On the Conduct of Inquiry

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On the Conduct of Inquiry
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• Fieldwork
• Participant observation
• Armchair anthropology
• Verandah anthropology

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Bronislaw Malinowski

• 1884 - 1942

http//www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1604/v
ideo/Verandah.html Miller, B., (2007). Cultural
Anthropology. Pearson Education Boston.
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Malinowski, B. (1964). Argonauts of the Western
Pacific. London.
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Malinowski, B. (1964). Argonauts of the Western
Pacific. London.
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Participation

• Pros
• Enhances rapport
• Enters a particular social position
• Overcomes Hawthorne effect, in which participants
  change their behavior to conform to the perceived
  expectations of the researcher
• Allows way of life to be deeply felt and
  understood (in the bones) of the ethnographer

• Cons
• One cannot be everywhere, so one needs to choose
  where to be
• Ones role opens and closes possibilities
• Difficult to obtain standardized comparable data
• Takes a lot of time

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Observation

• An ethnographer needs to find out how much his or
  her own experience is true for others
• An ethnographer needs to take notes and record
  conversation (something that regular participants
  wouldnt do)

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Looking for patterns

• What is present here? (descriptive pattern of
  central tendency)
• Why is this pattern present here? (associational
  patterns)
• What is the range of variations?

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Methods of Research in Cultural Anthropology

• Participant observation
• Talking with people
• Life history
• Photography and video
• Collecting songs, speeches, jokes, myths, and
  stories
• Archival or historical sources
• Census data
• Genealogies
• Maps
• Letters and columns in newspapers
• Triangulation of data

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Map of El Nahra Village, from Guests of the Sheik