The Long and the Short of Ethnographic Research among the Nahua of Northern Veracruz, Mexico

Abstract

Long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico provides the basis for a critical evaluation of commitment to a single research site over decades. We discuss positive and negative features of this strategy as well as its effect on understanding of basic anthropological concepts. [Mexico, Nahuas, longitudinal studies, fieldwork, comparative perspective] In this contribution, we discuss our ongoing ethnographic research in a single Nahua (modern Aztec) village of 600 people located in northern Veracruz on Mexico's Gulf Coast. 1 Many of the benefits of long-term ethnographic research are seemingly apparent, even obvious (Royce and Kemper 2002:xvi); from our own experience, these have included a more complete sample of observations, better control of the local language, increased chance of observing people in both habitual settings and crisis situations, improved documentation of longterm trends (e.g., the domestic cycle or socioeconomic change), correction of earlier observations and premature conclusions, and greater opportunity to assemble a variety of cultural materials such as oral narrations, musical and dance performances, and ritual practices. We would like to review what, for us, are the tremendous rewards of the signature practice of research in sociocultural anthropology, namely ethnography based on participant-observation, and then discuss a few drawbacks of commitment to a single field site over the long run. We will also discuss briefly how the experience of long-term fieldwork has caused us to reevaluate and come to a deeper understanding of certain key assumptions and concepts in anthropology. These assumptions and concepts concern the character of rural village life, economic behavior in non-Euroamerican cultures, and the role of the ethnographer as cultural interlocutor. Long-term ethnographic research has also caused us to reexamine the concept of culture itself. Culture, from the North American perspective, might arguably be considered one of anthropology's major contributions to world scholarship, but it certainly has become a staple in the training of undergraduate

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