that the anthropologist —whether consciously or unconsciously — is selecting what will be written down in his/her notes, and how it will be presented to the readers of his/her books or articles. Because there is no other version available to us except that of the anthropologist, there is always the chance of bias or error. However, this risk is present in most research methods. More generally, field work methods are criticised because of the one-sided relationship they are based on.
The anthropologist/sociologist asks the questions and presents the answers and speaks for ‘the people’. To counter this, some scholars have suggested more ‘dialogic’ formats — that is, ways of presenting field work results where the respondents and people can be more directly involved. In concrete terms, this involves translating the work of the scholar into the language of the community, and asking their opinion of it, and recording their responses. As the social, economic and political distance or gap between the researcher and the researched becomes less wide, there is greater and greater chance that the scholar’s version will be questioned, qualified, or corrected by the people themselves.
This will surely make sociological research more controversial and much more difficult. But in the long run this can only be a good thing because it will help to take social science forward and make it more democratic, thus allowing many more people to participate in producing and critically engaging with ‘knowledge’. Surveys Survey is probably the best known sociological method, one that is now so much a part of modern public life that it has become commonplace. Today it is used all over the world in all sorts of contexts going well beyond the concerns of sociology alone.
In India, too, we have seen the increasing use of surveys for various non-academic purposes, including the prediction of election results, devising of marketing strategies for selling products, and for eliciting popular opinions on a wide variety of subjects. As the word itself suggests, a survey is an attempt to provide an overview. It is a comprehensive or wide-ranging perspective on some