Off the verandah

spelling off the veranda; longer, come down off the verandah) is a phrase often attributed to anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, who stressed the need for fieldwork enabling the researcher to experience the everyday life of his subjects along with them.

Translated this reads "do not sit spinning theories like spider webs on the verandah ... go down among the people, get to know them ..."[3]: 43 The phrase refers to the argument promoted by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski who stressed the need for fieldwork enabling the researcher to experience the everyday life of his subjects alongside them.

[8]: 17  She also distinguishes the group of "verandah anthropologists", who visited new places, but did not learn the language of the people they observed, depending on interpreters and rarely interacting with their subjects.

[8]: 19 Indeed, Malinowski in his pioneering[a] research set up a tent in the middle of villages he studied, in which he lived for extended periods of times, weeks or months.

[16]: 1182–1183  His pioneering decision to subsequently immerse himself in the life of the natives represents his solution to this problem, and was the message he addressed to new, young anthropologists, aiming to both improve their experience and allow them to produce better data.