Barz and Titon

Both the Barz and Titon readings thoroughly informed the reader about the importance of utilizing materials (notebook, recorder, video, etc.) to conduct research. While Titon gave a very informative run-down of some key essentials while engaging in ethnographic fieldwork, I found Barz's questioning of the usefulness of fieldnotes very interesting.

The two main themes standing out in the Barz article are the reliance upon oral and auditory "documentation" versus reliance upon text and the function of the fieldnote as secondary or primary to the end result in research. Barz often talks about the notion of an "original" experience, and from what I gathered, he feels as though the fieldnote is one way to move towards relaying that notion to the audience. At one point, he recalled a conversation with Mzee Masanga in a fieldnote. He denotes it as an "innocent"/"original" experience, because both his words and thoughts were reflected in the same setting, and this was achieved using text. Later in the article, Barz somewhat rebukes fieldnotes as a necessity when he suggests that conveying an experience through text might be a hindrance to having a true connection. He even sites anthropologist Michael Jackson as saying that only one's senses can truly allow one to revel in an experience, but Barz doesn't completely dismiss the power of fieldnotes which brings me to the next topic, how important are field notes?

Barz presents two diagrams that place fieldnotes as an important conduit to the final ethnographic interpretation. He feels as though, although fieldnotes aren't completely necessary (the interpretation can be drawn directly from experience), they are a beneficial anchor for the overall research, but he claims that fieldnotes are much more beneficial to the ethnographer than the reader.

I would have to disagree that fieldnotes are majorly more benefical to the ethnographer than the reader. Of course, unpolished (or as he stressed without the use of headnotes) fieldnotes are fairly useless in a final interpretation because they're out of context, but if fieldnotes are presented in a fashion similar to how they were presented in the Barz article, they provide a very rich narrative which heavily enforces the reader's perspective when viewing the research. If anything, wouldn't the presence of fieldnotes make the material (including the interpretation) more objective, because the reader has a chance to derive his/her own interpretations from the text depicting the experience pre-interpretation? An interpretation from experience alone would be sufficient but wouldn't providing the fieldnotes make for a more "accurate" account of the research on behalf of the reader?