Kottack, What ethnographers do.

Kottack lived in Arembepe in the summer of 1962 where he had the change to experience ethnography, the firsthand study of local culture and social life.  The trip took him three hours and it was raining which made the road muddy.  Sand, lagoons and dunes came after the mud.  Kottack tells us that the “village was strung along a narrow strip of land between ocean and lagoons”.  Arembepe was alive with color, but there was poverty and poor public health.  The first step Kottack had to take in experiencing ethnography was to build rapport.  He would have to gain the trust of the people and get to know them.  He had to convince them he was safe and to get answers out of them from the questions he was going to ask.  He would sit and try to talk to them at the chapel stoop, the male territory where baths had been taken and meals were consumed.  He questioned sample of villagers, and found that Arembepeiros used many more racial terms than the Brazil community.  In order to get the things you need done as an ethnographer, it is better to speak the other cultures language.  Kottack was not very good at speaking their language so he spent the next summer taking an intensive course in Brazilian Portuguese.  Another experience an ethnographer does is a full-fledged interview schedule, a kind of questionnaire.  The ethnographer has to talk directly face to face with informants, ask the questions, and write down the answers.  Questions had to deal with age, gender, racial identity, diet, job, religious beliefs, education, political preferences, possessions, consumption patterns, and ownership.  Kottack also had to find out more about local opinions, values, and feelings.  He had to listen to stories, examine cases, and gather intimate basic details about everyday life.  Ethnographers have to experience culture shock, a chilly, creepy feeling of alienation.  They have to adapt to other cultures, learn different things, and eat different meals, feeling cut off from the world.