Item Detail
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19539
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3
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0
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English
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Thomas F. O'Dea, the Harvard Values Project, and the Mormons : Early Lessons on Ethnography Among the Literate
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Human Organization
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Winter 2006
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65
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no.4
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343-352
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The Harvard Comparative Values Project (1949-1955) was an innovative interdisciplinary study of five ethnic communities living in close contact in the vicinity of Ramah, New Mexico. In 1950, Thomas F. O'Dea was the project's Mormon specialist, responsible for conducting a thorough ethnography of the Mormon community of Ramah. There the Values Project encountered some of the challenges of research among literate subjects that would occupy American anthropologists a generation later. Facing problems of entree and deteriorating rapport in a community suspicious about recent increases in the number of resident researchers, O'Dea managed through a mixture of authoritative testimonial, in-depth personal participation, and gradual disclosure to win almost total cooperation. In the present paper we draw upon O'Dea's field notes and Values Project correspondence to illustrate the project policies of information control and some of the consequences of those policies. The tendency of Values Project leadership to practice tight information control and at least partial deception is contrasted with O'Dea's experience showing that increased disclosure to his Mormon subjects increased their willingness to cooperate. At the end of his fieldwork, O'Dea concluded that project efforts at information control had been counter-productive, and urged instead a policy of openness and "genuine humanism." [journal abstract]