The view of the stranger: some factors influencing the attitudes and writings of travellers

Abstract

The first task of the geographer is the collating and arrangement of information describing the multitudinous aspects of people and places. The information may have been acquired at first hand, or it may have come from the observation and reporting of some traveller. In either case, the problem of interpretation makes itself felt, and a many-sided problem it is. The geographer who is recording his own observation is presumably experienced and trained in his craft. And yet there are many factors that may distort, or give a changed emphasis to what he sees. His own background and training will predispose him, perhaps, to a rigidly physical or a determinist view. Or, at the other extreme, he may, in anthropological zeal, attribute to a custom, depths of significance which it does not possess. A recent example of this difficulty was shown in the work of two anthropologists who, separately, worked in a village of Mexico. They were describing the same village, but their accounts were completely different - so different as to sound like reports on different villages Oscar Lewis and Robert Redfield, writing about the village of Tepotzlan.