Question

Nice Girls Don"t Talk to Rastas
GEORGE GMELCH
Summary This article uses the experience of an American student studying abroad to illustrate the concept of naive realism, especially the American insensitivity to the existence of social class and the nature of small communities. Gmelch noted that one of his students, Hanna, whose research he was supervising in Barbados, suddenly encountered a serious fieldwork problem. Her fieldwork involved living in a rural Barbadian community, where she worked in the village school and lived with a host family. For several weeks her work went well. Rapport with her host mother and other villagers was excellent and she was enthusiastic about her experience. Then suddenly her homestay mother demanded that she move out because of what villagers were saying about her. It turned out that she had been seen talking to a Rastafarian named Joseph, and based on their view of Rastas, villagers had concluded that she was smoking marijuana and bathing naked with him and other Rastas. Some even thought she was a drug addict.
Gmelch learned that indeed she had met a Rastafarian named Joseph, spoken to him publicly several times in the village, and visited his cave in the hills on a couple of occasions. Hanna was puzzled why villagers would be upset by her behavior. Her fieldwork was based around the concept that anthropologists are supposed to be interested in different kinds of people
Her problem related to the existence of class in the Barbadian community; Rastafarians were looked down on. People felt that Rastas often stole vegetables and fruit from villagers and lacked good morals because they often went naked and looked bizarre. The situation was compounded by the size and face-to-face nature of village life. Unlike suburban and urban communities in the U.S., everyone knew each other in the village. Peoples' behavior was a constant topic of gossip.
Gmelch dealt with the situation by talking to village elders and Hanna's homestay mother. He explained that she did not understand their concern about Rastas, that she had not slept with Rastas, and that she meant no harm. In the end, Hanna was allowed to remain in the village. She learned that her U.S. suburban culture denied the existence of class and lacked a sense of how close people in a small community can be, combined with an American sense of personal autonomy. In short, she naively assumed that people in rural Barbados would view her behavior by her own standards.
In a "postscript" follow up years later, Hanna explained the profound impact that meeting Joseph had had on her sense of openmindedness, and her growing awareness of discrimination and prejudice.
In his article "Nice Girls Don"t Talk to Rastas," Gmelch argues that the U.S. students often work on the idea of personal autonomy, meaning that if they see what they believe is truth they can act without concern for what others think.

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