Ilongot Headhunting

I am most indebted to my Ilongot friends and companions whose names (pseudonyms, for obvious reasons) appear in this book. It has been a pleasure to recollect our conversations and days of walking together along the trails (v).

The debate in ethnographical studies continues over researcher bias. It is the opinion here that the ethnographer should be personally involved in his subjects' lives in order to not only deepen his research but also to prevent their becoming mere statistics for objective analysis.

Rosaldo makes the important point that only by seeing the subjects in a particular study as unique can the ethnographer come to a meaningful and effective conclusion with respect to which methods and concepts should be used in that specifi

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illusion created by the preeminent methods of anthropological research" (1). One way Rosaldo avoids traditional Western-oriented biases is to take the Ilongots on their own terms, to assess their society according to that society's realities: "The scope of my project thus definitively moved beyond social structure to encompass the distinctive ways in which Ilongot conduct is culturally patterned, institutionally grounded, and historically produced" (19). Rosaldo also allows the Ilongots to speak for themselves in narrative form. Traditional ethnographers might protest that such a methodology might sidestep some of the biases of the Western ethnographer, but it also introduces the biases of the Ilongots themselves. In other words, why should the ethnographer take these people at their word? What ensures that what they are telling Rosaldo is true? However, Rosaldo does not take the narratives at face value as accurate or comprehensive portraits of Ilongot life and reality. Instead, he considers the narratives in the context of his own observations and non-narrative research. Also, the author argues that "ethnographers should attend carefully to compositional [narrative] modes, for what we have to say is rarely separable from how
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1443
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)