The Methodological Significance of the Lying Informant

Abstract

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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