CULTURAL ECOLOGY STUDIES

Because this book is an ethnographic exploration of the meanings of landscapes, I include in this chapter some of my own personal background with its particular cultural baggage before describing my methodology. The information represents some of my ‘qualifications’ for understanding the meanings of Greek rural landscapes, the reasons I understand them in the ways that are presented here, and an explanation of some of the fieldwork methods employed. Although in the past the ethnographer may have been perceived as a dispassionate and unbiased observer, an element of reflexivity is now generally expected of Anglophone writers of ethnographic studies (see, e.g., Johnson 2000, 304; also Clark 1988, 3–16, in the context of her fieldwork on Methana). As Clark (1988, 3) notes in the introduction to her study of Methana households, factors such as the age, gender, marital status, personality, and cultural and educational background of the researcher affect which windows into a community will be open to him or her and which will be closed.