Thomas F. O'Dea, the Harvard Values Project, and the Mormons: Early Lessons on Ethnography among the Literate

Human Organization, Winter 2006 by Bahr, Howard M

The Harvard Comparative Values Project (1949-1955) was an innovative interdisciplinary study of five ethnic communities living in close contact in the vicinity of Ramah, New Mexico. In 1950, Thomas F. O'Dea was the project's Mormon specialist, responsible for conducting a thorough ethnography of the Mormon community of Ramah. There the Values Project encountered some of the challenges of research among literate subjects that would occupy American anthropologists a generation later. Facing problems of entrée and deteriorating rapport in a community suspicious about recent increases in the number of resident researchers, O'Dea managed through a mixture of authoritative testimonial, in-depth personal participation, and gradual disclosure to win almost total cooperation. In the present paper we draw upon O'Dea's field notes and Values Project correspondence to illustrate the project policies of information control and some of the consequences of those policies. The tendency of Values Project leadership to practice tight information control and at least partial deception is contrasted with O'Dea's experience showing that increased disclosure to his Mormon subjects increased their willingness to cooperate. At the end of his fieldwork, O'Dea concluded that project efforts at information control had been counter-productive, and urged instead a policy of openness and "genuine humanism."

Key words: Harvard Values Project, ethnography, Mormons, rapport, information control, community research, Ramah

Early in 1950, the directors of Harvard University's Values in Five Cultures project appointed sociology graduate student Thomas F. O'Dea as the project's Mormon specialist, responsible for conducting a thorough ethnography of life in the New Mexico village of Ramah. O'Dea was the logical choice. A mature first-year graduate student, he had the previous summer produced a literature review on Mormon history and belief as relevant to Mormon values (O'Dea 1949), a report almost everyone praised as thorough and even-handed.

The Values Project, an innovative interdisciplinary study of five ethnic communities living in close contact in the American Southwest, was an exemplary model of relevant social science research and the pride of Harvard's Department of Social Relations. Over its six-year duration (funded by the Rockefeller foundation for three years, it was granted a renewal in 1952) it produced a remarkable list of theses, articles, and books, and served as a training ground for some of the most productive anthropologists of the coming generation. Later assessments would suggest that the project did not achieve its main objectives. Powers (1997:264) concludes that it "did not succeed in producing a synthesis of the broad and varied research projects, nor did it produce or contribute (in any obvious way) to a theory of values, and its methodology and approach suffered from many flaws." Still, as a "major, highly visible, even star-studded project" that turned out to be the "the last, the longest, and the most sustained effort to capture the topic [of values] intellectually and conceptually," it occupies a secure place in the history of anthropology (Powers 2000:15; 1997:234).

Perhaps more important, as an exercise in applied social science and an experience enabling the immersion of talented researchers in a challenging, long-term, beyond-critical-mass mix of theory and fieldwork, the project was immensely successful. Some 50 social scientists, mostly anthropologists, but also sociologists, historians, psychologists, and others, honed their skills as Values Project researchers. Eminent participants, either as field workers or data analysts, include Robert N. Bellah, Clifford Geertz, David P. McAllester, Robert N. Rapoport, Fred L. Strodtbeck, Arthur Vidich, and Morris Zelditch, Jr. (Powers 1997).

The project was directed by Clyde Kluckhohn, Talcott Parsons, and John Brew. Of these, Kluckhohn was the most involved, despite a concurrent appointment as director of Harvard's Russian Research Center, and the initial proposal was largely his work. Field directors in the early years were Harvard Assistant Professors Evon Z. Vogt and John Roberts. The project was a continuation of Kluckhohn's long-term study of the Ramah Navajo (Lamphere 1979), adding the Zuni, Mormons, Hispanic Americans, and Texan immigrants in the Ramah area as ethnic groups that shared the same territory, confronted similar economic conditions, were frequently in face-to-face contact, and had experienced "similar historical processes" (Powers 1997:12).

The Values Project encountered some of the challenges of research among literate subjects that would occupy American anthropologists a generation later (cf. Brettel 1996). O'Dea's experience in Ramah is particularly instructive in this regard. Facing problems of entrée and rapport in a population where Harvard researchers had for a decade maintained an often unexplained presence, a population suspicious about recent increases in the number of resident researchers, O'Dea managed through a mixture of authoritative testimonial, in-depth personal participation, and gradual disclosure to win almost total cooperation.