Erik: How has your anthropology background
proven helpful working in unfamiliar environments,
including with the United States military?
Simon: Being trained as an ethnographer being
trained and sort of having this cultural anthropology
background, significantly changes the way
of how I do my work, or being in strange or
different situations. This is why I’m against
focus groups. I think the concept of a focus
group is laughable. That you bring people
in to a sterile research environment, so that
the researcher can be comfortable and safe
and happy, but the respondents – the people
who you want to be open and honest – are
the ones who are uncomfortable and on-edge,
that’s backwards to me. It’s the responsibility
of the researcher to go to the respondents.
It’s the responsibility of the researcher
to go into the environment, into the homes,
into the societies, into the buildings, into
the offices of the people that they want to
study and understand. It’s the responsibility
of the researcher to deal with the discomfort,
rather than forcing the respondent to be uncomfortable.
So that’s how I was raised, both academically,
and also that’s how I was actually raised.
I lived all over the world. As a kid, we traveled
around a lot, and so I will always go to somebody
if I’m interested in them, and I believe
they are the ones who should be comfortable
and I’m the one who should be uncomfortable.
That’s correct, because that way you get
the best answers. And so, because that’s
how I’ve always done things, I have no problem
going to very unfamiliar environments. For
me it’s an object of curiosity, if I’m
uncomfortable I want to understand what’s
making me uncomfortable and I think that’s
kind of cool.
