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El antropólogo inocentesecond-hand

Published by Anagrama · History and archaeology · ISBN 9788433960825

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An account of Nigel Barley's first fieldwork. Trained in anthropology at Oxford, he settled in a mud hut in Cameroon to study the Dowayo people. Published in 1983, halfway between travel writing and an ethnographic diary, it tells with irony everything the theory had not taught him: the misunderstandings, the illnesses, the boredom and how hard it is to get an honest answer.

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Who it's for
For readers curious about anthropology without needing to know it, and for students of the field: the Chilean anthropologist María Pía Poblete considers it basic reading, though she faults it for judging everything by Western standards.
Why people still read it
The British Museum first published it almost as a curiosity, and its success led to a Penguin paperback; it has since been reprinted many times and translated into several languages. It is credited with puncturing the idealised image of fieldwork through humour.

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