Techniques and Antecedents: A Response to Giesler

Abstract

In this validation of Faraday and Wren-Lewis by an anthropologist and ethnographer, Dentan refers to "Comments on ‘The Selling of the Senoi’" by Patric V. Giesler. Giesler wanted to know if Faraday and Wren-Lewis were cognizant of certain fieldwork pitfalls, since they were not ethnographers. He gives as an example a difficulty he himself had when studying Jurema shamans’ beliefs about psychokinesis. When interviewing them about tales he had heard on a previous trip, he kept getting nothing but "No" answers to the question, "Have you ever seen an object move by itself?"—until he realized he had to reframe the question because of conflicting cultural assumptions. His informants didn’t believe objects moved "by themselves"—spirits moved them.