Agar's "Who are you to do this?"

Key Issues:

1) The ethnographer's cultural and personal identity influence his interactions with the group being studied. The informants' "expectations of what the ethnographer wants to learn--and their decisions about what should be told--will derive partly from their sense of who he or she is."

2) The ethnographer's background "is the initial framework against which similarities and differences in the studied group are assessed."

3) The ethnographer's "attitude toward his or her own culture conditions the evaluative description of the studied group. The less the ethnographer likes his or her own culture, the more favorably the alternatives may be viewed."

4) "In increasing numbers, the "natives" are becoming ethnographers."
Question: How would an ethnographic study undertaken by an indigeneous person reassure our concerns about the overall objectivity and validity of the results? How would a native's subjectivity be factored into the findings?

5) "Whether it is your personality, your rules of social interaction, your cultural bias toward significant topics, your professional training, or something else, you do not go into the field as a passive recorder of objective data.

6) Culture shock "comes from the sudden immersion in the lifeways of a group different from yourself." In order to adapt to culture shock, the ethnographer "adapts to the stranger role" and becomes "an autonomous man, one with a higher tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty."
One of the characteristics of an ethnographer is his "detached involvement."

How is it possible to be a member of the community you are observing and yet step back and reflect upon the situation without allowing your involvement to affect your judgment?