Road Through the Rain Forest

These are not dramatized men and women, but actual individuals, some living, some dead, of flesh and blood. . . . Conventional ethnographies are usually writings about people with no personal names, no utterances, no feelings, no individual life experiences. Rather than beating the life out of the data, as academic writing frequently does, I have tried to squeeze it back in (ix).

Not only does the author include the personal experiences of individuals among these people, but the author actually uses those individual experiences as the "footing of data" (x), rather than vice versa, as do most ethnographers. He also proudly includes himself as an actor in his study: "The lives I write about---mine included (and I offer no apology for my intrusion in the text)---are neither strictly biographical nor explained by conventional social science models. . . . Rather, they are meant as . . . time-slice illustrations of a range of individual experiences that normative anthropological monographs . . . usually m

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sorrow that such a culture is indeed so profoundly threatened. The author's deep concern for these people and their culture is contagious and affects the sensitive reader with its tragic undercurrents. The author does not take a superior stance with respect to the people he is chronicling. To the contrary, he identifies with them in many instances, and even sees them and their culture as superior in many ways to himself and his own culture. Here he compares himself to the warrior/leader Ila: I felt that Ila and I were very much alike. We both seemed to take an odd, detached view of our own respective cultures. . . . But in many ways he was far more accomplished than I: his observations and descriptive skills, his memory, his facility for languages, his story-telling ability, his tactful relationships with almost everyone. He was a natural anthropologist; I was trying to be taught. Only the perverse fortunes of birth and opportunity brought me to study his culture (35). The author, living with these people, takes note of the fascinating process whereby the anthropologist becomes more and more a part of the society under examination, and less and less a part of the modern world left behind. Noting the "current events" covered b
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Ila Ila, Papua Guinea, Api Ila, Highlands Highway, Api' Ila, Rain Forest, modern world, Illinois Waveland, awa life, Road Rain, concern people culture, road rain forest, individual experiences, author writes, awa people, people culture, concern people, road rain, rain forest,
Approximate Word count = 1278
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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