Midterm 1 Flashcards
1
Q
What is ethnography?
A
- one of many approaches in social science research
- a descriptive account of a community or culture (originally contrasted with ethnology)
- meaning term is fluid, and is not limited to anthropology
2
Q
What do ethnographers do?
A
- participant observation: participate in and observe daily life (methods include interviews, document gathering and analysis, survey, and observation)
- direction and course if research are determined as research progresses
3
Q
Major features of ethnography
A
- observation occurs in natural rather than controlled settings
- researchers employ range of methods
- research methods are largely unstructured (does not require fixed research design, categories for interpretation emerge out of data collection and analysis)
- emic rather than etic
- focus on a limited # of cases
- analysis more about interpretation that explanation
4
Q
Emic
A
- subjective or insider accounts
5
Q
Etic
A
Objective or outsider accounts
6
Q
Two major approaches in social science research
A
Positivism and naturalism
7
Q
Popper and Hempel
A
- logical positivism
8
Q
Logical positivism
A
- Popper and Hempel
- emphasis on the experiment, controlled competitive inquiry can determine cause and effect
- reality exists outside our bodies, operates according to universal and physical laws that we can express as mathematical formulae
- experiment is the gold standard for determining causation
9
Q
The logic of the experiment
A
Controlled comparison:
- Generate a hypothesis
- Figure out way to test hypothesis and a research design
- Evaluate your results in light of the theory you used to make your initial hypothesis
10
Q
Major tenets of positivism
A
- The methodological model for social sciences should be physical sciences (ie the experiment)
- The goal of science is universal or statistical laws
- The foundation for science is observation (need standard methods so that we can get more stable measures reliability and replicability)
- Observe things directly or indirectly via devices that measure their effects
- Science needs standard methods of assessing measurements (measurements must be stable across observers)
- Reliable measures provide sound, theoretically neutral based upon which we can build stable knowledge (procedural objectivity)
11
Q
Issues positivism with social sciences
A
- most social science research is not experimental
- rather than exorcism for experimental control over variables, positivist a in social science research use statistical methods to exercise control and test hypotheses
- use other methods to collect data too (surveys, structured interviews, questionnaires - devices that measure the effects of what we presume to be social or cultural causes)
12
Q
Naturalism
A
- more akin to biological sciences
- the knowledge we get from experiments is limited and not representative of what occurs in the “real world”
- we cannot truly understand things outside of the context in which they “naturally” occur or exist
13
Q
Naturalism agrees with Positivism
A
- there is a world that extends beyond our bodies that exists independent if us and our minds
- we can know the world through observation and other empirical methods
- we can be objective (we can create theoretically neutral descriptions of the real world)
14
Q
Naturalism disagrees with positivism
A
- naturalists believe t is best to study things as they are without disturbing settings in which they occur (researchers should be sensitive to nature of the setting)
- primary aim is to describe things as they are, and to document how actors understand the phenomena and contexts in question (constructionism)
- researchers should respect and appreciate the social world they study (our work should be true to the phenomena not to the scientific methods)
- we shouldn’t be looking to explain the cause of social things as if they were physical things (material has interpretation and is about meaning, maybe there are no standard measures in the first place)
15
Q
Constructionism
A
- people construct their social world, both through interpretations of it and through actions based on those interpretations
- interpretations sometimes reflect different cultures, through their actions people create distinct social worlds
16
Q
Anti- realist and political critiques of naturalism
A
- there is no such thing as value free research
- the world and its objects do not exist independently of the researcher
- researchers’ knowledge is not more objective or superior to those of the people researchers study
17
Q
Questioning realism:
A
- constructionism and realism only works if we do not apply them to ourselves as researchers (if so how can they describe real world beyond social, how is it objective?)
- all that we see we see through a cultural lens
- ethnographers descriptions have to be unpacked
- we can’t capture social meanings on their own terms (we have to examine our texts as creative works that are shaped by contexts, dispositions, biases etc.)
18
Q
Post structuralism
A
Derrida
- ethnography is writing and all forms of writing are creative endeavours involving the use of rhetoric
19
Q
Post modernism
A
Foucault
- ethnography is part of the social service machinery that has served the surveillance and control of societies
- truth and falsity are a matter of power and political authority
20
Q
Politics of ethnography
A
- the mid 1980s saw the rise of advocacy in ethnography - emancipatory anthropology
- most people ethnographers studied were economically, politically, and socially marginalized
- advocates argue that ethnographers should be using their skills to “help” the people they study
21
Q
Reflexivity
A
- researchers are part of the world they study
- our research has consequences
- our background status impacts the manner if our research
