An Ethnography of Encounters: A Methodology for the Enquiry Into the Relation Between the Individual and Society

Abstract

An ethnography of encounters is the detailed protocol of the interaction among two or more persons in a social situation where each has something-however large or trivial-to gain or lose in the course of the event. This paper proposes that such ethnographic records are a new form of recording and reportage and recommends the creation of a corpus of literature of this genre. After defining the genre, and giving two examples from the author's fieldwork, the discussion turns to the value of such reportage in the formulation of ethnological theory. The protocols reveal that individual actors enter into social interaction with personal and private motives, with variant values and attitudes, and with differential sets of social skills and knowledge. These ends and skills are important to the forms such events display and to the outcome of the encounters. This suggests that in the formulation of models of social behavior it is necessary to introduce individual actors and personal motivations. Social models hav...