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Fieldwork and Ethnography

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Title: Fieldwork and Ethnography


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Fieldwork and Ethnography
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Fieldwork
  • living with people for an extended time
  • variety of field techniques for collecting that
    data
  • fieldwork field techniques developed in the
    study of smaller scale societies with greater
    cultural uniformity compared to large-scale
    industrial societies
  • the concept of holism

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Before Fieldwork
  • schooling training
  • language acquisition (at school in the field)
  • research proposal
  • visa, government bureaucracies permissions to
    do fieldwork
  • changing nature of the rules ethicsof
    fieldwork

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Field Equipment
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Medicine, money, and as field equipment
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Entering the Field
  • expats (missionaries, other anthros,
    international development people)
  • tourists
  • going native types
  • exceptional locals
  • culture shock
  • refuge from the natives

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Field Techniques The Ethnographic Method
  • participant-observation - defining characteristic
    of cultural anthropology its methods of
    research
  • first-hand observation of daily behavior
    immersed in daily life
  • no other human science does this
  • what people say what they do

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(Kottak), "The common humanity of the student and
the studied, the ethnographer and the researched
community, makes participant observation
inevitable."
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  • (Malinowski), , in this type of work, it is
    good for the ethnographer sometimes to put aside
    camera, note book and pencil, and to join in
    himself in what is going on."

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Surveys Interviews
  • 2 techniques of asking questions eliciting
    responses
  • quantitative vs. qualitative methods
  • Collection logic analytical approach
  • Enumerated -- statistical
  • Descriptive -- interpretive

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Surveys
  • structured closed-ended questionnaires
  • genealogical method/genealogies
  • statistical analysis
  • objectivity
  • who administers

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Interviews
  • structured open-ended
  • unstructured
  • spontaneous planned

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Ethnographic vs. Survey Research
  • study whole functioning community vs. a sample
  • develop rapport
  • totality of an informant's life-context
  • context thick description
  • adds depth to survey data (i.e. kinship
    genealogies)

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Life History
  • recollections of lifetime experiences
  • identify important life turns for a culture
  • indicates the diversity of experience within what
    appears to be a society of cultural uniformity
  • problem with remembering in the present
  • Notions of narrative and history

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Informants
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Informants
  • what is a "well informed informant"?
  • compared to who?
  • the relationships between ethnographer
    informant
  • relations of power
  • trust, friendship, economic contract, learning,
    adopted as family member, prestige for both

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Anthropology in pairs and such
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TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE
  • Emic local knowledge how people think,
    perceive, categorize the world what has meaning
    in their world-the natives point of view
  • Etic -- shift focus from the native's point of
    view to that of the anthropologist

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Reflexivity
  • Type of knowledge intersubjective
  • A self consciousness about the impact on the data
    produced in the context of doing fieldwork and
    writing culture
  • how the anthropologist effects the thoughts,
    actions of informants
  • how the ethnocentrism of the anthro colors the
    interpretation and final representation of others
    thinking actions

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Paul Rabinow on Reflexive Knowledge
  • Field data are constructs of the process by which
    we acquire them -- intersubjective
  • The problem is a hermeneutical one
  • hermeneutic interpretation ... as the
    comprehension of self by the detour of the
    comprehension of the other
  • Fieldwork is dialectic
  • DIALECTIC BECAUSE NEITHER THE SUBJECT NOR THE
    OBJECT REMAIN STATIC

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Ali Rabinow
  • highlighting, identification, and analysis also
    disturbed Alis usual patterns of experience.
  • forced to reflect on his own activities and
    objectify them as an informant.
  • began to develop an art of presenting his world
    to me
  • But the more we engaged in such activity, the
    more he experienced aspects of his own life in
    new ways.

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Reflexive Knowledge and Doing Anthropology as
Negotiated Reality
  • a mutually constructed ground of experience and
    understanding
  • an acknowledgement of the dialogue between the
    anthropologist and the informant in the
    experience of fieldwork

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Negotiated Reality
  • anthropologists are historically situated through
    the questions we ask and the manner we seek to
    understand and experience the world
  • anthropologists receive from our informants their
    interpretations that are also mediated by culture
    and history
  • the data is doubly mediated
  • first by presence of the anthropologist
  • Then by a second order self-reflection of our
    informants

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  • fieldwork is an experience in humanity
  • a kind of social relationship
  • risky business

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Anthropology and the Ethics of Fieldwork
  • Anthropological researchers, teachers and
    practitioners are members of many different
    communities, each with its own moral rules or
    codes of ethics
  • In both proposing and carrying out research,
    anthropological
    researchers must be open about the purpose(s),
    potential impacts, and source(s) of support for
    research projects with funders, colleagues,
    persons studied or providing information, and
    with relevant parties affected by the research.

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Ethics and Informant Relationships
  • Anthropological researchers have primary ethical
    obligations to the people, species, and materials
    they study and to the people with whom they work
  • avoid harm or wrong
  • respect the well-being
  • consult actively with the affected individuals or
    group(s)

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Fieldwork and Informed Consent
  • Anthropological researchers should obtain in
    advance the informed consent of persons being
    studied, providing information, owning or
    controlling access to material being studied, or
    otherwise identified as having interests which
    might be impacted by the research

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Ethics Beyond the Field
  • Responsibility to scholarship and science
  • Responsibility to the public
  • Responsibility to students and trainees
  • www.aaanet.org
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