The Influence of the Anthropologist

While reading the work from Dr. Pandian on Louis Dumont one thing that stood out to me the most was the role of the anthropologist and how their mere presence can significantly alter the behavior of the people they seek to understand. One quote from the paper that stood out was on pg 6, "When an old person had died, for example, Amsu Thevar suggested that some would pose themselves excitedly for its lens: 'He is going to take a photo, he is going to take a photo, stand, man!'" While I understand Dumont was conducting research in a time very different than our own, the phenomena of observation still rings true in the works of anthropologists today. This may even tie in a little to the Daston paper we are also looking at, the idea of the mechanically objective observer or rather how would our subjects act if we were just a fly on the wall.