idle thought #34
Dec. 16th, 2018 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madimpossibledreamerthat's weird I never even thought about that. Sociologists actually kinda do have a prime directive. They're supposed to act as a 'natural' part of the society (see: dressing like the natives, A Private Little War) and use the group's own way of thinking about things rather than judging them by the standards of the society they come from. This has the added side effect of trying to make as little impact as possible, and if you're viewing things their way in most cases you'd go 'oh, there shouldn't be a change'.
(admittedly I only took one class on this so my memory might be off/understanding might be skewed, but we also had to do ethnographies for class so)
(in some cases it's actually even sort of secret. on one hand you want to give people the knowledge of who you are as an IRB thing. on the other hand if you're not directly referring to them and trying not to make ripples in order to
get the most accurate results possible...Star Trek, Voyages of the Space Ethnographers)
I'm not sure whether that's fallen out of favor or anything, but it was huge for a while.
(admittedly I only took one class on this so my memory might be off/understanding might be skewed, but we also had to do ethnographies for class so)
(in some cases it's actually even sort of secret. on one hand you want to give people the knowledge of who you are as an IRB thing. on the other hand if you're not directly referring to them and trying not to make ripples in order to
get the most accurate results possible...Star Trek, Voyages of the Space Ethnographers)
I'm not sure whether that's fallen out of favor or anything, but it was huge for a while.
