The Bamboo Fire: Field Work with the New Guinea Wape by William E. Mitchell (review)

At the end of the second edition of The Bamboo Fire: Field Work with the New Guinea Wape, anthropologist William E. Mitchell asks himself and his readers, “What is it, then, that motivates an anthropologist to leave the comforts of one’s own society…. Can he or she really discover the ‘truth’…? Even if one should succeed, of what value are the published findings to others including the people themselves?” (264). Although Mitchell is an anthropologist, these are questions all researchers, not only social scientists, engaging in oral history interviews must ask themselves. To enter the lives of others, to attempt to record their lives and lifestyles, and then to interpret the meaning of their words is to step outside our own comfort zones, our own self-centered societies. Why do we do interviews? Will we ever discover a “truth” during the course of our interviews, and of what value is the “truth” that we learn? Who values it? Mitchell readily admits that he has only partial answers to these questions. For his readers, the answers he finds are not nearly as important as the path he takes to find them. The Bamboo Fire, a well-written, engaging, and intensely self-reflective ethnography, can be read as something of a guidebook for aspiring interviewers.

The Bamboo Firecovers a little more than two years of William E. Mitchell’s life, from 1970 to 1972. It follows him from his home on a farm in Vermont to the village of Taute, high in the Torricelli Mountains of northern New Guinea. Mitchell describes the trials and disappointments of locating a village in which to conduct his research and his doubts about bringing his wife and children along for the two-year venture. He also describes the excitement of being allowed to join town meetings and establishing relationships with the Tautes. More than anything, the book describes interviews Mitchell conducted with various Tautes and the facts and stories he gleaned from them.

While describing in mesmerizing detail the customs and culture of his New Guinea neighbors, Mitchell is able to reflect on the impact of his presence on them, as well as the impact they have on him, his research, and his lifestyle. By including anecdotes about his own experiences gathering data, he teaches us important lessons on conducting interviews. For example, Mitchell describes coming to the realization that his extensive note-taking was bothering his interviewees: “In fact they don’t like to have me write … It reminds me of suspicious Western informants I have interviewed who want to see what you are putting down. Although the act of watching me write is similar, I think the motivation is very different. They aren’t at all suspicious but … [w]hen I begin to write, they act as if I am suddenly talking with someone else, as if I am no longer interacting with them” (103). For newly minted interviewers, whether oral historians or ethnographers, Mitchell’s observation is helpful. If an interviewee becomes reticent during an interview, it might be due to our own behavior. In another example, Mitchell describes accidentally making assumptions about Wape use of Western medicine based on his own experiences: “I had unwittingly assumed a host of unwarranted cultural assumptions about the Wape orderly-patient relationship based on my American experiences that were not only situationally inappropriate, but distorted the truth of the actual relationship … It was a warning to be especially wary of interpreting the obvious act or familiar stereotype—for the more obvious and familiar … the greater is the tendency to project one’s own cultural interpretations of understanding” (53). The lesson here for interviewers is that a situation that may seem obvious or familiar is often neither; the interviewer should always seek clarification. In both examples, Mitchell later reflects on his possible understandings and misunderstandings as an American anthropologist, a married father of two, and a native...