Question of the Day

I started writing about why I picked the group of people I did in my research. As part of the answer, I started talking about how Levi-Strauss made a distinction between hot and cold cultures. He was fond of binaries, as you may be aware. He said that the degree of heat is based on the degree of participation in the marketplace. So, cold cultures are ones that have very little trade with other groups of people.

Now, as should be obvious, this distinction between hot and cold cultures has, largely, been blown out of the water. Even in the most remote places on the planet, one can find people who are fans of Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, or Oprah Winfrey. This blurring of the distinction between hot and cold has meant that just about any group is fair game for an ethnographic study. But the question I have from all this is, is there any reason for ethnographer to continue going to the jungle, the mountain, or the remote island. Is there anything that is a preferred subject for the ethnographer? Is there anything that is a boring or unacceptable subject for the ethnographer?