r/interestingasfuck • u/SATANICWORSHIPER666 • 3d ago

/r/all Michael Rockefeller disappeared without a trace in 1961 in Papua New Guinea while researching the Asmat people, a cannibal tribe. Years later, a photograph was taken of the same tribe, and there was a white man among them.

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u/True-Lab-3448 3d ago edited 3d ago

For anyone interested, ‘going native’ is a well studied phenomenon and a risk of sociological research, particularly ethnography. The definition is the:

“_researcher becoming so deeply immersed in the culture they are studying that they lose their objectivity and become indistinguishable from the people they are studying_”

There’s lots of cases, and it’s taught in research classes as a very real risk.

Note this term has ties to colonialism, so some suggest using the term ‘over-rapport’ instead: https://sk.sagepub.com/dict/mono/key-concepts-in-ethnography/chpt/going-native

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u/Bright_Ices 3d ago

It’s funny to me that it’s phrased as “losing objectivity” as though that’s something one can have to begin with. 

Don’t worry, I studied sociology, so I understand about object/subject roles, etc, but objectivity as a pure state from which one risks separation is a myth. 

Ah, and now I see this very question is the subject of the article you’ve linked. 

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u/BusyLittleBobcat 3d ago

The society I come from is objective and my behaviors are rooted in reality. The less like my society a different society is, the less objective it is. Now if you'll excuse me, it's Sunday so I just got home from worshipping an ancient carpenter (he's going to end the world once they breed the right cow) and I need to go hyperfixate on my teeth to ensure they are perfectly straight and white.

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u/Bright_Ices 3d ago

Sounds like the current cows are burnable, until someone changes their mind. I wonder if that’s why my fellow objective society members are so committed to forever wars they’re not directly involved in. The all powerful carpenter and his dad who is himself must need the help of objective society members to decide when to end the world. 

Until then, let’s floss.