She spent several months in Rio de Janeiro, acquiring the language, culture, and customs of Brazil before traveling to Bahia. There, she found an escort, Edison Carneiro, who would help her to penetrate the rituals of the candomblé religion. Landes (1994) made it clear that she could not simply interview prominent members of the community “in an office or hotel” (p. 19). Instead, she would have to “go to them,” and “see them live their own lives” instead of merely asking questions (p. 18). In addition, she realized that she would have to have patience, always remember to take notes “in an unobtrusive way,” and,0 most importantly, she would “have to be continually available,” and “always alert” (p. 19).
Landes was first able to put her methods to practice when Carneiro arranged a visit with a man known as Martiniano, who was nearly eighty years of age and was “reputed to be the wise man of his world” (p. 22). He held a wealth of knowledge on the subject of candomblé. As Landes learned on that visit and on her future visits – where she was supposed to learn African lore from Martiniano – the more she wished to learn, the less she could extract, “because by the rules of his logic, everything became priceless” when she wished it (p. 208). Landes’ response to Martiniano’s withholding was one that is now seen as a better approach than planned interviews at appointed times. Landes knew that the best way to tap Martiniano’s knowledge was to watch him “at work at his secret trade.” Instead of continuing to “prod the old man with questions,” a research method which could have left Landes feeling embarrassed and “risked [Martiniano’s] friendship,” she decided to “give him a client,” a woman named Rosita, and watch as he worked with her. Only through watching his divination and counseling, as it happened, was Landes able to “penetrate Martiniano’s façade” (p. 209).
Landes involvement in the candomblé rituals meant that to be accepted she would have to participate fully. Thus, we see Landes (1994) contributing money “and a scribbled note, like the others” in a ceremony for Janaína at a candomblé temple (pps. 160-161). Landes lived in a community of people so impoverished that Carneiro tells her she “will never understand how poor” Bahians truly are (p. 40). As a result, she writes of her appreciation for a small, “poor man’s meal,” through which she discovers that “it is amazing how good manioc will taste when you are hungry and unconcerned with luxurious considerations” (p. 68). Perhaps her understanding of the community is illustrated best by her ability to know when not to get involved. She describes a holiday in Bahia called the Washing of the Church of Our Lord of Good Ending. As Bahians washed the church on that day, as they were “talking and laughing in high humor,” Landes decided she would “not disturb them at all with my camera,” even though “I almost wished I could join them” (p. 241). Late in her stay, Carneiro attempts to teach her a caboclo dance that he had learned. Landes writes whether or not she learned the dance, but the point of her story is that she is joining the community, and learning the ways of the people she is studying by “doing the dance,” not just asking questions.
Through this participation she gained invaluable knowledge of the people of Bahia. This method of research gave her enough information to assert that, as Mahony (1996) writes, “Bahia's traditional candomblés were matriarchies organized by and for women.” Landes did not rely on second-hand accounts, but instead witnessed, that “Nago priesthoods in Bahia are all but exclusively female… only women are suited by their sex to nurse the deities… the men in the cult rarely complain of the authority and demands of women,” and that many men actually want to be women because of the power that women hold (Landes, 1940, pps. 388-394). While some may argue that her personal attachment clouded her work, it is more likely that the bonds she formed led to more reliable evidence that supported her beliefs. Her active participation allowed her first-hand knowledge that interviews alone would not have afforded her.
Nevertheless, Landes’ methods were not without their negative consequences. Some critics argue that her alliance with Carneiro, had “given her intimate access to the life of the candomblés,” and that this had compromised her work (Cole, 1994, p. xxiv). Giesler (1998) notes that Landes “inflated” information that she derived from one of Carneiro’s surveys in order to “favor [her] ‘cult matriarchate thesis’” (p. 260). It is certain that to gain the knowledge that she did, Landes had to truly live and think like Bahians. Clearly, this type of work resulted in the presence of her personal experiences and opinions in her work. “I discovered that I had become African in my prejudices,” Landes (1994) writes, “I know by now that women are the chosen sex” (pps. 200, 202). One has to wonder at this point whether she is studying an outside culture or if she has become “a real candomblézeiro,” as Carneiro says to her, and she is simply studying herself (p. 205).
Still, in Landes methods, we find the foundations of scholarly participant-oberservation methods as “American anthropology was beginning to define it,” where she was able to “enter deeply into the field culture, joining it twenty-four hours a day, each day, all the months or years of research” (Cole, 1994, p. xxiii; Landes, 1970, p.121). As Cole (1994) points out, Landes’ work meant “describing internal conflicts, dialogues, and contestations of meaning in a context of change and fluidity,” the state in which she found Brazil (p. viii). While this work did not always lead to empirical scientific data, it did produce conclusions that later studies upheld. For example, Cole points out that “abundant subsequent research” has shown that candomblé relations are women-centered “in ways consistent with Landes’ early understanding of social roles in Bahia” (p. xxii). In addition Wafer (1991) describes more recent research as also “supporting Landes’ early observation about homosexuality in the cults” (Cole, 1994, p.xxii). Even Giesler (1998) points out that while Landes does appear to inflate certain data, Carneiro’s findings were “certainly consistent with the trend [in female leadership] Landes reports” (p. 261).
Though Herskovits (1948) did criticize Landes, saying that Landes gave a “false perspective on the role of men and women in the culture that gives the book its misleading title,” her methods were able to garner extensive evidence of African culture in Brazil, findings that provide a wealth of evidence to support Herskovits’ assertion that a great deal of African culture has survived in the Americas (p. 124). Though criticized, Landes’ work made an impact on two important levels. Many of her conclusions, which were afforded her only by of her particular methods, provided the basis for a better understanding of race and gender and the roles they play in our society. Unscientific as these methods may have been, they produced theories that are still considered historically accurate. Finally, her methods are now seen as innovative, the fundamentals of a form of study that is now widely accepted.
References Cited
Cole, S. (1994). Introduction: Ruth Landes in Brazil. Writing, Race, and Gender in 1930s
American Anthropology. In The City of Women, vii-xxxiv, by Ruth Landes.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Giesler, P. V. (1998). Conceptualizing Religion in Highly Syncretic Fields: An Analog
Ethnography of the Candomblés of Bahia, Brazil. (Dissertation Excerpt, UMI,
Ann Arbor). Leadership and Gender, Chp. 5, 257-276.
Herskovits, M. (1948). Review of The City of Women. American Anthropologist, 50,
123-125.
Landes, R. (1940). A Cult Matriarhate and Male Homosexuality. Journal of Abnormal
and Social Psychology, 35, 3:386-397.
Landes, R. (1970). A Woman Anthropologist in Brazil. In P. Golde (Ed.), Women in the
Field: Anthropological Experiences. (pp. 117-139). Chicago: Aldine.
Landes, R. (1994). The City of Women (originally published 1947). Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press.
Mahony, M. (1996, April). Review of The City of Women (2nd ed.), by Ruth Landes.
On H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online. Retrieved November 22,
2004 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=12150851402117
Wafer, J. (1991). The Taste of Blood: Spirit Possession in Brazilian Candomblé.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
See several examples, including (Landes, 1940, p. 387; Landes, 1994, pps. 145-153; Mahony, 1996).
