The Ethnographer’s Ten Commandments
- Ethnography is the crown of all the humanities because it makes a comprehensive study of all peoples and all mankind, past and present.
- You shall not make for yourself an idol of your people, your religion, or your culture. You should know that all people are created equal: there is no Greek or Jew, no white or coloured. He who knows one ethnos, knows none; he who knows one religion, knows none.
- You shall not prophane science, or defile ethnography by career-seeking – a true ethnographer is he who nourishes enthusiasm for science and bears love for mankind and Man.
- Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall draw conclusions. Remember that you owe a debt to the public and science.
- Honour your great predecessors and teachers in academic and public life, and you will be duly honoured.
- You shall not kill science with forged facts, superficial observations, and hasty conclusions.
- You shall not plagiarize.
- You shall not change your once chosen profession of ethnographer. He who has entered upon the path of ethnography, shall not wander from it.
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour, other peoples, their spirit and rites, customs and mores, etc. Love your neighbour more than yourself.
- You shall not impose your culture on the ethnos you explore. Treat this ethnos with care and alertness, love and attention, whatever the stage of their cultural development – and they will strive to rise to the level of higher cultures.
L.Y. Sternberg