ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how one might begin to detect the presence of cultural complex systems in which one may be caught. Craig San Roque approaches the matter through a conversational exchange with a man who spent most of his working life within indigenous Australian cultures. This man is typical of people who experience intensities of unconscious confusion and communication in ethnic border regions. Craig suggests that a localised cultural complex can be keenly felt by sensitive individuals who, in turn, act out the complex in their own life patterns. As individuals we may be “swimming” in a localised complex without fully understanding what we are immersed in. Some articulate what is going on and, in doing so, they risk being denigrated. Speaking one's mind, while being swept up in the current of enculturated complex systems, requires considerable presence of mind and discipline. Craig describes being sustained by Malinowski's approach to participant observation. The primary field work of Bronislaw Malinowski was situated, circa 1915–20, among islands north of Australia; of his approach he says this: “It is good for the ethnographer to put aside camera, notebook and pencil, and join in himself in what is going on … I am not certain if this is equally easy for everyone … ”.
