women and work, for example, they without could not demonstrate their traditionalism displayingrudenesstowardsher. In general,the of participation a young woman in a study of employmentwas not successful because it is not seen as a woman's place to questionmen on what is exclusively men's business. On the other hand,in the study of dwelling places conductedin JulyAugust 1961, the presence of a woman was essential because we were interviewingwomen and the interioris exclusively woman's domain. 18 'We found it was especially the higher whitecollar workerswho refused to respond;sometimes sometimes right until they ended up understanding; the end they refused to listen and simply threwus out. Some of them saw us as inferior,and treatedus as such. "I know all about statistics,"one of them said to us, "it's all made up";anothersaid: "You again, you with your ideas alreadyformed, go away."At best they answeredto please us, giving little away, without believing in what they said.' 19 'Withpeople in the lower social categoriestrust is establishedmore immediately,more intuitively and above all more comprehensivelythan with people in the higher categories.The intervieweris trustedwhateverthe content of the question, and attentionis no longer focused on the question. Moreover,their intellectualmodesty means that they don't pick apartthe question to try to find the hidden meaning,or any suspect elements in it. Someone in a social category with some intellectual pretensionswould indulge in such analysis - on false premises, we might add - believing himself well-informedenough in this type of work to be able to despise it, the kind of person who thinksof it as as "the stupidwork of the administration", one intervieweeput it.' People in the poorest categories tendedto believe that the aim of the interviewers was to find work for them or renderthem assistance. This conviction reinforcedtheirtrustand to contributed creatinga kind of complicity,but could have the disadvantageof encouragingsome to make an exaggerateddisplay of their wretchedness. 20 The sensitivity famously attributed Algerians to and to colonized people in generalis a productof the colonial system - more precisely of the inequalityin the relationsbetween colonizers and colonized. 21 For example, on the basis of 50 or so family monographswrittenin 1958 in variousAlgiers shantytowns, I had concludedthat the precarious living conditionsoperatedas a brakeon the of adoptionof urbanmodels and the transformation lifestyles. On the basis of this finding, I formedthe

hypothesisthat moving to a moderndwelling would lead to a sort of mutation,in all domains and especially in the economic, since some types of expenditurepreventedby precariousliving conditions, such as furnishingthe home, now became possible. In fact, because I had been struck of by the most obvious contradictions, which the car iron shack or the parkedoutside a corrugated from a tar-paper roof are television aerialprotruding the manifest symbol, because I had unconsciously focused on the cases of the most well-off individuals,I had failed to note what the study would reveal - that the shantytown allowed the poorestto create an equilibriumwhich moving to a moderndwelling destroyed.Thus, while it held true for a fractionof the poorly housed population,the hypothesiswas completely false in relationto all the others. 22In additionto allowing savings of time and was well money, the multiple-contentquestionnaire suited to an exploratorystudy,but could have compromisedthe qualityof the results if the researchershad not been skilled enough to adaptit to the differentsituationsand individuals. 23 In a traditional society in a process of between where the differentiation transformation, economic and social conditionsis relatively limited, the significance of the distortionarisingfrom a samplingerroris reduced. 24 It is generally recognized that thereis no better errors guaranteeagainst samplingand measurement than comparingresults obtainedwith data on the same phenomenonwhose validity has been established(cf. HerbertHyman, incontrovertibly Surveyof design and analysis, Free Press, 1960, p. 166). 25 See, for example, the verificationby calculation of hypotheses on the stabilityof employment:PartI, 'Note on methodology'. 26 Sixty individuals,selected on the basis of a typology drawnfrom a first manipulation,were questionednot only on their professionalactivities but on the whole of theirlife, in orderto resituate work among other aspects of everyday life. Through the informationthey providedon the family life of the subjects,these monographsmade it possible, among other things, to measurethe degree of in rationalization the domestic economy and the disjunctionbetween behavioursimposed by the behaviours workingenvironmentand traditional which tend to be maintainedwithin the family. The study of the changes in family life broughtaboutby moving to a moderndwelling (currentlybeing analysed)will provide more precise documentation on this issue. 27 Similarobservationscan be found in M. Halbwachs,Esquisse d'une psychologie des classes sociales, Rivibre, 1945, p. 53-54.

NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS

M. W. Hilton-Simpson (1881-1936) was a traveller,collector and ethnographerwho travelled extensivelyin North and CentralAfrica in the early part of the 20th century.Togetherwith his wife, Helen, he made a numberofjourneys among the Shawia, Berber hill tribes of the AurksMountains, SouthernAlgeria, collectingjewellery and other from artefactsfor the Pitt-RiversMuseum,Oxford 1912 until the early 1920s. He published both popular accounts of his Algerianjourneys and a numberofpapers on Arab medicineand surgeryas practised by the Shawia. TheRAIPhotographic Libraryholds over 700 cellulose nitratenegatives, which offer a comprehensivevisual documentation of Shawia crafts, customs,activities, architecture and landscape in the early 20th century. For details contactphoto@therai.org.uk.
ANTHROPOLOGYTODAYVOL 19 NO 2, APRIL 2003