by Shah-Kapoor

Created on: December 23, 2008   Last Updated: March 10, 2009

My love affair with anthropology!

I spent 3 years studying a population via the use of anthropological field methods. Here, I want to talk particularly about the struggles I faced in the process, and the advantages of being a native in the culture I studied.

I studied the Gujarati community in Gujarat, India - known for its migratory nature. This description is about a pilot project where I lived near a village, and observed and interacted with the community - - and obviously took notes, that you see here. This research took place in 2005, after which I returned to the US to complete the second leg of the project.

This article would help any anthropologist who is planning to take on a cross-cultural study, where research in a foreign land is involved. Look out for my next piece on 'negotiations with self' later this month.

Advantages of being a Diasporic Native'

Before I began my research, I thought of all the issues that I might face (things that would influence me and that I might influence, consciously or unconsciously) during the interviews. Being an insider to the Gujarati community, I anticipated that I would be at an advantage when I conducted these fifty USbased nation-wide interviews. For instance, as a member of the Gujarati community, I was already aware of some "basic rules, forms of etiquette, important values, as well as some explanations of why things are done or what happens if they are not done" (Edgerton & Langness, 1974).

In addition to being a community member, I believed that I was also at an advantage as a researcher because instead of concentrating primarily on, as Spencer describes, Malinowski's "master-pieces of description". I believed in focusing on something that Edgerton and Langness suggested: the daunting task to not only observe what was different, but ask the question to members of the community - Why is it different?"

Fieldwork in Gujarat, India

In an attempt to explain why and who holds on certain beliefs about religion, marriage, or education, I felt that my fieldwork needed to include learning about people's histories, not just from expatriate Gujarati participants in the US, but also from indigenous Gujaratis in Gujarat, India. In the initial stages of my research, I felt the need to visit India to explore the Gujarati culture and then extend that explanation by searching for a more general understanding of diasporic Gujaratis in the US. It is for this reason that I

spent a few preparatory months doing in-depth interviews and

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