Being A Good Person: Give and Take in Santa Rosa

An “ah ha” moment. For a foreigner attempting to participate in and understand the lives of people very different from herself, it was usually far easier to accomplish the former than the latter. And while anthropological training had prepared me to quickly recognize specific configurations of social relationships that differed from those to which I was accustomed, there were few moments in the field more exciting than when a number of apparently disconnected practices I had noted unexpectedly came together in my understanding and made sense as an interrelated whole. One such “ah ha” moment occurred midway during my field research with a sudden reconceptualization of theft.