Participant observer

by Whyte, William Foote

What would happen if a social scientist saw himself not as an outsider but as a participant, engaging in the situations he studied and acting to change the course of events? The distinguished career of William Foote Whyte as an activist scholar provides a rich and complex answer to that question. Participant Observer is Whyte's own story. He takes us to worksites from Boston's North End in the early forties to Spain and Peru in the seventies to Jamestown, New York, in the eighties. Along the way, we see the development of his thinking and the spread of his influence into fields as disparate as social psychology, industrial relations, and agricultural development. While it documents a remarkable career, Participant Observer is also a personal chronicle. Whyte reflects with candor and sometimes great amusement on the years of his childhood, his academic education, and his marriage. He also describes being stricken with polio and recounts how he and his family worked to circumvent the han