In sociological studies, "snowball sampling" entails researching a population by using existing participants to recruit their friends to enroll in the study. Thus, the number of participants is said to expand like a snowball. The method has been used widely to research so-called "hidden populations" (commonly cited examples include illegal drug users, homeless people, prostitutes, &c, that the researcher can't easily "go out and find" to enroll in her study), but obviously can produce biased estimates of "population characteristics" because the researcher can get a rather skewed group of participants (say, if one person is widely popular and recruits all of her friends, the sample can study her personal network rather than the "target population" per se). Ethnography sometimes looks a bit like "snowball sampling" since anthropologists tend to drop into a context where they don't know anybody at all, and slowly build up a network of contacts based on an ever-expanding circle of acquaintances, often based on luck and chance encounters. Very often, my informants will tell me, "you know...if you want to know about XYZ, you really should talk to_____________. I'll give you her phone number." (which later produces the extreme anxiety and terror of calling a complete stranger and trying to convince them that even though you are a sketchy american, it would be really great if they'd agree to let you shove a microphone in their face and record the intimate details of their personal life. Gulp!)
So, since our object of study isn't "population characteristics," (indeed, anthropologists are more interested in the cultural processes that produce "difference" in the first place, and the hard social work of maintaining those cultural boundaries), the bias of the "ethnographer's perspective" is something that we take for granted as given. Indeed, it would be naive to assume that we could get "unbiased answers" if we bring all of our own cultural baggage (upper middle class white academic woman from a private university in 'yankee-landia'...definitely generates a rather unique perspective!). And if our object of analysis is "patterned behavior" (broadly glossed as "culture") that cross-cuts and defines populations (rather than assuming that populations exist ex ante), then a wide network of contacts is extremely useful since it also helps us trace patterns of social relatedness (who are your friends? your relatives? your neighbors? what sort of people are they?). All the messy "bias" is actually interesting data in an extended case study. So in a way, our method is closer to archaeology (pick a plot of ground, start digging, see what you find, use your analytical toolkit to figure out what you've got) than sociology (pick a population that you have already defined and are interested in, use your analytical tools to determine if x characteristic is correlated with y behavior).
Ok...done with the long disquisition on research methods. All this is to say, I've been extremely (and sort of shockingly) lucky as far as my ever-expanding network of contacts. One of my most important contacts is also a close personal friend (and downstairs neighbor...how lucky am I!?). She runs a small-scale lending business out of the entry-way of my apartment, using capital supplied by her sister (my landlady). Sweet! An excellent contact *and* a very cool woman who has become a wonderful friend. What is more, she used to work at another lending firm with her longtime friend and boss...and would be happy to make the necessary introductions. And bring her friend over for dinner. Excellent! When I was pitching my research proposal to my department, my wonderful crazy dissertation committee chair suggested that I find some way to penetrate the seemingly-obtuse world of small-scale (illicit?) finance in Ciudad del Este. His very helpful methodological suggestions involved me, a miniskirt (mine, of course), a large (semi?)automatic firearm (mine again), and back-alleys (and of course the ubiquitous ethnographer's tape-recorder...for when the criminal underground happily wants to go on record and tell me all about their sketchy money laundering and loan-shark business). Thank you for the research tip, dear Prof. C... Luckily, his advice is usually quite a bit more sane, and rather more helpful. Instead, I find that I am *much* happier to discuss the complexities of the credit market in Ciudad del Este from the comfort of my porch, sharing a beer with my friend, furiously scribbling notes as she tells me how her lending business is doing.
And of course when she asks for a favor, it is hard to say no...since fortune put her at the center of my "snowball"...seems like a good idea to be nice to my very best informant :) And such a terrible sacrifice when she asks me to drive her and her friend to the waterfalls for a sunday excursion, poor me! Sometimes research is so hard! Especially since it's butterfly season in Paraguay. To be fair, I spent most of the day attached at the hip to her friend's ten year old son, who thought that hanging out with the exotic American girl was *the coolest thing ever!!!* Sigh. Sacrifices in the name of research. Did I mention butterflies?
p.s. before you succumb to the impulse to immediately book a plane ticket to south america, lured by the immense beauty of the waterfalls...be reminded that the last photo of the arachnid...yup, about the size of my hand. Eeeew!
