ABSTRACT
There is a distinctiveness to anthropological research methodology. The fieldworker locates herself or himself in a physical space or in a frame of mind that is new and takes up the task of making ‘sense’. This chapter reprises the way in which 'transference', even if by other names, accords with the ethnographic record and how anthropology has already seen fit to give account of the routine distortions and miscommunications of social life and exchange, the emphasis is a moral one. It considers cosmopolitan politesse to be a morally optimal way of according recognition and including anyone and everyone while not basing recognition and inclusion on criteria of identity whose choice, delineation and evaluation remained anything other than matters of personal and individual intentionality. Mannerly behaviour as an ethos appears frequently in the ethnographic record: there are many and diverse instances of ‘regimes’ of formal politeness.
