ABSTRACT
To introduce the final set of readings of Part I, this selection explores the researcher’s role in developing hypotheses, studying, and writing about the dynamics between patients and healers. Cassell challenges the idea that the researcher should or is able to avoid interfering with and thereby modifying the field of study. Given that even sciences such as physics recognize the impossibility of noninterference, she asks why we should expect social science researchers to be any less intrusive. Like Barsh in the previous selection, Cassell argues for active involvement in research, in the full spirit of anthropological participant-observation.
