ABSTRACT
T h e main achievement in field-work consists, not in a passive registering of facts, but in the constructive draft ing of w h a t might be called the charters of native institutions. T h e observer should not function as a mere a u t o m a t o n ; a sort of combined camera and phonographic or shorthand recorder of native statements. Whi le making his observations the field-worker must constantly construct : he must place isolated data in relation to one another and study the manner in w h i c h they integrate. T o put it paradoxical ly one could say that Tacts' do not exist in sociological any more than in physical real i ty ; that is, they do not dwell in the spatial and temporal continuum open to the untutored eye. T h e principles of social organisation, of legal constitution, of economics and religion have to be constructed by the observer out of a multitude of manifestations of vary ing significance and relevance. I t is these invisible realities, only to be discovered by inductive computation, b y selection and construction, w h i c h are scientifically important in the study of culture. L a n d tenure is typical of such 'invisible facts'.
