1.7 Reaching for an Insider’s Point of View

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Define the notion of insider’s point of view.
• Critique the notion of insider’s point of view, explaining how it is never perfectly achievable.
• List and describe the distinctive methods anthropologists deploy in their attempts to represent an insider’s point of view

Bettina Shell-Duncan’s work on FGC demonstrates the importance of setting aside your own values and opinions in order to see an issue from the point of view of those directly involved. This often means working across contexts, whether studying another group or another culture. Anthropologists across the four fields apply this technique. Cultural anthropologists talk to people and participate in social activities in order to understand cultural life. Archaeologists rely on artifacts and fossils to reconstruct the sociocultural life of peoples in earlier times and different places. Through these different methods, anthropologists all aim for the same thing: they want to understand the perspectives of the people who practice a particular culture, sometimes called an insider’s point of view.