An informant is a community member who provides cultural knowledge to a researcher. The term is old-fashioned and increasingly replaced by collaborator, consultant, or interlocutor. The change reflects a shift in ethics: people are not sources to be mined but partners in research. Still, informant remains common in older literature and in some technical contexts.

Good informants are not just talkative. They are reflective, willing to explain things they take for granted, and patient with repeated questions. Anthropologists often work closely with a few key people over months or years. Those relationships shape the research profoundly. What gets learned depends on who is willing to teach and what they choose to share.

What informants provide

• Local vocabulary and categories.
• Explanations of rituals, rules, and relationships.
• Access to networks and events.
• Corrections when the researcher misunderstands.

The best informants are also critics. They push back, question the researcher's assumptions, and refuse to simplify. That friction is where good ethnography comes from.