Lecture 2: Ethnographic Fieldwork

Question 1

ethnography

Answer 1

• based on fieldwork and ‘provides an account of a particular community, society, or culture’
• long-term residence (new language, intimate relationships with people unlike you)
• works through a series of reversals (F->S S->F)

Question 2

ethnology

Answer 2

• based on cross-cultural comparison and ‘examines, compares, analyzes, and interprets the results of ethnography
• more directly compared

Question 3

Malinowski

Answer 3

• Trobriand islands
• western pacific coast of Papua New Guinea
• 1) cut yourself off from your own kind of people
• 2) immerse yourself in the social world you’re
studying
• 1) find patterns, structures, ‘anatomy’ of social life
•2) fill in details of everyday life, ‘imponderabillia’
• 3) collect a set of telling examples, ‘corpus
inscriptionum’
• to ‘grasp the native’s point of view, relation to life, and realize his/her vision of the world’

Question 4

ethnographer techniques

Answer 4

• participant observation, rapport, key cultural consultants
• genealogical method
• ethnographers discover and record connections of
kinship, descent, marriage, using diagrams and
symbols
• life history

Question 5

Emic

Answer 5

• local perspective

•

Question 6

Etic

Answer 6

• external, more analytical

Question 7

research models

Answer 7

• problem-oriented
  
  • investigates one or more specific topic or problem
• longitudinal
  
  • long-term study of an area or population
• team research
• multi-sited ethnography

Question 8

informed consent

Answer 8

• agreement to take part in research after the people being studied have been informed about the nature and purpose

Question 9

Dr. Berk

Answer 9

• Tasmania, Australia (Hobart)
• ancestors inhabited around 40,000 yrs ago
• at end of the last ice age (12,000 yrs ago) they were
separated from mainland
• considered extinct as of 1876
• demanded federal recognition as aboriginal people in
1970s
• language is English, but different context

Question 10

Hobart, Tasmania

Answer 10

•Dr. Berk conducted
• education programs
• birding
• mittens (shell accumulation from arriving feast)
• public displays
• bushwalking (walabee’s are marsupials)
• shell collection
• exhibition design (tayenebe project- kelp weaved
baskets)
• Palawa Kani and the Value of Language in Aboriginal
Tasmania

Question 11

qualitative vs quantitative

Answer 11

• more depth driven; less focused on data
vs
• number driven science

Question 12

participant observation

Answer 12

•a characteristic ethnographic technique; taking part in the events one is observing

Question 13

rapport

Answer 13

•good, friendly working relationship with the people you are working with (hosts)

Question 14

genealogical method

Answer 14

• ethnographers discover and record connections of
kinship, descent, marriage, using diagrams and
symbols

Question 15

key cultural consultants

Answer 15

• key informants; people who will help teach you; power is associated

Question 16

life history

Answer 16

• cultural biography looking in depth

* can speak to the culture as a whole

Question 17

forensic anthro

Answer 17

•special sub-field of physical anthropology (the study of human remains) that involves applying skeletal analysis and techniques in archaeology to solving criminal cases.

Question 18

longitudinal research

Answer 18

•involves repeated observations of the same variables over short or long periods of time

Question 19

problem-oriented research

Answer 19

•tries to solve larger social issues

Question 20

multi-sited ethnography

Answer 20

•having program with multiple sites

Question 21

team research

Answer 21

•teams of scientists working together

Question 22

ethics

Answer 22

•anthropologists have a duty to their field of study and must follow code of morals

Question 23

naïve realism

Answer 23

•assuming everyone thinks with equality/on the same level on certain social issues/cultures

Question 24

applied anthro

Answer 24

• application of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify and assess contemporary social problems

ex: applied medical anthropology