No Matter How We Asked Them, They Convinced Us That They Suffer

Ethnographers' accounts of the same rural-peasant community have sometimes prompted contradictory impressions; Redfield's and Lewis's practically opposite characterizations of Tepoztlán, Mexico, is a good case in point. It is essential that overall appraisals of the quality of life in rural communities be accurate, otherwise agents for social change might base their programs upon an ethnographer's false premises. Some critics of ethnographic methodology have proposed that an ethnographer's overall impression of his field site is a logical extension of the kinds of questions he asked; for example, if mostly positive aspects of local life are elicited, then the ethnographer's overall impression will likely be positive, and vice-versa. This proposition was tested in a small, rural-Mexican community by means of a query which elicited dialectically opposed life viewpoints. The resulting data indicate that regardless of whether "positive" or "negative" life aspects are elicited, the overall ethnographic impression will be appropriately negative. Had the researchers not surveyed a representative sample of the community's population and instead concentrated upon male informants and informants from affluent households, an erroneous, positive overall impression might have been obtained. The elicitation of opposed life viewpoints also enabled a quick pinpointing of the informants' most urgent problems, those life aspects which change agents should first concentrate upon. Des exposés d'ethnographes sur la même communauté rurale paysanne ont quelques fois suggéré des impressions contradictoires; les caractérisations pratiquement opposées de Tepoztlan, Mexique, de Redfield et Lewis en sont un bon exemple. Il est indispensable que les évaluations d'ensemble sur la qualité de la vie dans les communautés rurales soient justes; dans le cas contraire les agents du changement social peuvent baser leurs programmes sur les fausses prémisses d'un ethnographe. Quelques critiques des méthodes ethnographiques ont proposé que l'impression d'ensemble d'un ethnographe au sujet du terrain recherché est une extension logique des types de questions qu'il a posées; par exemple, si on met à jour essentiellement des aspects positifs de la vie locale, alors l'impression d'ensemble de l'ethnographe sera probablement positive et vice versa. Cette proposition a été mise à l'épreuve dans une petite communauté rurale mexicaine par le moyen d'une question qui a mis à jour des points de vue de vie