Washington Post Article on CAMP

 The Washington Post article on the link at the end of this entry was written years after the ethnographic present I delineated in my book on the counter-culture in southern Humboldt County, the area I now call the Land of Shum. Writing as a field anthropologist studying a particular group, I was constrained to define the group in time and space, following the long-established method of participant-observation as developed by anthropologists studying traditional cultures. Journalists have different constraints, something I learned well when, after comparing journalism unfavorably to ethnography at one point in my book, I was then forced by circumstances to become a journalist myself. And, I specify journalist, not reporter, because in addition to straight news stories, I often also wrote features and opeds. Journalism includes all three whereas reporter reports straight news, avoiding as much as possible biases, slants and opiinions. The article below has the great benefit of being written by someone with no connections at all to Shum or my ethnographic research, in a well known national magazine by a well known and respected journalist. It thus presents a view of the marijuana industry in Shum and the efforts to eradicate it that originates from outside Shum and not constrained by ethnographic priorities. I present it for its historical value and as an informatiive contrast to materials emanating from me.

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