Selected Problems of Field Work in the Planned Community

AMONG the most widely practiced and least codified procedures of social research are those comprised by the large-scale collection of observational and interview data in communities. A few accounts of participant-observation are available but, in general, a deep silence cloaks many of the concrete problems found in field work. Thus social anthropologists, themselves heavily committed to community research, have recently been indicted for the "limited extent to which . . . (they) have been articulate about their field techniques. .*. 1 The experiences of fieldworkers have not commonly been codified and set forth for all to read. As a consequence, these procedures have largely remained private skills passed on through example and word-ofmouth to a limited number of apprentices. The reasons for this public reticence are not entirely clear. Perhaps so much of what is done "in the field" seems to require only the application of common sense-with which, presumably, social researchers like other folks are liberally blessed-that there appears small point in codifying situations, problems and procedures. Yet it is acknowledged that sociology and anthropology, like