DATE: Thursday, September 25, 1997          TAG: 9709240097

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ERIKA REIF, STAFF WRITER  

DATELINE: GLOUCESTER                        LENGTH:   62 lines

BOOK ABOUT GUINEA LEFT MANY FEELING BETRAYED

Carolyn Ellis was a 21-year-old undergraduate student at the College of William and Mary when she waded into the peaceful Guinea marshes and into a different culture.

From 1972 to 1984, she spent countless weekends among the Guineamen, learning their ways, sometimes acting as social worker - taking notes and recording private conversations.

By 1986, her years of sociological research in Guinea and in another Chesapeake Bay fishing village became a book, ``Fisher Folk: Two Communities on Chesapeake Bay.'' Today, what she wrote and how she got her information is still a topic of conversation in Guinea.

In her book, Ellis changed the names of the two communities and the names of the people. But when she returned to Guinea in 1989, many former friends reacted angrily or snubbed her, making it clear that they felt betrayed.

James Walter West, 37, a disabled waterman in Guinea, said Ellis would be wise never to come back.

``I carried her fishing, clamming, everything. She's got some junk in there now,'' he says.

His wife, Beth West, didn't know Ellis but many of Beth's in-laws did. Having read parts of the book, Beth said that Ellis made Guineamen ``sound like they were raging lunatics, going after each other sexual-wise. . . . It made people around here look like child molesters and what you call ignorant people.''

``That's why people are so hesitant talking to people that are not from around here - because of her.''

In response, Ellis published an article, ``Emotional and Ethical Quagmires in Returning to the Field,'' in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography in 1995. Although the article was intended to explain her dilemma in simultaneously acting as both friend and scientist, some Guineamen understood it to be the prelude to yet another book.

Ellis, now a professor of sociology and communications at the University of South Florida in Tampa, said there will be no second book. Nor did she make money on the first book, although it earned her tenure, awards and academic prestige, she said.

She blames herself for being a naive young researcher. She also blames the way in which ethnographers were trained in the past.

``It was your job to penetrate and capture that reality,'' Ellis said of how she was taught to study cultures out of the mainstream. Emphasis on the human impact of research was negligible.

Ellis is thankful that a few good friendships with Guineamen survived the ordeal. However, her experience has become a teaching tool.

As a professor, Ellis says she now tells her students that human feelings matter as much as data. She regrets having written certain portions of the book, such as parts of the ``Down in the Marsh'' chapter that deal with sexual practices.

Many in her field have gotten caught in the same position, Ellis said. However, most don't publicize the details of what amounts to ethical dilemmas, as Ellis did in her article.

``I'm willing to take that heat, because I think it helps people think through these projects we're involved in,'' she said.

``I'm trying to figure out ways now of being an ethnographer without being a fink - without doing people in.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

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