for as many generations as the person could remember. The information obtained from one person would be cross-checked by asking other relatives the same questions, and after confirmation, a very detailed family tree could be drawn up. This exercise helped the social anthropologist to understand the kinship system of the community — what kinds of roles different relatives played in a person’s life and how these relations were maintained. A genealogy would help acquaint the anthropologist with the structure of the community and in a practical sense would enable him or her to meet with people and become familiar with the way the community lives.
Building on this base, the anthropologist would constantly be learning the language of the community. H/she would also be observing life in the community and making detailed notes in which the significant aspects of community life would be described. Festivals, religious or other collective events, modes of earning a living, family relations, modes of child rearing — these are examples of the kinds of topics that anthropologists would be specially interested in. Learning about these institutions and practices requires the anthropologist to ask endless questions about things that are taken for granted by members of the community.
This is the sense in which the anthropologist would be like a child, always asking why, what and so on. In doing this, the anthropologist usually depends on one or two people for most of the information. Such people are called ‘informants’ or ‘principal informants’; in the early days the term native informant was also used. Informants act as the anthropologist’s teachers and are crucially important actors in the whole process of anthropological research.
Equally important are the detailed field notes that the anthropologist keeps during field-work; these notes have to written up every day without fail, and can be supplemented by, or take the form of, a daily diary. Activity Some famous instances of field work include the following: Radcliffe-Brown on the Andaman Nicobar islands; Evans Pritchard on the Nuer in the Sudan; Franz Boas on various Native American tribes in the USA; Margaret Mead on