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An "ethnography of encounters" is the detailed protocol of the interaction among two or more persons in a social situation where each has something-however large or trivial-to gain or lose in the course of the event. This paper proposes that such ethnographic records are a new form of recording and reportage and recommends the creation of a corpus of literature of this genre. After defining the genre, and giving two examples from the author's fieldwork, the discussion turns to the value of such reportage in the formulation of ethnological theory. The protocols reveal that individual actors enter into social interaction with personal and private motives, with variant values and attitudes, and with differential sets of social skills and knowledge. These ends and skills are important to the forms such events display and to the outcome of the encounters. This suggests that in the formulation of models of social behavior it is necessary to introduce individual actors and personal motivations. Social models have in the past sought to avoid consideration of the individual, relegating personal actions to the performance of social roles, but an examination of actual encounters makes it clear that the behavior of the actors cannot be adequately perceived within the concept of role. The concluding sections develop some of the theoretical problems that might be resolved with an adequate sample of encounters from diverse cultures. These relate to the cross-cultural study of such standard roles as avoidance and joking relationships, the dynamic interaction between the normative and the actual, and the role of the individual in culture change and adaptation.
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