Ethnographics Gallery University of Kent

Turkish Village

Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.

Paul Stirling
CHAPTER TWO

THE SETTING

previous page

Page 25


Typicality

One comment on my work which I hear from all directions is that I cannot generalise from these villages since I have no way of knowing whether they are typical. This objection would hardly deserve a reply were it not so frequently stated. In the first place, I do of course know from visiting, travelling and reading that they are typical in almost all respects of the area in which I worked, and in many if fewer respects of most Turkish villages.

But the whole implication of this objection is mistaken. I have not set out to make general statements about all Turkish villages and do not pretend to. The anthropologist, by his detailed field work in one community, is able, explicitly or otherwise, to offer a model of social structure of this community. The chosen community cannot possibly be `typical', because there is no such thing. But the model is bound to throw light on other similar communities, either because the model fits and enlightens, or because the points at which it does not fit, in so far as they are not explicable by elementary common sense, suggest new problems. Of course, had I been five people (or twenty-five, for that matter), capable of working in five sharply different villages simultaneously, the study would have been more informative. But I am only myself.

next page
Contents Page