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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This paper offers a review of methodological problems as dealt with by anthropologists (mostly since the 1960s), points up the lack of data about the lying informant and suggests reasons for its neglect, specifically the humanistic self-image of the anthropological field worker. The methodological significance of the lying informant is then discussed in terms of a typology of lying, with examples from different culture areas. It is maintained that lies are a form of communication, not its negation, and that a detailed and rigorous investigation of them can lead to the discovery of cultural values, dynamic aspects of social organization and the informal structure of networks.When I read what the white man has written of our customs, I laugh, for it is the custom of our people to lie as a matter of course to outsiders, especially the white man. We ask, "Why does he want to know such personal things about us"?A Tiv Informant

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Statement of problemAn interesting problem emerging from recent studies in complex societies is that of the relationship between ethnic identity and the interaction between various ethnic groups in a pluralistic society. In much of the sociological and anthropological literature, writers have treated ethnic groups as isolates and ‘givens’. Such categorization dismisses the potential investigation of factors responsible for permanence and change in ethnic groups. This paper will focus on a specific example of ethnic identity change, that of the Gungawa of Yauri Emirate, North-Western State, Nigeria, who have long had a pattern of ‘becoming’ Hausa. The paper will suggest some ways in which the possibility and mechanism for ethnic identity change functions to structure interethnic relationships and ease tensions resulting from such contact.

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