Ruth Landes

THEORY

“The aristocratic class always condescends... and when some of them decide to study Candomblé, they get their material by calling Negroes into their offices because they’re too proud or too lazy to visit the temples in the country. But you will have to go to them. You can’t expect them to act naturally in an office or a hotel. And they will know you respect them if you go to them. I’ll introduce you (Landes 1947, p. 19).” 

“Too often the writers overlook the individualities of their informants, as personalities; the methodological implication is, then, that all are alike….Perhaps because writers here think in terms of ‘strategy’ rather than of ‘creativity’…I myself cannot name the Afro-Brazilian world I knew without instantly hearing, seeing, smelling the vivid actors in it. [6]” (Whitten and Swed, 1971)